The Weekly Sage hopes to regularly bring brief profiles of key contributors to thought and faith before a Christian audience for historical education and awareness of valuable resources.

This Weekly Sage was an audience suggestion, so thanks go to Theophilus for the inspiration!

Jacques Ellul

• “In planning it is very difficult to distinguish clearly between the means and the ends, between the grand political decisions and their technical implementation (the plans themselves). Only the technician can tell, on the basis of the means in existence, what is possible with respect to the realization of such and such an end, and similarly the simple technical formulation of such and such an intention is bound to transform it by eliminating the imponderable, the contingent, the emotional, the ‘human’ element contained in a speech. The simple citizen who gives his opinion will no longer recognize it once the rigorous method of economic calculation has passed over it and implemented it. In other words, in formulating a choice on the level of a speech, of opinion, or of sentiment, one does not know with precision what the end-result will be in terms of work schedules, the possibilities of consumption, investments, or the general equilibrium of the economy. In going on to such calculations, the technician is compelled to take his bearings once again in order to avoid any incoherences or disasters.”[1]
• “I shall devote much space to the fact that propaganda has become an inescapable necessity for everyone. In this connection I have come upon a source of much misunderstanding. Modern man worships ‘facts’ – that is, he accepts ‘facts’ as the ultimate reality. He is convinced that what is, is good. He believes that facts in themselves provide evidence and proof, and he willingly subordinates values to them; he obeys what he believes to be necessity, which he somehow connects with the idea of progress. This stereotyped ideological attitude inevitably results in a confusion between judgments of probability and judgments of value. Because fact is the sole criterion, it must be good. Consequently it is assumed that anyone who states a fact (even without passing judgment on it) is, therefore, in favour of it. Anyone who asserts (simply stating a judgment of probability) that the Communists will win some elections is immediately considered pro-Communist; anyone who says that all human activity is increasingly dominated by technology is viewed as a ‘technocrat’; and so on.”[2]

Jacques Ellul (1912-1994) was a French sociologist and philosopher who wrote prolifically on the impact of technology, propaganda, and modern society, with a uniquely Christian perspective. The topics of his writing have been covered by many of the other authors in the Weekly Sage so far, notably Hannah Arendt, Bertrand de Jouvenel, Raymond Aron, and others. Nevertheless, his contributions to these fields and themes was very original.

Born in Bordeaux to a Protestant mother and Eastern Orthodox father, Ellul studied law, inspired by several leading Western intellectuals. While studying Karl Marx intently as a student in Bordeaux and Paris, Ellul also became acquainted with Soren Kierkegaard and Karl Barth, thinkers who integrated religion with their social perspective. In the 1930’s Jacques professed a conversion to Christianity, and went on to lead French Resistance groups in France during the Nazi occupation in the early period of World War II.

Afterwards, Ellul spent his career as a professor at the University of Bordeaux, near where he grew up, and published extensively. His major topics of concern were naturally focused on the challenges that Christian religion and theology presented for the post-war world of controlled economies, technological development, and political entrenchment. No doubt the experiences that Ellul had during the war shaped his understanding of the intense conflict between the world’s way of life and the Christian alternative.

Ellul’s works consist both of explications of his own viewpoint, as in The Theological Foundation of Law, as well as critiques of the prevailing views among academics or the common man, as in The Political Illusion. In both cases, his writing offers few solutions or optimistic projections. His explanations of what he understands the Christian revelation to require are equally hesitant and humble.

Rather than pushing hard for a particular idea, Ellul tends to question the scholars and theologians that have come before him, including luminaries like Calvin. He argues instead for the limited ability to comprehend what Scripture teaches. Moreover, the church, in Ellul’s vision, needs to be able to adapt this revelation to the changing circumstances of society. From his perspective in the middle of the twentieth century, Jacques Ellul saw an unbounded horizon of uncertainty, with change the only prospect. As a result, he was very hesitant to entrench a particular application of Christian theology.

Further, when confronting the secular ideas of his day, Ellul was persistently critical. He was willing to go so far as to say that particular thinkers had completely failed to understand the issues that the modern social and economic system presented. Old ideas, in his reading of his contemporaries, had an unnecessary and extensive hold on the leading thinkers of the twentieth century. While a complete overhaul of conditions in human life had occurred, the academia was rigidly bound to Enlightenment conceptions of man, the individual, the state, nature, law, and more.

Specific thinkers come in for particularly scathing analysis. It is sufficient to note that Jacques Ellul was not particularly fond of Jean-Paul Sartre’s ideas and writing. Inconsistency and amateurism were certain to draw Ellul’s ire. Nevertheless, his work evidences an incredible familiarity with a broad range of intellectual and technical literature. Making use of this broad and deep education, Jacques Ellul points toward accurate conceptions of the fundamentals of society by critiquing others.

Ellul’s own understanding of the state of the world’s politics and culture lacks significant sources of hope apart from the eschatological assurance of Christianity. In an age of increasing concentration of power and alienation of man from the sources of spiritual community that traditionally refreshed him, Ellul foresaw the potential for violence and moral decline. Modernism presented few comforts for the self-identified anarchist.

Nevertheless, the insight and originality Jacques Ellul was himself able to achieve is a hopeful sign for the world in which he lived. While his early life was burdened by the World Wars, the extremes of violence and destruction that occurred then did not escalate throughout the rest of the century. The engagement and awareness of the church that Ellul sought would be a hopeful sign for expanding the influence of peace, even if the underlying conditions of mechanization and politicization he deplored appear as persistent as ever.

• “The machine, so characteristic of the nineteenth century, made an abrupt entrance into a society which, from the political, institutional, and human points of view, was not made to receive it; and man has had to put up with it as best he can. Men now live in conditions that are less than human. Consider the concentration of our great cities, the slums, the lack of space, of air, of time, the gloomy streets and the sallow lights that confuse night and day. Think of our dehumanized factories, our unsatisfied senses, our working women, our estrangement from nature. Life in such an environment has no meaning. Consider our public transportation, in which man is less important than a parcel; our hospitals, in which he is only a number. Yet we call this progress…And the noise, that monster boring into us at every hour of the night without respite. It is useless to rail against capitalism. Capitalism did not create our world; the machine did.”[3]
• “Man must be allowed to know of himself what is a proper regulation of society. Christians and non-Christians must come to an understanding on the lines of sound social and political order, based on capacities common to all men. They must be able to work together on this foundation and build the best human society. In the process God is considered more and more an outside factor. In all the theories of natural law God appears more like a presupposition convenient for reasoning, like a hypothesis which is necessary as a point of departure, rather than as the living God, unique in three persons, at the same time creator, savior, and revealer. In all these theories God is regarded only as creator. The idea of an original identity in creation is relied upon to establish a unity between Christians and non-Christians, as if there had not been in the meantime the decisive intervention of God becoming man and radically changing all relationships. Furthermore, creation is conceived of as initially proceeding from God. But the world is thereafter thought of as functioning by itself, as if God were not continually creator and as if the world did not owe its life to God at every moment.”[4]

[1] Jacques Ellul, The Political Illusion, trans. Konrad Kellen, New York: Vintage Books, 1972, 257.

[2] Jacques Ellul, Propaganda, trans. Konrad Kellen and Jean Lerner, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965, xv.

[3] Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society, trans. John Wilkinson, London: Jonathan Cape, 1965, 4-5.

[4] Jacques Ellul, The Theological Foundation of Law, trans. Marguerite Wieser, New York: The Seabury Press, 11.