JOURNAL OF CHRISTIAN EDUCATION, Papers 102, December 1991
JACQUES ELLUL AND TECHNOLOGY: WHAT WE CAN LEARN JEFF CAYZER St Marys District Baptist Church, Sydney ELLUL AND HIS THOUGHT ON TECHNOWGY AND TECHNIQUE
Jacques Ellul (born 1912) has been a most important commentator on the twentieth century scene. A former professor of the history and sociology of institutions at Bordeaux, and a native of that city, Ellul has been an active Christian layman since his conversion as a young student. Dismissed from his post as professor of law at Strasbourg by the Vichy government he entered local politics after the war hoping to have a Christian influence. Although he rose to the post of deputy mayor of Bordeaux, he left politics disillusioned with the possibility of making radical social changes from such a position. Thereafter, until his retirement, he propagated his ideas using the academic world as his base. He has continued a prolific literary output in retirement. Ellul has written some fifty books and many articles. His thought ranges over a wide spectrum of issues, but may perhaps be summarised as dealing with history, especially of institutions, sociology and social criticism and ethics. Some of his works on these areas have taken the form of stimulating and original Bible studies. l\Iuch of his writing has become available in English translation. Ellul's thought has generated numerous doctoral dissertations, principally in North America, and has been the subject of an extensive secondary literature. In a brief article it is possible to give only a short outline of one important segment of his work and to point to its usefulness and suggestiveness for Christians as they consider the effects and implications on society of the use of technology. Ellul uses a dialectic approach. This emerges notably in that he does not accept uncritically the jargon and methodology of any one discipline. Speaking as a sociologist, he criticises the methods used by his colleagues to reach their conclusions. On biblical matters he feels free to abandon much of the modern critical approach and use the text as it stands. He aims at going beyond the received ideas and methods to get at the truth.