이 정석 교수의 신학 문답 Q&A

I.2 Modern Secularization

 

Secularization is a perennial and universal phenomenon.  However, this process is culminating in our times, so that it is properly called “the Age of Secularization.”  Tired of controversy over secularization, Martin E. Marty denied the uniqueness of contemporary secularization. [55]   But I do not agree with him, because it is quite different from the secularization in the past.  Modern secularization is rather systematic and dominant, so that “At the international missionary conference at Jerusalem in 1928, Secularism was put alongside Hinduism, Islam and the rest as one of the rivals with which the Gospel has to deal, but described as the greatest of them.” [56]   As Lesslie Newbigin wrote, “The most significant fact about the time in which we are living is that it is a time in which a single movement of secularization is bringing the peoples of all continents into its sweep.” [57]   It is “the supporting atmosphere” or “like the air about us.” [58]   It is not a mere subjective judgment but “an objective process” and “a matter of history.” [59]

 

We will attempt to overview some special characteristics of the modern secularization for deeper insight into this critical phenomenon.  Every aspect of culture is considered in relation to it, but three particular aspects receive the most intense illumination, i.e., political, philosophical, and technological developments.  It is generally agreed that modern secularization started in the political weakening of the ecclesiastical power and its subsequent transfer of power to the secular powers.  The leading ideas of this movement were then developed and strengthened in the area of philosophy, especially the philosophy of history.  Finally, it is said that the birth of the technological culture accelerated our contemporary and future secularization.  Our discussion in the three sub-sections will concentrate on these three aspects of modern secularization.

 

 

 

I.2.1 Political Secularization

 

Historians generally agree that the latter half of the nineteenth century is crucial in this trend. [60]   Owen Chadwick, in his monumental work entitled The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century, set the crucial period for the European secularization as “from the publication of the Origin of Species in 1859 until the downward turn in French, German and English churchgoing statistics during the 1880s, or in part until 1914.” [61]   This agrees approximately with Gary Scott Smith, who analyzed American secularization as follows in The Seeds of Secularization: Calvinism, Culture, and Pluralism in America 1870-1915: “Many of the secular seeds planted between 1870 and 1915 have borne mature fruit only in our time.” [62]

 

What or who caused this radical turn in the history of Christendom?  Most scholars find its distant origins in the Greek philosophy of human autonomy or the Church Fathers' progressive interpretation of history, but they cannot be its direct and decisive causes.  It is a typically modern phenomenon and its cause should be found rather within more recent centuries.  Many revolutionary thinkers are suggested as influential in the rise of modern secularization.  No doubt they have contributed to this universal movement in their own way, but it is difficult to conclude that a small number of intellectuals created this movement, for “Enlightenment was of the few” while “Secularization is of the many.” [63]   Rather, they seem to reflect some historic change which was happening at their own time with a keen sensitivity.

 

Then, what was the historic event or movement which caused a massive departure from Christianity in our times?  Because it is a religious change, it is natural to turn our attention to the most revolutionary event in church history--the Reformation.  However, if the two movements are related, secularization may be an unintended development of the Reformation.  Concerning this possibility, it is interesting that a consensus is emerging in recent studies.  In the 1947 Evanston Conference on Secularism, church historian John T. McNeill suggested an idea: “The increasing subjection of the churches to the state in all European countries produced its fruits of secularism among the clergy.” [64]   Later, after the heated discussions and analyses on secularization in the 1960s and 70s, the leading sociologist David Martin concluded that secularization was caused by the failure of differentiation between church and state.  According to him, church and state are two major organizations in human society, and the social differentiation between these two safeguards their distinct and constant development.  However, “it [the Church] constantly encounters the centripetal power of society, either converting the body of the Church into the body of citizens without remainder, or making Christianity merely the vehicle of local continuities, reciprocities and values.” [65]   Secularization is the result of the Church's failure to resist “the pressure against Christian differentiation.”  This failure is followed by the collusion of Church and state, marginalization, and attenuation. [66]   Therefore, the Barmen Declaration (1934) is significant in this aspect: “We repudiate the false teaching that the church can and should expand beyond its special responsibility to take on the characteristics, functions and dignities of the state, and thereby become itself an organ of the state.” [67]

 

Wolfhart Pannenberg recently published a treatise entitled Christianity in a Secularized World, where he agreed with the analysis that secularization is the consequence of the Church's subjection to the state, and that this transition of power occurred because of the public resentment against the endless confessional wars caused by the Reformation in the post-Reformation era:

 

People realized that religious passion destroys social peace...The doubt which grew under the impact of the wars of religion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, led in the seventeenth century thinkers Hugo Grotius and Herbert of Cherbury seeking instead the basis of social order and also of peace between states in the natural law, and in connection with that, in a natural religion common to all human beings... That became the starting point for a secular culture in Europe... (Thereafter) the religious question was subordinated to the decision of state sovereignty. [68]

 

Accordingly, he suggested church unity, the failure of which has brought this situation, as a necessary condition for overcoming our contemporary secularization. [69]   David H. Hopper also agreed with this analysis in his recent book (1991), [70] where he also pointed out that even the Reformation itself inspired this development by its “change in the attitude toward change.” [71]   This insightful consensus is very significant in our discussion.  The failure in proper relations with the state, i.e. political secularization, leads to the subsequent development of secularization.

 

Secularization theologians insisted that secularism and secularization are not essentially related and therefore to be distinguished.  According to Harvey Cox, while secularism is “the name for an ideology, a new closed world-view which functions very much like a new religion,” secularization is “a historical process, almost certainly irreversible, in which society and culture are delivered from tutelage to religious control and closed metaphysical world-views” and therefore “an authentic outcome of biblical faith.” [72]   However, secularization is not only a departure from Christianity but also a pursuit of some different ideal.  No doubt, there must be some leading idea for secularization, and it is none other than secularism.

 

 

 

I.2.2 Philosophical Secularization

 

Then, what is the essence of secularism?  Rudolf Bultmann is correct to say that “the loss of the supernatural can be and was replaced in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by the belief in progress and its accompanying optimism.” [73]   When John Baillie says in The Belief in Progress that “Historians agree in regarding belief in progress as one of the ruling ideas in the Western thought of the last hundred and fifty or two hundred years,” [74] it is but an another name for secularism.  The idea of progress is called a “belief,” because it “is of a speculative or a priori kind, and not such as readily to be suggested by the observation of historical data alone.” [75]

 

And, the belief in progress is called “a Christian heresy,” because “it is within Christian civilization and nowhere else that the modern belief in progress has arisen.” [76]   Hendrikus Berkhof seems to agree with this positive understanding:

 

This concept came into the world only after and through Christianity...in short, in the struggle for what we call progress--an activity is taking place throughout the world to the honour of Christ.  It is sometimes performed by people who know and desire it; it is more often performed by those who have no concern for it, but whose labour proves that Christ truly received--in full objectivity--all power on earth. [77]

 

Therefore, “pessimism of culture” is criticized as “an ungrateful blindness.” [78]   On the other hand, all the progressivists are praised even as “evangelists and missionaries in their own kind.” [79]   But, it is too positive and too inclusive.  As a result, Berkhof has fallen into a dilemma.  If it is true that “Sanctification and secularization progress together” [80] and therefore “The growth of the opposition forces, then, is an indication of the growth of the Kingdom of God,” [81] there will never be a solution.

 

Rather, we need to raise a basic question: What is progress?  Simply, is it “a movement in a direction deemed desirable”? [82]   It is certainly not a sufficient definition, because it is relative to what is desired.  Concerning this problem Baillie made a penetrating statement: “Human history can therefore be thought of as progressive only if it is in some sort conceived as a single action.  But the conception of history as a single action involves the conception of an universal agent, that is, of God.” [83]   Therefore, from the Christian point of view, the belief in progress without God is logically impossible.  But, an essential element of secular progressivism is “without God.”  As Karl Löwith pointed out, divine providence has been replaced by the idea of progress and thus man became the subject of history in place of God. [84]   That is why Martin Heidegger called this age as the epoch of subjectivity (Subjektivität), the era of human autonomy.  That is why humanists attempt to erase even the concept of God. [85]   But true progress is progress toward God, the center of history, and the true hope of progress “is thus a hope radiating from a single centre and existing only for those whose lives are determined by a positive relation to that centre.” [86]   Therefore, claimed progresses in wrong directions are not progress but “progress against Progress.” [87]

 

Moreover, a genuine progress must be a human progress.  Economic, scientific, or informational progress alone may not be true progress without the progress of humanity.  However, no historian testifies to the moral progress of human race. [88]   Our century is said to be one of the most immoral centuries in the human history: brutal warfare and killing, compassionless neglect of the starving and poor people, insane addictions to immoral pleasures, and, most of all, egoistic rebellion against family and God.  Therefore, Hendrikus Berkhof recognized that there are limits to progress.  He listed three such limits: (1) it is not applicable to art, the human ethos, love, empathy, and religion; (2) one cannot speak of progress in the sense of happiness; (3) fundamentally, the fact of sin limits it. [89]

 

Furthermore, the belief in progress involves an element of illusion and even idolatry, because it is an empty notion without any empirical or theological ground.  Some have confused the idea of progress with the doctrine of divine providence, but, as J. B. Bury concluded in his pioneering work The Idea of Progress, those two concepts are “incongruous.” [90]   For the providence of God neither guarantees a simple forward progress of human history nor imposes His will with a total disregard of human response.  It is mysterious and inscrutable in most details.  The Kingdom of God will be ultimately realized, but how and when is not revealed.  It is ambiguous, but the way to realize His Kingdom lies in judging the world rather than in making it an Utopia.  Some criticize this optimistic pessimism as naive and ignorant, [91] but this apocalyptic expectation seems a more biblical and realistic picture. [92]   In reality, this belief in progress finally met the “watershed event” of World War I.  As Carl L. Becker recognized, “Since 1918 this hope has perceptibly faded.  Standing within the deep shadow of the Great War, it is difficult to recover the nineteenth-century faith either in the fact or the doctrine of progress.” [93]   But, it did not die out.  Becker himself turned to another hope in progress--the hope of technological progress grounded upon the mastery of power. [94]   After World War II and Holocaust, a great return to the Christian faith had been expected, but “the revival of religion in the early post-war years was no more than an episode.” [95]   Rather, secularization has been more accelerated than ever with the pride and belief in the technological progress.

 

 

 

I.2.3 Technological Secularization

 

Suddenly we are in the midst of “technological culture.”  As Jacques Ellul writes, “we are all in this game.” [96]   “Technology is our environment, the new `nature' in which we live, the dominant factor, the system.” [97]   It threatens our natural environment, humanity, society and culture, [98] and creates far bigger problems than what it solves, and some of them are irreversible and irreparable. [99]   The more technology advances, greater unpredictable disasters will follow. [100]   In addition, its damages and dangers are assessed only in monetary terms, and its problems and solutions are analyzed only in technological terms. [101]   Technology humiliates men into serving machines [102] and appreciating any and all technological products. [103]   It is absurd.  It is even more absurd, when we consider the unreasonable fact that we cannot dispose it, even if we wish to do. [104]   We simply cannot resist the attractions of modern technology, whatever problems and threats it entails.  As technocrats always conclude, “we cannot stop progress.” [105]   “To be sure, there are growing efforts at resistance from the environmentalists concerned about the degradation of the natural environment and also from some religious traditions that seek to preserve the social structure and religious meanings of an earlier time,” as David Hopper observed, “but by and large the pace of technological innovation and its spread are little altered by these efforts.” [106]   It seems that this technological mechanism, coupled with human problems of pride and avarice, is leading the human race to a “global death.” [107]   Ellul even called it an invincible and demonic “terrorism.” [108]

 

At present, there is a growing anxiety that technology is “beyond our control”.  René Dubos commented: “Technology cannot theoretically escape from human control, but in practice it is proceeding on an essentially independent course.”; John Kenneth Galbraith stated: “I am led to the conclusion... that we are becoming servants in thought as in action, of the machine we have created to serve us.”; Martin Heidegger also said: “No one can foresee the radical changes to come.  But technological advance will move faster and faster and can never be stopped.  In all areas of his existence, man will be encircled ever more tightly by the forces of technology--these forces--have moved long since beyond his will and have outgrown his capacity for decision.” [109]   Almost every intellectual worries about it and some of them even imagine a future in which human beings would actually be slaves of powerful artificial intelligence, but they cannot find any fundamental solution.  Jacques Ellul provides an insightful explanation of the puzzle of why we cannot control technology.  “What all those who think they can master technique lack is,” he explains, “a basic understanding that technique is simply power, that no one can master power, and that by its very nature power forbids all questioning and slips away from all attempts to seize it.” [110]   Therefore, it “cannot be controlled unless the whole be controlled.” [111]   Who could control the worldly power if not the Christian churches?  As he sees it, however, the churches are the worst victim of the modern technological culture rather than a leading force to overcome it. [112]   Ellul simply became pessimistic and negative. [113]

 

However, pessimistic defeatism or technological negativism may not be Christian, because God still reigns this technological world and the power of darkness cannot ultimately succeed.  A Christian philosopher Egbert Schuurman offers a “liberating perspective for technological development.” [114]   Upon his critical analysis that transcendentalists and positivists, technocrats and revolutionary utopians are altogether heading toward a cul-de-sac because they commonly share a wrong belief in the “autonomy” of technology, [115] he seeks a “religious” solution, for “it is not science or technology but man that bears the blame.” [116]   Technological development itself is a divine call, [117] as it works for the redemptive process of liberating the world. [118]   But, it is the secular motive(s) of secularized men rather than technology itself that causes technological secularization. [119]   Of course, it is debatable whether technology has an internal mechanism that causes secularization.  From a Christian point of view, however, the ultimate problem certainly lies in the sinful mind of man, and his salvation is given by grace, making man free from the power of sin and empowers him to serve God responsibly for the redemption of the world.  As he correctly pointed out, nothing or nobody could block the progression of the Kingdom of God, which “is forging a path right through the disturbances and dislocations of meaning occasioned by the technological development led by secular motives and fraught, today, with far-reaching consequences.” [120]   The present form, however, is not so optimistic.  Technology is so secularized, and the problem is still increasing.  So Schuurman called for immediate action to restrain and halt the deepening secularization of technology, [121] though its fundamental solution should be religious, that is, a restoration of relationship with God.    

 

As a matter of fact, there are several powerful movements which resist the wrong developments of technology.  First, the environmental movement arose in the midst of technological society and has now gained sufficient political power to control unrestrained industrial developments globally.  Moreover, scientific research has proved that uncontrolled technological developments will result in global death.  Second, the anti-Western movement arose in the Third World countries and corrected the concept of “development.”  Though the Western idea of development in technology and economy is still powerfully influential in the Third World countries, it has been significantly controlled by cultural criticism of the superiority of Western technological culture, and the concept of development as Westernization is no longer dominant.  This movement has also led for the West to reflect seriously on their own understanding of “culture.”

 

Most significantly, another movement is emerging now.  Disillusioned with technological culture and disappointed by rationalistic thinking, people are turning to seek for the meaning of life.  Now, people are beginning to realize “the technological bluff” which has promised an Utopia. [122]   “Technology now provides a lesser hope,” says Hopper: “Sometimes the vision of a new technology revivifies briefly the old political hope, the hope of deliverance..., but with a passage of five or six years, the excitement, the stir, the resolve are gone.” [123]   Peter Berger analyzed the “built-in” limits of secularization in terms of “homelessness”: modern technological culture necessarily produced a general feeling of homelessness and alienation so that a massive counter-modernization movement would arise to reverse the trend.  As examples of this movement, he listed the Third World nationalism, youth culture, leisure culture (labour movement), liberation movement of race and women, and religious resurgences. [124]   Pannenberg agreed with this diagnosis, and listed “three signs of a reversal” of the trend toward secularization: a widespread disappointment with the passion for social revolution, a tendency to withdraw from social commitment into private life, and the renewal of religious life in the sub-cultures of society. [125]   Because “long term effects of the secularization of culture”--the loss of legitimation in the institutional ordering of society, the collapse of the universal validity of traditional morality and consciousness of law, and the loss of a meaningful focus of commitment--are too destructive to tolerate, he believed, there would certainly be a break and reversal. [126]   He then raised an important question: “What can theology contribute to this?” [127]

 

As clearly stated from the beginning, this study attempts to offer a theological solution to the problem of modern secularization, particulary the secularization of the Korean churches.  In our discussion of the problem of secularization (1.1) and some special characteristics of modern secularization (1.2), we found that secularization is a mass emancipation from God toward the world and the effects tragically appear in every area of life, especially in the political, philosophical, and technological aspects of our modern culture.  Our task will be to find a way out of the problem of secularization, and therefore the next section will be devoted to that purpose.

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[55] . Cf. M.E.Marty, “Secular Theology as a Search for the Faith,” in: A.Schlitzer, ed., The Spirit and  Power of Christian Secularity, Notre Dame 1969, 12.

 

[56] . Newbigin, Honest Religion for Secular Man, 7; But the position changed at the missionary conference in Mexico, which said: “We are neither optimistic nor pessimistic about this process of secularization as such... Secularization opens up the possibilities of new freedom and of new enslavement for men.” (19); Concerning both possibilities, see 139-140.  One is a new life of freedom in Christ, and the other is that the dethronement of the old absolutes opens the floodgates to chaos in which men are simply lost.

 

[57] . Ibid., 11.

 

[58] . L.E.Loemker, “The Nature of Secularism,” in: J.R.Spann, ed., The Christian Faith and Secularism, New York 1948, 11.

 

[59] . Chadwick, The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century, 264; “Simply... a     description of something happened to European society in the last two hundred years.” (266)

 

[60] . Cf. ibid., 18: “This start and end are arbitrary... They symbolize, however, an age admitted by every               historical observer to be central to any consideration of the theme.  And these forty years have the first merit, that during them the word secularization came to mean what we now mean when we use it.”

 

[61] . Ibid.

 

[62] . G.S.Smith, The Seeds of Secularization: Calvinism, Culture, and Pluralism in America 1870-1915, Grand Rapids 1985, 6; Concerning the difference of American secularization from that of Europe: “The nature of secularization in America was quite different from that in England and on the European continent, and its more gradual, subtle change was much harder to apprehend than the overt scepticism and attacks on Christianity across the Atlantic.” (166)

 

[63] . Chadwick, The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century, 9.

 

[64] . J.T.McNeill, “Historical Introduction to Secularism,” in: The Christian Faith and Secularism, 34.

 

[65] . D.Martin, A General Theory of Secularization, Oxford 1978, 280.

 

[66] . Cf. ibid., 278-305.

 

[67] . Article 5, in: J.H.Leith, ed., Creeds of the Churches, Atlanta 1982, 521f.

 

[68] . W.Pannenberg, Christianity in a Secularized World, London 1988, 12-14; His position with respect to the issue of secularization has changed significantly here in comparison with that in the 1960s.  In a review article, “Christianity as the Legitimacy of the Modern Age” (1968), in: The Idea of God and Human Freedom, Philadelphia 1973, 190f, he understood the beginning of the secular European culture in the same way, but assessed this “emancipation of the political order from its ties to Christianity” and the process of secularization quite positively: “Secularization in a wider sense can be understood positively as a consequence of the Reformation, that is, the removal of the privileges of the clergy in favour of the Christian people... Of course not every process of secularization has favoured Christian maturity.  Secularization can also bring about a break with Christianity altogether.  In this sense, these processes are ambiguous.  But the motivation of their genuine significance is entirely Christian... in spite of all the tendencies associated with it to turn away not merely from the authoritarian medieval form of Christian tradition, but also from Christianity itself, it represents a phase in Christian history in which the `infinite increase of man's regard for himself' has for the first time come fully to prevail.”

 

[69] . Cf. Pannenberg, Christianity in a Secularized World, 58; A.Zabriskie, “Secularism and Church Unity,” in: The Christian Faith and Secularism, 243-255.

 

[70] . Cf. D.H.Hopper, Technology, Theology, and the Idea of Progress, Louisville 1991, 53: “In short,   the evil attending the religious wars that ravaged Europe over the last half of the sixteenth century and throughout most of the seventeenth century was of such magnitude that a profound reaction to religion set in among sensitive, discerning intellectuals.  Hope shifted from religion to a `rational politics'.”

 

[71] . Ibid., 50: “The Reformation made clear that there was no longer a dominant institution free from the processes of change... helped to further a change in the attitude toward change.”

 

[72] . H.Cox, The Secular City, New York 1965, 20f; Newbigin, Honest Religion for Secular Man, 8f. He also distinguishes secularization from secularism, but considered both aspects of secularization: “This process may be looked at both in its negative and in its positive aspects.  Negatively, it is the withdrawal of areas of life and activity from the control of organized religious bodies, and the withdrawal of area of thought from the control of what are believed to be revealed religious truths.  Positively, it may be seen as the increasing assertion of the competence of human science and techniques to handle human problems of every kind.  In a biblical perspective, this can be seen as man's entering into the freedom given to him in Christ, freedom from the control of all other powers, freedom for the mastery of the created world which was promised to man according to the Bible.”

 

[73] . R.Bultmann, “The Idea of God and Modern Man,” in: R.W.Funk and G.Ebeling, ed., Translating Theology into the Modern Age, New York 1965, 85.

 

[74] . J.Baillie, The Belief in Progress, New York 1951, 1.

 

[75] . Ibid., 104, 184; In The Philosophy of History, Collingwood raised the criticism that “Any idea of this kind is open to the fatal objection that it encourages the historian to plug the holes in his knowledge with something that is not history.” (8); Hopper, Technology, Theology, and the Idea of Progress, 40: “Neither Comte nor Spencer was able to establish Progress as a `scientific hypothesis', as the fixed law of society... belief in Progress has become the great dogma of modern society.”

 

[76] . Baillie, The Belief in Progress, 94f; C.L.Becker, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers, New Haven 1932, 29-31, 40f.

 

[77] . H.Berkhof, Christ The Meaning of History, London 1966, 171-173.

 

[78] . Ibid., 174.

 

[79] . Baillie, The Belief in Progress, 222.

 

[80] . Berkhof, Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Study of the Faith, 514.

 

[81] . Berkhof, Christ The Meaning of History, 171: “Along with the growth of the Kingdom of God the antichristian powers will also grow.”

 

[82] . Baillie, The Belief in Progress, 2.

 

[83] . Ibid., 186.

 

[84] . Cf. K.Löwith, Meaning in History: The Theological Implications of the Philosophy of History, Chicago 1949.

 

[85] . Cf. F.A.E.Crow, “The Meaning of Death,” in: E.J.Ayer, ed., The Humanist Outlook, London 1968, 260: “The god-hypothesis, invented by man to provide an explanation of the meaning of existence has served its purpose and is destined to disappear.”

 

[86] . Baillie, The Belief in Progress, 189; “At all events, the further progress for which Christians may hope can only be that which radiates from the Christian centre of history, and can be nothing else than the progressive embodiment in the life of humanity of the mind that was in Christ and `a growing up in all things unto Him who is the Head'.” (235)

 

[87] . Hopper, Technology, Theology, and the Idea of Progress, 105.

 

[88] . Cf. Baillie, The Belief in Progress, 34: “We have found no encouragement either in the testimony   of the ancients or in that of modern pre-historians for supposing that men have grown progressively more moral.”; Accordingly, it is a misconstruction of modern progressivism that a man in the later age of human history is more moral than a man in the earlier age: “Every individual must make a new beginning for himself.” (227)

 

[89] . Cf. Berkhof, Christian Faith, 513f.

 

[90] . J.B.Bury, The Idea of Progress, New York 1932, 21.

 

[91] . Cf. Berkhof, Christ The Meaning of History, 174: “The average Christian... has a feeling... that God will have his chance in the far future through a sudden interference.  The average Christian is not aware of the presence of the Kingdom in the world today... This leads to an ungrateful blindness for the signs of Christ's reign in the present... And they believe that this pessimism of culture is completely in agreement with Christian faith.”

 

[92] . Cf. G.Tyrrell, Christianity at the Cross-Roads, London 1909, 119f: “It is evident that there are vital and progressive forces at work everywhere, but it is equally plain that there are destructive forces... The world is the arena of a conflict between a multitude of irreconcilable ends.  The belief that they are ordained to an eventual harmony...falls to pieces on closer inspection, which reveals an inherent rift in nature.  All life is under the sway of sad mortality.”  Tyrrell was pessimistic on the future terrestrial history and therefore welcomed the apocalyptic reading of the hope of Jesus as offering us a much more realistic picture of our human situation.

 

[93] . C.L.Becker, Progress and Power, New York 1936, 7.

 

[94] . Cf. ibid., 24f.

 

[95] . Pannenberg, “Christianity as the Legitimacy of the Modern Age,” 179.

 

[96] . J.Ellul, The Technological Bluff, Grand Rapids 1990, 8: “Nothing is indifferent, nothing is outside. The game is so big and so universal that it is communal.  There are no individual players; we all play it together.”

 

[97] . Ibid., 15; “We live incontestably in a society that is totally made by it [technology] and for it.” (12)

 

[98] . Cf. ibid., 141-148. Here Ellul illustrates that a “technological culture” is essentially impossible for   the following reasons.  First, technology recognizes only operational information, while culture is concerned with true knowledge.  Second, technology is totally subordinate to the economic imperatives, while true culture transcends them.  Third, technological language cannot communicate with culture.  Fourth, technique is universal, while culture has local and temporal differences.  Fifth, technology does not reflect the past, while culture is essentially past-oriented.  Sixth, technology decreases social contact, while culture promotes it.  Finally, culture is humanistic, while technology does not care humanity.

 

[99] . Cf. ibid., 50: “Mechanization and technique has thus brought great gains and responded to many human needs.  But it is incontestable that they also gave rise to the main problem for Western society throughout the 19th century.”; “We must look at the ecological question in its entirety, with all the interactions and implications, without reductionism.  We then see that the problem raised is a thousand times more vast and complex than any of those raised in the 19th and 20th centuries which techniques have been able to solve.” (51); “The situation is even more startling when we look at it globally, taking into account the relation between the advanced technology of the West and the demographic growth of the Third World.” (59); Concerning its irreversible and irreparable effects, see 60-73.

 

[100] . Cf. ibid., 60: “Unpredictability is one of the general features of technical progress.”; “It is especially in the field of chemistry that we find unforeseen and unexpected results of this kind.” (66); “We can formulate the principle that the greater the technical progress, the larger the number of unpredictable effects.” (70)

 

[101] . Cf. ibid., 76; “Every problem--social, political, human, or economic--must be analyzed in such a   way that it becomes a technical problem.  Technique is then a perfectly adequate means to solve it.” (48)

 

[102] . Cf. ibid., 43: “Machines do not stop... People, then, have to be organized to work as the machines do.”; “But the classical problem is that people do not adapt to machines nor machines to people.” (16); For the problems caused by this machine adaptation, see 42-44.

 

[103] . Cf. ibid., 203: “The techniques developed in the last decade are themselves leading to absurdity. They produce and demand absurd behaviour on our part.”; “Things are produced that we do not need, that serve no useful purpose.  We produce them because technique makes them possible and we have to exploit the possibility.  Inexorably and absurdly we have to follow this direction.  In the same absurd and inexorable way we also use things that we do not need.” (204); “The primary function of technique was to promote industry.  The movement is from investment to mass production to mass consumption to mass returns or profits, which are then reinvested.” (207); “We are truly in the presence of erratic economic thinking (and sadly, we have to say, economic practice)... Obsession with technical innovation brings our system into a series of logical follies and puts it out of step with the economies of people in the Third World.” (209f); “What we have here is techno-economic absurdity in its purest form, for the goods that are produced are totally negative.  If we use them, the result is negative because of the enormous destruction they will cause... I am well aware of the economic argument.  They keep the wheels of industry turning and supply jobs.  On this reasoning the pharaohs who built the pyramids were great economists!” (210); “Many advertisements, urging us to be modern, portray what are basically images of aggressiveness, conquest, power, and violence.” (215)

 

[104] . Cf. ibid., 197-220.

 

[105] . Ibid., 218.

 

[106] . Hopper, Technology, Theology, and the Idea of Progress, 13.

 

[107] . Ibid., 126.

 

[108] . Cf. Ellul, The Technological Bluff, 384-394.

 

[109] . Quoted in Hopper, Technology, Theology and the Idea of Progress, 73.

 

[110] . Ellul, The Technological Bluff, 157: “Power is at one and the same time both the objective and the               justification.”

 

[111] . Ibid., 153.

 

[112] . Cf. ibid., 396: “To me, however, the churches seem worst of all.  Whether we take the World Council of Churches or the papacy, they have become the privileged agent of technical enthusiasm.  They are in a panic lest they should be thought to be behind the times, obscurantist, out of things.  To show their good faith and broad-mindedness, they defer.”; “The question that I have to ask is why the churches have so little judgment and so little critical spirit in a matter which concerns not only dogma but the conception of humanity as a whole and even the possibility of a revelation that is beyond the reach of science.  I think that all the churches' reactions stem from the fear of not being modern, of not being up to date or `with it.'  It is much more important for them to preserve contact with their contemporaries than with God, to talk as society does than to listen to God's Word.  They are thus victimized by the terrorism of opinion and communication as regards technique.” (399)

 

[113] . Cf. ibid., 411: “Seeing the Hydra head of trickery and the Gorgon face of hi-tech, the only thing   we can do is to set them at a critical distance, for it is by being able to criticize that we show our freedom.  This is the only freedom that we still have if we have at least the courage to grasp it.  Nothing is more certain.”

 

[114] . E.Schuurman, Technology and Future: A Philosophical Challenge, tr. H.D.Morton, Toronto 1980.

 

[115] . Ibid., 326: “Neither the positivists (Norbert Wiener, Karl Steinbuch, and Georg Klaus) nor the transcendentalists (Friedrich Georg Jünger, Martin Heidegger, Jacques Ellul, and Herman J. Meyer) can give an integral, harmonious view of the relation between humanity and technology.  As a result, they are without a meaningful perspective for the future.  This brings us to the matter of the fundamental agreement between the transcendentalists and the positivists.  Their agreement is grounded in the pretension of autonomy... The self-worship of the positivists is directed outward, while the self-worship of the transcendentalists is directed inward, in the flight before technology.”; “It is self-evident that Ellul's difficulty must follow from his judgement that technology is an autonomous power.  If this power is truly autonomous, how, indeed, can there be any escape from it?” (143); Idem, Reflections on the Technological Society, Toronto 1977, 12: “Both the technocrats (Herman Kahn, Antony Wiener, Olaf Helmer, Karl Steinbuch, Erich Jantsch, and Georg Klaus) and the revolutionaries (Herbert Marcuse, Arthur Waskow, Claus Koch, Robert Jungk, Ernst Bloch, and Jürgen Habermas)... stand in the tradition of Cartesian philosophy.  Both are guided by the idea of human autonomy.”

 

[116] . Ibid., 15.

 

[117] . Cf. Schuurman, Technology and Future, 365: “Finally, technological meaning-disclosure ought to be led by the belief that humanity is called to the task of technology and that people are obliged to accept this mission as a responsibility before God.”  See also 374f.

 

[118] . Cf. ibid., 375f: “A liberated technology will then be able to ease the difficult circumstances in which people live `by nature'.  It will afford an enlargement of life's opportunities, relieve the aches and pains and difficulties of work, resist natural catastrophes, conquer disease, improve social security, expand communication, multiply information, augment responsibility, vastly increase material prosperity in harmony with spiritual well-being, and abolish alienation from self, nature and culture.  Technology frees man's time and fosters the development of new possibilities”; Also, see Idem, Reflections on the Technological Society, 21, 59.

 

[119] . Cf. Schuurman, Technology and Future, 156: “In Ellul's opinion, secularization inevitably accompanies technological development.  Yet he has the roles reversed here, for it is because of secularization that people construe technology as an autonomous power.  People themselves have made an idol of technology; they have placed their confidence in it, and they expect salvation from it in the end.”

 

[120] . Ibid., 375.

 

[121] . Cf. ibid., 369f.

 

[122] . Cf. Ellul, The Technological Bluff, 11.

 

[123] . Hopper, Technology, Theology, and the Idea of Progress, 74.

 

[124] . Cf. P.Berger et al, The Homeless Mind: Modernization and Consciousness, New York 1973, 181-  200.  He mentioned especially the present religious resurgence as “a possible reversal of the secularization trend.” (199)

 

[125] . Cf. Pannenberg, “Eschatology and the Experience of Meaning,” 193f.

 

[126] . Cf. Pannenberg, Christianity in a Secularized World, 33-38.

 

[127] . Ibid., 44.  For his answer, see 56-58.  Negating both extreme positions, anti-assimilation and pro-assimilation strategies, he suggested integration and a broadening perspective: “Rather, the opportunity for Christianity and its theology is to integrate the reduced understanding of reality on the part of the secular culture and its picture of human nature into a greater whole, to offer the reduced rationality of secular culture a greater breadth of reason, which would also include the horizon of the bond between humankind and God.” (57)

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