11
Religion has the most profound and seemingly ineradicable roots in the very being of humans. Experience shows it to be ineradicable, because the greatest attempts to destroy religion only result in new religiousness.180
Now, more than ever before, humans are enslaving themselves to things and to other people through the religious process . . . The religious, which humans in our situation are bound to produce, is the surest agent of alienation, of people’s acceptance of the powers which enslave them . . .181
In Les nouveaux possédés (1973) we encounter Ellul’s sociology at its finest.182 Translated as The New Demons (1975), this book is a presentation, analysis, and critique of various contemporary conceptions of secularization, myth, and religion. We would not consider it a work of pure sociology today, but rather a blend of sociology, philosophy or social theory, and theology. In it, Ellul describes the ways human beings are inherently oriented toward the sacred and argues that modernity is more religious than ever before. However, religion (as opposed to revelation) for Ellul is human-created, and involves various objects of worship, as we shall see.
Ellul and Dostoevsky
The book’s title is a reference to a novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky called Demons or Devils, depending on the translation. Since the original English and French translations were titled The Possessed [Les Possédés], Ellul’s title (literally, “The New Possessed”) is a clear homage to this novel, which he also refers to elsewhere.183 Indeed, in Ellul’s Theology and Technique, he engages with a number of Dostoevsky’s works. If we understand this engagement, we can better grasp what he is doing in The New Demons. The Possessed presents Dostoevsky’s critique of the political ideologies of his time. It is a satirical critique of political revolutionaries, nihilists, and utopian projects all at once. Many of the characters are possessed by radical political ideas, states of possession represented by their being driven towards suicide and assassination.
In Theology and Technique, Ellul notes that technique wears a mask, presenting itself as permitting a new social unity among humans. However, if we lift this mask, we find that in fact, it locks humans into a world built of their own pride. This pride actually cuts them off from others and causes them to see other humans as objects to be controlled. In discussion of an essay on Dostoevsky by the philosopher René Girard, Ellul calls this isolating pride l’orgueil souterrain, “underground pride”—a reference to Dostoevsky’s novel Notes from the Underground. Then Ellul gives us a key sentence: “Technique constrains man to the underground. It places him in an objective situation, such that the situation described as an exceptional case by Dostoevsky . . . becomes the common (and incidentally, very mediocre) lot of all. Technique has generalized, vulgarized, banalized, democratized the underground spirit; the Raskolnikovs and the Possessed number in the millions.”184 So then, by calling this sociological work The New Possessed, Ellul is suggesting that the ideology of technique is a similarly nihilistic—and in fact, somehow religious or spiritual—spirit that dethrones old religions, possesses hearts and minds, breaks up social unity, and drives individuals towards death; it is a sort of madness leading to a state of schismatic paralysis, to a place unable to be wholly occupied by humans.
Humanism as Ideology and Religion
While many believe that we live in a secular society, that we are no longer guided by superstitions, myths, and religion, Ellul contends that the present age is profoundly religious. In fact, says Ellul, humans cannot help but be religious, and today they are more religious that ever. However, our faith is in science, technology, and politics, which are “the new demons.” Mythology is alive and well in our worship of progress, itself a very myth. Traditional forms of religious and political belief are often deeply ideological; that is, they are both composed of irrational impulses and logical incongruity. Karl Marx defined an ideology as a groundless belief system, calling it a “false consciousness.”185 Ellul expands Marx’s definition: “An ideology is the popularized sentimental degeneration of a . . . doctrine or worldview; it involves a mixture of passions and rather incoherent intellectual elements, always related to present realities.”186 Ellul maintains that the primary ideology of the present era is a kind of “atheistic humanism.”187 But this doesn’t mean that people define their own beliefs this way, or that they think this consciously. He explains:
We are speaking of a change in the basic convictions of contemporary man . . . we are speaking of an ideology that is unquestioningly adopted, a simultaneously accepted frame of reference, something that is implicit and rarely consciously adverted to. It is the basis for a vision of the world . . . and a common language and a norm by which behavior is judged.188
Ellul believes that this type of humanism—in contrast to older philosophical forms—is a direct result of the mindset of technique, discussed earlier, and rests on a host of false presuppositions. The first is the assumption that “man is the measure of all things.”189 This proposition, taken from the Sophist Protagoras, sums up the essence of contemporary humanism: there is no truth outside what is discovered and decided upon by human beings. In other words, there are no transcendent or divine sources of truth or ethical norms—we are the arbiters of truth and all values: “Humans are both the judge and the criterion for the judgment.”190 It follows that ultimate meaning is found only in the experiences, decisions, and commitments individuals make, and in nothing else.
A further assumption of humanism is the erroneous conviction that human beings are progressively becoming more rational. In contrast, Ellul argues that the increase of technolatry and propaganda has increased irrationality. As Ellul asserts in The Technological Society, many today have a complete misconception of their relationship to the dominant forces in society’s evolution. Given that so many of us are unaware of our psychological manipulation, societal myths, and formational ideologies, our irrationality has become the norm rather than the exception.
The final assumption of humanism, according to Ellul, is twofold and concerns morality. The first part of this presupposition is the conviction that evil is solely and exclusively the result of economic, educational, and political institutions; humans in themselves are good. While Ellul does believe that societal institutions are the cause of tremendous evil in the world, he also pushes back on this tenet of his society, believing that individuals—regardless of institutions—are often prone to selfish, destructive, and exploitative behavior.
The second aspect of humanism’s final assumption is the conviction that societal norms should provide the basis for ethical norms. Ellul describes this misconception: “whatever is ‘normal’ is also good and moral. ‘Normal’ means whatever a majority of individuals do or whatever a group accepts as a self-evident opinion or attitude.”191 While present-day humanists look to common practices themselves as the foundation for values, Ellul points out that the convictions and actions of the majority do not imply ethical correctness. The countless examples of societies with unethical beliefs and behavior demonstrate that value claims cannot be grounded in societal norms.
Despite the problematic assumptions of this atheistic humanism, it continues to grow, particularly in the industrialized world. Ellul believes that despite their claims, those who subscribe to this ideology are actually deeply religious; their devotion is simply misdirected. In order to support this claim, Ellul delves into a discussion of the sacred.
The Sacred: Forms and Functions
Ellul adopts the idea of the sacred from twentieth-century sociology. As he uses it, it refers to “a whole order of experiences which is absolutely essential . . . which cannot be reduced to rational categories . . . and which is experienced even when one means to curtail and eliminate it.”192 Religion, as Ellul strictly defines it, is created by individuals as they try to interpret and understand this numinous realm. Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and all other traditional faiths are natural responses to the sacred—the result of human effort to turn an abstract intuition into a concrete form.193 The sacred aids people in primarily three ways, which Ellul refers to as its functions.
First, the sacred provides a framework for seeing and interpreting the world. Ellul maintains that everyone requires a frame of orientation or “point of reference.” For some, this is found in their particular religion; for others, science delivers this. Both science and religion presuppose a structured and ordered cosmos. Furthermore, both answer—albeit in significantly different ways—questions such as, Where did I come from? Why am I here? Is there inherent value in life? The constant need to ask such questions, and to seek answers, supports Ellul’s claim that individuals need an orienting point. He writes, “humans always end up referring, most often, unconsciously, to this order of experiences, and it is from that standpoint that one assigns meaning, purpose, and limits.” He continues: “Humans never assign a clear and explicit ‘sphere’ to the sacred, yet we always come upon its secondary trace in every age and in every activity.”194
Second, the sacred provides an ethical orientation. Ellul believes that humans have an innate sense of two realms of existence: the sacred and the nonsacred. This dualistic apprehension, Ellul argues, leads to our viewing of behavior in moral terms. Regardless of how morality is interpreted, people cannot help but see the world through this binary framework. Even ethical relativists—who argue that morality is purely subjective—still explain ethics in terms of value judgments. Ellul’s point is this: the sacred gives humans an intrinsically dualistic understanding of reality, first metaphysically and then ethically.
The third way the sacred aids individuals is that it offers a sense of community. For Ellul, depending on one’s interpretation of the sacred, one will be drawn to a group of like-minded people. Those who make up the community share the same worldview and values, resulting in a unique language and logic, which outsiders may have a difficult time understanding.195 Whether this assembly is of scientists, traditionally religious believers, or political activists, the needs for a frame of orientation and for ethical standards meld the individual with the collective. This crystallizes an “us versus them” mentality, providing a distinctive sense of identity and purpose. Thus, for Ellul, the sacred implicitly directs belief and behavior while simultaneously solidifying community.
Two Modern Myths
Ellul believes that today, even as many are moving away from traditional religion, and toward science and secular humanism, people continue to be inspired by a strong undercurrent of myth. We are accustomed to hearing the word myth as a reference to something that is necessarily false, a made-up story, but this is not necessarily how Ellul intends it. Myth is a kind of story, however; we might say it is a story that explains. He writes:
It does seem to me assured that myth is not an antiquated, outmoded expression, attesting the feebleness of nonscientific humans . . . It should be treated as an original experience, not to be reduced to any other . . . or it should be treated as a logical instrument of mediation between contradictions, a means of establishing order.196
Myths have long been with us, and in our present age they are still around. Ellul holds that myths are quite useful in explaining our place in the world, and in providing humans with a sense of structure and security. At the same time, however, he firmly believes that some myths lead to exceedingly harmful consequences. Ellul contends that there are two myths on which contemporary society is founded: history and science.
In addressing history, Ellul notes that for most human societies, history always made reference to the divine, or something outside of itself; the true meaning of events was never simply the events themselves. It was not just a record of events, but an inclusion of these events into a myth which explained them and gave them meaning. But once history is desacralized, it becomes its own meaning. We no longer seek a hidden or divine meaning; instead, we integrate this divinity into the events. Ellul’s point, however, is that this secular history is still mythological; the “true” meaning of things does not simply disappear. Instead, the events themselves now become seen as something sacred.
The second instance is found in modern science, which, in Ellul’s view, goes together with the myth of progress. The view that humanity is making progress, that some values are progressive, is ultimately modeled on the only actually observable progress, that of technology. Ellul writes:
Myth is also characterized by its extrapolation from what is to what ought to be. The progress we see as being so unmistakable is the progress of machines, of technology, of material means as a whole. The progress of institutions is less certain, and the progress within man himself is probably nonexistent. Neither virtue nor intelligence seems very superior now to what it was four or five thousand years ago.197
Many uncritically believe that history is progressing toward more accurate human knowledge and greater freedom. As a result of this assumption, ancient religious views and philosophical practices are no longer seriously considered, classical ethical systems and aesthetic theories are dismissed, and traditional educational models are rejected. Ellul believes that the myth of progress lies at the foundation of, and is indeed the driving force behind, the most serious societal problems today. Alienated from meaningful traditions, practices, and beliefs through technique, we lose a robust sense of personal identity, instead seeking selfhood in fleeting trends and commodities.
Religion and Revelation
As his reference to Dostoevsky’s Demons suggests, Ellul thinks that this new secular society is possessed, that it adheres to new myths and religions. Again, it would be stupid to think that Ellul is somehow against science, history, or even technology; what he is against is scientism, historicism, or faith in technological progress. These are legalistic, ideological, or fundamentalist forms of religion, investing progress, science, and technology with a sacred quality.198
Following from his earlier definition of the sacred, he describes religion as a system that formalizes the three functions of the sacred: an interpretive framework, ethics, and community. For Ellul, in our present day, technology is the quintessential religion. People place their unquestioning faith, trust, and hope in the latest technology, believing it will afford their lives with lasting meaning. Many unreflectively look to it for answers to life’s problems and challenges. Often, individuals are united to others based on the technology they appropriate. In these ways, technology, like traditional religion, provides the structure for the functioning of the sacred.
Along with technology, Ellul describes the contemporary religion of science: “We expect everything from science, as of an awe-inspiring and benevolent divinity, which plays a central and mysterious, yet well-known role in the story which modern humanity is telling itself.”199 Because of technique, many are biased toward the “image”—what is immediately seen. This leads people to unquestioningly rely on the empirical sciences as the ultimate source of knowledge and truth. Ellul explains: “To the degree, in fact, to which objectivity stems from pure methodology, then becomes a state of consciousness, an attitude, an ethic, it becomes a value judgment, an exclusion of every other mode of apprehending truth.”200 Science therefore becomes an exclusionary, formal point of reference, along with being an object of worship and a source of community and of moral claims.
As The Political Illusion argues, politics has become the end-all for many, so it is not surprising that Ellul sees it as a present-day religion. In fact, in our technological milieu, political answers to social problems are often the only ones considered legitimate. As we have seen, however, Ellul argues that our current political systems are corrupt and ultimately impotent. They are not guided by authentic values such as justice, charity, and integrity, but rather by the values of technique—efficiency and power.
What Ellul is after in this book is ultimately desacralization. He does not want to destroy science, technology, or history, but to desacralize them—to strip them of the spiritual meaning that our secular society has invested them with. This will allow us to see them for the relative, humble tools they are, and to deny them the false power that we currently attribute to them. For Ellul, human community is something more profound and spiritual than science or history can account for; they provide us with false community. “Alienation and illusion—that is the modern religious.”201
If we include Ellul’s theology, in contrast to the contemporary religions of technology, science, and politics, Ellul looks to revelation for answers to social and existential problems. He defines revelation as God’s intervention in history—God’s free decision to descend to the human level and to communicate with individuals. Religion, by contrast, is a construct that tries—with human effort—to grasp ultimate meaning and truth. Ellul expounds:
The opposition between religion and revelation can really be understood quite simply, and before working out its consequences, we can reduce it to a maxim: religion goes up, revelation comes down. Once you have truly grasped this, you have the key to the problem . . . From the very beginning humankind has sought to go up. Religion was at the same time both the principal instrument of this ascent and its expression, perhaps its origin. When Adam finds himself in Eden, he tries to ascend to the level of God. When people gather to attend to their common work, they are essentially building the city, but that includes the Tower of Babel, climbing to the heavens . . . But we are filled with stupefaction when we realize that in every aspect the revelation of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of the God of Jesus Christ, is exactly and entirely contrary to what we have just described. The central fact, the crucial point, is that here God descends to humankind. Never in any way, under any circumstances can we ascend to God, howsoever slightly. God has chosen to descend and to put God’s self on our level.202
For Ellul, it is only by looking to the revelation of God in the example of Jesus that can we effectively respond to the myths, idols, and religions of our modern age. As the quintessential iconoclast, Jesus challenged and destroyed the idols and myths of the first century, standing against the political rulers, religious elites, and the money changers at the Jerusalem temple. By doing so, Jesus desacralized what was held sacred. Ellul maintains that we should follow this example by calling into question that which is considered hallowed today. “The fight of faith to which we are committed . . . is a fight for freedom. To smash these idols, to desacralize these mysteries, to assert the falseness of these religions is to undertake the one, finally indispensable liberation of the person in our times.”203
Summary
The current age, according to Ellul, is not secular, but thoroughly religious. One of the most popular growing “religions” is a practical (and sometimes unconscious) atheistic humanism. This approach to the world rests on numerous false assumptions: moral relativism, increasing rationality, and the inherent goodness of humanity. Ignorant of its own assumptions, this society which claims to be secular is a type of false consciousness, an ideology. For Ellul, this humanism and many other religions are analyzed as the natural outgrowth of our implicit awareness of the sacred. The sacred seeks to fulfill three functions: providing a formal frame of reference, a system of ethics, and community. The three dominant examples of religion today are politics, science, and technology.
Ellul is quite critical of these current objects of worship, and essentially calls an allegedly secular and godless age to become aware of its own spirituality. In The New Demons, Ellul ultimately exhorts his readers to recognize, question, and challenge contemporary ideologies—to desacralize these idols of false community, to cease our worship of power, dominance, and pride. Embodied in science, technology, and politics, today’s myths and religions are especially harmful and dehumanizing, and must be fought against if human freedom is to survive.
180. Ellul, New Demons, 130–31.
181. Ellul, New Demons, 206–7.
182. Darrell Fasching considers The New Demons “the Rosetta Stone of Ellul’s work” (Fasching, Thought of Jacques Ellul, 14).
183. Indeed, Ellul and his close friend Bernard Charbonneau were both reading Dostoevsky in the 1970s, and in their writings both reference Dostoevsky’s parable of the Grand Inquisitor (found in his novel The Brothers Karamazov). See Charbonneau, Quatre témoins de la liberté, chapter 4; Jacques Ellul, Théologie et Technique, 35.
184. Ellul, Théologie et Technique, 35. This is our own translation; it will be rendered obsolete upon publication of the English edition.
185. Describing an ideological person, Marx writes: “He works with mere thought material, which he accepts without examination . . . and does not investigate further.” Quoted in Gerard Bekerman, Marx and Engels: A Conceptual Concordance, 74. Marx’s description of blind acceptance of belief is Ellul’s reference here.
186. Ellul, Jesus and Marx, 1.
187. Ellul, New Demons, 25.
188. Ellul, New Demons, 25.
189. Ellul, New Demons, 25.
190. Ellul, New Demons, 25–26.
191. Ellul, New Demons, 28.
192. Ellul, New Demons, 49.
193. It should be noted that for Ellul there is a fundamental difference between Christianity as a religion and Christian faith, as a lived experience with God. Following Karl Barth, we could call this the difference between religion and revelation: the first is created by humans, the second initiated by God through Jesus Christ.
194. Ellul, New Demons, 48–49.
195. Ellul, New Demons, 52–54.
196. Ellul, New Demons, 89.
197. Ellul, New Demons, 107.
198. It should be remembered, as mentioned in an earlier chapter, Ellul is not opposed to technology and science in themselves. He is critical of unquestioning faith in technology and science. More accurately, Ellul is critical of technolatry and scientism.
199. Ellul, New Demons, 102.
200. Ellul, New Demons, 102.
201. Ellul, New Demons, 207.
202. Ellul, Living Faith, 129, 137. Ellul acknowledges that his distinction between religion and revelation is largely informed by Kierkegaard and Barth.
203. Ellul, New Demons, 228.