"The Lord knows our human thoughts; how like a puff of wind they are." (Psalm 94:11)
When I last wrote about Ellul’s Presence in the Modern World (Good Lord, was that over four months ago?), I had just begun a discussion of Chapter 4, “Communication.” To summarize that post, since we are so inundated with images and other “phenomena” that are completely separate from our actual experience, and therefore personally … Read more
Continuing my read-through of Ellul’s Presence in the Modern World, we are still in Chapter 3. As discussed in the last post, in God, means and end are unified: the end is God’s Kingdom, and it is God’s Kingdom, through the presence of Christ and his followers, that will bring about that end. On a … Read more
Continuing my read-through of Ellul’s Presence, we are still in Chapter 3. As we have seen, Ellul believes that Christians are engaged in a spiritual struggle against the supremacy of “means,” which have eliminated any common “ends” except for imaginary ones created only to justify each new set of means. But Ellul refuses to recommend … Read more
Continuing in chapter 3 of Presence in the Modern World, Ellul dwells a bit more on the meaning of means, which is “that they are totalitarian. Our civilization is entirely one of means, and means affect every domain. They respect nothing.” There are two angles from which to consider the totalitarianism of means. First, means … Read more
There was a time when society might grapple honestly with whether or not particular means were appropriate to a desired end. But ends have vanished into abstraction and are no longer necessary to justify means, which justify themselves in the answer to a simple question: Do they work? “In reality, what justifies the means today … Read more