A Newly Produced World
The “old, assumed” world is given to us in the creation narratives of Genesis 1-2, powerfully seconded by Israel’s exuberant doxologies. That world, still assumed by Copernicus and Galileo, was a properly ordered world of abundance with a reliable rhythm of
seedtime and harvest,
summer and winter,
day and night (Genesis 8:22).
It was an order that Israel, along with many other ancient cultures, gladly affirmed, a world trusted by religious communities and long assumed in the scientific community.
But of course, there came the “Copernican revolution” that decentered the earth, alongside the Darwinian revolution of evolution, which created a very different world. That new world was readily recruited into the sphere of science and eventually made a subject of political and economic– not to say scientific– investigation, intervention, exploitation, and alternation. These interventions easily exploited the guaranteed reliabilities of God’s creation and made creation putty in the hands of exerted human power and emancipated human imagination. It is a long story from the old doxological world of Israel to our present world of human management with the coming reality of artificial intelligence. In that long story, the aggressive expansionism of the European powers in the fifteenth-seventeenth centuries is an important, even definitional, component.
On the whole, the Bible is content to accept the world as God’s creation and has little to say directly about the coming technological world. It is reported at the outset that Tubal-cain, a descendent of Cain, is noted as a maker of bronze and iron tools (Genesis 4:22). And Job 28 reflects on the futility of mining as a way to “dig up” wisdom. In one narrative concerning early Israel, we are able to see tension over control of technology. In I Samuel 13:19-22, we have reported that the Philistines had tight monopolistic control over iron instruments; they did not permit Israelites (presumably peasant farmers) to have a smith even though the peasant farmers required a smith to maintain their agricultural equipment. They needed a smith to sharpen their plowshares, axes, and sickles. Thus the Israelites were deprived of technological freedom. The final note in verse 22 reports that “neither sword nor spear was to be found in the possession of any of the people.” Yet the king and his son Jonathan had special access to such weapons. I suppose this note attests that leadership can always find its way to exceptional privilege and advantage. In any case this narrative concerning Israel’s technological disadvantage and deprivation proves to be a sufficient link to what follows here in my consideration of the new world produced by technology.
Concerning the ancient world of God’s creation and the new world produced by technology, and the tension between them, I have benefited greatly from reading The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century by Daniel Headrick (1981). The book traces the way in which technological advances equipped and aided the European powers in their competitive energetic efforts to occupy new lands and exploit their peoples and resources. The “Age of Discovery” or the “Age of Imperialism” or the “Age of Colonization” was to some great extent made possible by technological advance. Headrick identifies four technological factors that made a decisive difference in the development of imperials power in the modern era. I take these developments to be an echo, on a large scale, of the Philistine control of technology to the exclusion of Israelite peasants.
1. The “immortal Watt,” James Watt, invented steam power in 1776 (Tools of Empire 17). This new power is promptly developed into the steamboat, and the steamboat became a major tool for imperialism:
The steamboat, with its power to travel speedily upriver as well as down, carried Europeans deed into Africa and Asia. Few inventions of the nineteenth century were as important in the history of imperialism (Tools of Empire 17).
It did not take long for steam power to eventuate in The Nemesis, a major gunboat, “as a machine and as a protagonist” of imperialism (47). She carried two “pivot-mounted 32-pounder guns that functioned both as an instrument of power and as “the very symbol of Western power along the coasts and up the navigable rivers of Asia” (54). In 1832, the merchants of Liverpool
bought the brig Columbine as a storeship and ordered two steamers in which to ascend the Niger. The larger of the two, the Quorra, was built of wood by Seddon and Langley…Macgregor Laird himself built the smaller one, the Alburkah…. Both boats were heavily armed. In addition to handguns, the Quorra had a 24-pound swivel gun, eight 4-pound carriage guns, and an 18-pound carronade. The Alburkah carried a 9-pounder and six 1-pounder swivel guns (61).
From that development, Britain was able to dominate commerce, extend its power, and maximize its trade in a way that brought great wealth to Britain, as well as exploitation to the occupied areas of Africa and Asia.
2. The Europeans in Africa and Asia faced great danger from malaria. Effective treatment of malaria began with French chemists in 1820. They
succeeded in extracting the alkaloid of quinine from cinchona bark. Commercial production of quinine began in 1827, and by 1830 the drug was being manufactured in large enough quantities for general use (66).
By the 1840s the British had effectively employed quinine as an antidote to malaria. The discovery and development of quinine from cinchona bark constituted an effective response to the threat of malaria, thereby giving the European entrepreneurs greater freedom for exploration and exploitation.
3. The third “tool of imperialism” noted by Headrick is the modern gun. Military rifles, in use by the 1850s, were slow and awkward, but nevertheless an important advance in firearms. The overwhelming firepower of European colonial armies resulted from the discovery of “breech loading.” This is the capacity to reload the rifle from the back of the gun as distinct from muzzle loading from the front end. This capacity made it possible to reload and refire more quickly, thus enhancing the capacity of the gun. It was the “American system” of the production of interchangeable parts that Eli Whitney first applied to gun-making in 1797. The slow but steady advance in gun-making made both speed and accuracy more effective and gave the imperialists an immense advantage in their quest for land, resources, and slave labor.
4. Headrick reports the development of cables as “an essential part of the new imperialism” (163). The laying of oceanic cables helped to expand the empire, and “served to tie the Europeans empires together (163).
Headrick summarizes his probes in the “Tools of Empire”:
Inventions are most easily described one by one, each in its own technological and socio-economic setting. Yet the inner logic of innovations must not blind us to the patterns of chronological coincidence. Though advances occurred in every period, many of the innovation that proved useful to the imperialists of the scramble first had an impact in the two decades from 1860 to 1880. These were the years in which quinine prophylaxis made Africa safer for Europeans; quick-firing breechloaders replaced muzzle-loaders among the forces stationed on the imperial frontiers; and the compound engine, the Suez Canal, and the submarine cable made steamships competitive with sailing ships, not only on government-subsidized mail routes, but for ordinary freight on distant seas as well. Europeans who set out to conquer new lands in 1880 had far more power over nature and over the people they encountered than their predecessors twenty years earlier had; they could accomplish their tasks with far greater safety and comfort (205).
These four “tools” have been elementally essential in the development of European power that served exploitation and the concentration of great wealth wrought from the colonies that were helpless before this great technological power. This imperial technological advantage produced for the several European empires cheap (slave) labor, vast natural resources, and eventually genocide of local populations.
This account by Headrick affirms an accent on the capacity of Western technology, in the pragmatic way of “tools,” for the exercise of power, control, and predation. More than anyone else, Jacques Ellul, (The Technological Society, 1964) has provided not only both a crucial characterization of technology and the development of a technological society but a searing critique of it as well. Ellul opines:
Modern man is held by the throat by certain demands which will not be resolved simply by the passage of time…Every rejection of a technique judged to be bad entails the application of a new technique, the value of which is estimated from the point of view of efficiency alone…Technique has only one principle: efficient ordering…The distinction between peaceful industry and military industry is no longer possible. Every industry, every technique, however humane its intention, has military value…Economics demands, in effect, an increasing productivity; it is impossible to accept the nonproducers into the body social—the loafers, the coupon-clippers, the misfits, and the saboteurs—none of them have any place. The police must develop methods to put these useless consumers to work. The problem is the same in a capitalist state (where the Communist is the saboteur) and in a Communist state where the saboteur is the internationalist in the pay of capitalism…Technique, to be sued, does not require a “civilized” man…Technical invasion does not involve the simple addition of new values to old ones. It does not put new wine into old bottles; it does not introduce new content into old forms. The old bottles are all being broken. The old civilizations collapse on contact with the new. And the same phenomenon appears under every possible cultural form…In all areas, then, technique is producing the rapid collapse of all other civilizations (105-124).
The argument of course may be more fully stated, but these sentences from Ellul score the main point. In a technological society, such as the one at hand for us, human agency is sidelined, and human persons are irrelevant. Human agency is overridden, and human persons are dispensable. Of course the inventors of the steamboat, quinine, reloadable rifles, and cable could foresee none of this. Nevertheless the accumulation of such devices in the end has added up to technological control and domination. That technology has been, almost completely in the hands of European and American white people, to the great cost of non-whites around the world. One can hear an echo and reassertion of such white control in the rants of Donald Trump who yearns for and promises those “good old days.”
In the midst of this anti-human environment, there is the church with its foolish message of “a more excellent way.” As a result, I have been thinking about the way in which the Bible bears witness to the “ancient world” governed by the creator God as an alternative to the humanly produced world of technology. There come to my mind these six texts, but you might readily think of other texts that are even better for making such a contrast.
1. Joshua 10:1-15 reports on Joshua’s mighty victory over the city of Gibeon. The naming of the “Amorites” as the enemy of Israel suggests that this is something of a paradigmatic battle for Israel’s memory. What interests us is the pause in the narrative for the poetry:
Sun, stand still at Gibeon,
and Moon, in the valley of Aijalon.
And the sun stood still, and the moon stopped,
until the nation took vengeance on their enemies (Joshua 10:12-13).
The poem is followed in verse 13 by a prose confirmation. While the battle may have turned on military technology (we are not told that), in the end it was the stunning pause of the sun and moon that made the day longer, long enough to permit an Israelite victory. The powers of creation were mobilized by the creator on behalf of Israel. That mighty pause was beyond the agency of Joshua. The context confirms that “the Lord fought for Israel” (v. 14). I am left in wonderment about how many battles, over time, have been decisively impacted by weather over which no military commander has a say.
2. The narrative in Judges 7:2-25 reports on a mighty victory of Gideon over the Midianites. The narrative is at some pains to notice that the army or Israel should not be too large lest Israel overestimate its own military achievement. The rush of the army of Israel consists of an advance with only trumpets, jars, and torches. That is all. There is no great military technology put to use. All that is on offer is the rush of a well-situated people powered by YHWH. Thus human agency, evoked by the God of Israel, is enough against the Midianites. Nothing other than people power was required for the great victory of Gideon. The battle was “for the Lord and for Gideon” (v. 20); the slogan is clear about the priority of YHWH. YHWH was first; Gideon played only a supportive role. People power is enough when divinely propelled!
3. Perhaps the best known and most important text for our purpose is the poetry from Isaiah:
In the days to come
the mountain of the Lord’s house
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
and shall be raised above the hills;
all nations shall stream to it.
Many peoples shall come and say,
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the house of the God of Jacob;
that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.”
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations,
and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more (Isaiah 2:2-4).
In the poem the key actor is YHWH. It is YHWH who will “teach, judge, and arbitrate.” The outcome will be a Torah-based community that has disposed of its weapons. While military arms require technology (so the Philistines feared Israelite smiths), the rule of a Torah-based peaceableness requires no such technology. It requires only the willingness to be instructed and a readiness to recognize that YHWH is the governor of human community.
4. This poetic vision of a society freed from military technology is advanced in the addition to the poem in Micah 4:4:
But they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees,
And none shall make them afraid;
For the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken (Micah 4:4).
Israel—and all peoples—could live peaceably and without fear, glad to accept a lower standard of living dictated by vines and fig trees. The appetites that make for military violence have all dissipated in adherence to the Torah tradition of Israel.
5. The night vision of Zechariah anticipates the peace-making regime of Zerubbabel in reconstituted Israel. (Zechariah 4:1-14). The vision recognizes the “great mountain” of Jerusalem in its pride and elevation but sees that the great mountain is leveled to a plain. That is, the dynasty in Jerusalem gives up its mighty dreams of domination. The new governance dreamed by the prophet is:
Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord of hosts (Zechariah 4:6).
The future of the people of God will not be shaped by worldly might or by coercive power, but only by God’s spirit. The prophet offers a radically alternative future for Israel that is devoted to a peaceable horizon that refuses the seductions of the old powers of wealth and might.
6. Finally consider James 4:1-2:
Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask (James 4:1-2).
The epistle reflects on how we are driven by destructive cravings. It is such envy of what one does not have that leads to murder (and lesser forms of acrimony), to coveting, disputes, and conflicts. In the end conflict and even war is evoked by cravings that disturb community (world!) equilibrium. The alternative, says the apostle, is to ask, and so to receive. But asking propelled by craving is “wrong asking.” One can only ask and receive if one is a “friend of God.” Such friendship with God would put an end to our mobilization of technology to satisfy our inordinate grasping and desire.
These six texts, among many others, attest to a “more excellent way”:
-Joshua relied on the mobilization of creation that he could not control.
-Gideon relied on people power that required no advanced military technology.
-The prophets (Isaiah and Micah) can imagine and anticipate an alternative world marked by Torah obedience, disarmament, and disciplined appetites.
-Zechariah anticipated a new regime in Israel that is governed by God’s life-giving spirit that does not rely on muscle or coercion.
-James sees that asking rather than coveting is a way of wellbeing, but only asking that is congruent with the will and purpose of God, the good giver.
These are all instances of “a more excellent way.” In a culture awash with military technology and its inevitable violence, the church has entrusted to it a more excellent way. The burden of the church is to summon and recruit persons away from the seductions of a world of technology that can never yield peace, into a world governed by the God of neighborly abundance. Each of these texts invites a stark either/or. The world that can give peace is the “ancient world” of God’s goodness that lives in, with, and under our humanly constructed worlds that are insistently tilted toward false cravings and the consequent violence that accompanies these cravings. We will of course continue to rely on steam power (and more recently developed forms of power), on guns (and more recently developed armaments), on remedies that continue to advance in medical research, and on cable (and many other nodes of communication). It nonetheless matters if these ongoing technological accomplishments are situated in a context of right appetites and tools that refuse to be weapons. It is a tall order to which the church bears witness. It is nevertheless an urgent either/or for choosing a way of life that rejects the long failure of a way of deathliness. The “ancient world” of God’s creation is a vehicle and venue for abundant neighborliness, offered in the face of our more recently produced world of technology that generates fear, greed, and eventually violence.
