'Worshipping God with technology' - response to Andrew Basden

Denis Alexander
June 2004

I am grateful to Andrew Basden for responding so thoughtfully and in such detail to my Cambridge Paper entitled 'Worshipping God with Technology' (Vol 12 No 4 Dec 2003). We have always been aware within the Cambridge Papers Writing Group of the benefits of engaging with our readers in an active exchange of ideas, but until the advent of the new web-site for electronic publishing we were unable to do this, except for the occasional letter and the opportunities provided by a Day Conference every couple of years or so. With the web-site now fully in action we look forward to a higher level of interaction, although even now the pressures of our own professional lives make the running of an on-going interactive discussion forum impractical, desirable as that might be in theory.

Writing the first Response, in what will eventually become a collection of Responses by the Cambridge Papers Writing Group authors, provides an opportunity to highlight what we think we may, or may not, be able to achieve through our brief papers. In this context I was somewhat alarmed by Basden's assumption, highlighted in his first paragraph and repeated near the end, that such a paper could in any sense pretend to be a "definitive statement of a Christian view of technology". I do not think, and I am sure my co-authors would agree, that our papers can in any sense be offered as "definitive statements" about anything, let alone concerning a topic as broad and as complex as technology. At best they can be discussion starters, flagging up some biblical principles that can be applied, with prayer and caution, to certain contemporary social or political issues. If the papers get people thinking biblically about areas of life that, as Basden points out, can so easily be left in the realm of that 'other' life, the secular life - in such a way that they help us to develop a Christian mind, then certainly they are achieving their purpose.

I think that in practice Prof. Basden and I agree over a great deal. Also I think that he maps out some very useful ways of looking at different aspects of technology, for example the "four areas of concern" mentioned in section 3.4 in the context of information technology. As a research scientist in the biomedical sciences I am naturally influenced by examples drawn from my own profession and I am sure that Basden's own work in information technology has some impact on his stance, giving rise to a different flavour in our respective approaches to some issues. And there are also some points that Basden mentions that might be points of disagreement, although I suspect that if we sat down and talked about them for a while we would end up finding a large measure of agreement (sometimes coming to a topic from a slightly different angle can give an initial impression of disagreement that vaporises when the different angles are explored a bit more). So what I would like to do in this Response is to explore those areas where I think we might have genuine disagreements, as this might make for a more useful interaction, providing always that we keep in mind the initial point that we actually agree about a lot.

But before plunging into the areas of potential disagreement, I need to make some preliminary comments about the use of the Bible to shed light on complex contemporary issues.

1. Applying Biblical Teaching to Contemporary Issues.

A central aim of the Cambridge Papers Writing Group is to apply biblical principles to contemporary issues. Often there are biblical passages that contain direct teaching on such issues. For example, there are some legal, economic and political questions for which Old Testament teaching proves to be directly relevant, given that such teaching was provided for the social ordering of a particular society with the aim of rendering the communal life of that society honouring to God. Even then, of course, the application of that teaching to contemporary societies is by no means invariably straight-forward, and it is precisely such questions which render the monthly discussion meetings of the Writing Group so vigorous and so enjoyable. Other arenas on which we write, such as science, are of course not mentioned in the Bible, for the simple reason that science, in its modern sense at least, was not yet invented in biblical times. That is why the search for 'hidden scientific truths' in the biblical text is anachronistic: scientific literature was not a genre of writing that was then in existence. Nevertheless, this does not imply that biblical teaching has no implications for science, quite the reverse: as many historians of science have pointed out, the emergence of modern science was nurtured by a world view in which the biblical concept of a monotheistic creator God who sustained his creation in an orderly way encouraged the belief that it was worth investigating empirically and that its properties displayed law-like behaviour.

Biblical allusions to technology lie somewhere between the poles of 'direct teaching' and 'not mentioned at all, but general world-view highly relevant'. On one hand there are no biblical narratives containing direct teaching about technology 'it was not a topic that became a cause for concern in the early churches and does not therefore feature in Paul's letters (for example). On the other hand, however, as my paper reminds us, there certainly were some great OT projects requiring the use of technology, and other passages have some indirect bearing on a Christian's attitude towards technology. Nonetheless I was somewhat non-plussed by Basden's attempt to extract 'primary and secondary norms' out of my comments on this biblical material (section 3.1). The point made about technology being a "moral obligation implicit in the created order" was merely to point out the obvious - that it was very unlikely that humankind could subdue the earth successfully in obedience to God's command without the use of technology, and that is in fact what we see happening in those early Genesis narratives. But this is very different from saying, as Basden suggests, that it therefore follows that "any attempt to resist or halt technology is at best suspect and probably going against God". I do not believe that at all and my paper does not say that. Of course there are technologies that should not be applied in certain ways (e.g. human reproductive cloning cf. my Cambridge Paper on this topic: 'Cloning humans - distorting the image of God' Vol 10 No 2 June 2001). Because the OT material on technology focuses on its use in idolatry, a further example flagged up in my paper, Basden then thinks that this implies that this is the "only limit on our technological development". But this tendency to reify points into norms that were provided merely as examples should, I think, be resisted. By page 3 of his text Basden is commenting that "the three principles above give us few grounds on which we can prioritise different technologies". But no such 'principles' have yet been introduced! There is a danger in handling biblical material, a danger perhaps more common among systematic theologians, which is the tendency to want texts and teachings to be neatly pigeon-holed into convenient primary norms, secondary norms, and so forth. This may be helpful when the biblical teaching is directly on the topic in question, but perhaps less useful when the teaching is somewhat incidental or less direct, as is often the case with technology. We can certainly take biblical teaching on board when it makes points that have some bearing, albeit tangentially, on a particular issue. But we should beware, I think, of reifying such points, and my paper specifically tried to resist this temptation.

As it happens my paper adopted a fairly familiar structure for a Cambridge Paper (a structure not unfamiliar to preachers): the topic is introduced, some of the biblical principles involved are summarised, their relevance today and the complexities of applying those principles are introduced ('Technology in contemporary society') and finally the biblical principles are applied ('Worshipping God with technology'). For this final section I chose to focus on three aspects of worship: first, the relational perspectives of technology; second, the creation of beautiful and well functioning technologies; and, third, the creation and use of appropriate technologies. Does that exhaust the potential list of applications of the biblical principles introduced in the earlier section? Absolutely not! For example, we could have included a major section on environmental concerns in the context of technology (such a big issue that it needs to be a separate paper really). We could have reviewed the social and relational impacts of the new reproductive technologies. The area of information technology, Basden's own area of specialisation, could certainly have received more attention. And so forth. This is truly a vast topic and the paper was more interested in introducing some of the biblical principles involved and providing a few examples of how they might apply, than in trying to cover every possible arena of application.

But one thing I do not think a paper on such a topic can ever accomplish, and that is to provide some 'blueprint' for Christians so that they will know exactly what to do when faced with questions relating to technology. I do not think there is sufficient relevant biblical material to generate such a blueprint, and I am glad there is not, for instead it means that Christians, guided by the Holy Spirit and by the important biblical principles that we do have, are delegated by God to work out their stewardly responsibilities for the earth according to the light they have received, and surely that is what being made in God's image is all about.

2. 'Nature' and 'what is natural'?

One area in which I think Basden and I probably do genuinely disagree is in our understanding of 'nature' and the extent to which technologies should depart from the 'natural'. In fact I think probably four out of his eight points for developing a "fully biblical understanding of technology" (last page) relate in some way to what is perceived to be 'natural'. Basden is provoked (section 3.3) by the fact that I mention 'nature' only once, and that somewhat disdainfully. Basden also thinks that the author is "deeply unsympathetic to any view that places importance on natural (i.e. less technological) ways of living" and "it seems he does not admit that there could be a valid (not overly romanticised) view of nature".

Basden is entirely correct in thinking that I find the distinction made between the 'natural' and the 'unnatural' suspect and this for two quite distinct reasons (see also my Cambridge Paper ' Genetic Engineering in God's World , Vol 6 No 2 June 1997). First, if we are trying to develop a biblical framework for technology, then this task is made easier if we use the Bible's own theological language whenever feasible and appropriate. And the fact of the matter is that the Bible has no notion of 'nature' for the simple reason that everything that exists is seen in the Bible as being directly dependent upon God's sustaining actions. In current parlance the word 'nature' has become laden with overtones derived from the Enlightenment view that it represents some some quasi-independent state that exists independently of God's continuous sustaining. In contrast the psalmist speaks of the lions who "roar for their prey and seek their food from God" (Psalm 104:21) and Jesus says that his Father "Causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous" (Matthew 5:45) - two of many hundreds of passages that could be cited that provide the same emphasis on a created order utterly dependent upon God's continued actions. I am not suggesting that Basden in any way doubts this, only pointing out that the notion of 'nature' is absent from the biblical text. Of course it is inevitable that we will end up using the word in daily discourse for the simple reason that it's a useful short-hand word in common use to refer to what Christians understand by God's 'created order'. But I have to say that it is surprising how common it is for Christians to slip into a secular understanding of the word that then perceives 'nature' to be less than simply a description of the daily activities of God (as Augustine succinctly expressed it: "Nature is what God does").

Does this have any bearing on our development of a biblical view on technology? I think it does. For there is nothing in the Bible to suggest that our role as God's stewards of his creation should omit the active management of the created order, and if subduing the earth involves the generation of new technologies to carry out that stewardship effectively, then so be it. The early mention of the use of bronze and iron in the Genesis record (Gen. 4:22) perhaps symbolises that point, for of course bronze is far from being 'natural' to the created order and the advent of the bronze age ushered in an era of technological complexity in which bronze was used for cooking, fighting and decoration, to name but a few of its applications. We look in the biblical literature in vain for exhortations to leave things in their 'natural state', as if this was necessarily an intrinsic good. As Donald MacKay has written: 'In place of the craven fear instilled by a pagan theology of nature...the Christian who finds scientific talents in his toolbag has quite a different fear - the fear that his Father should judge him guilty of neglecting his stewardly responsibilities by failing to pursue the opportunities for good that may be opened up by the new developments'. We should approach such responsibilities not with the arrogance implicit in the phrase 'playing God', but with prayerful concern that we should be responsible earth-keepers under God. Of course there are other biblical principles (suggested in my paper) which draw boundaries around the uses of technology, but the Bible gives no grounds for thinking that the distinction between the 'natural' and the 'unnatural', at least as far as technology is concerned, will help us very much in drawing these boundaries.

The second point that suggests that a 'natural'/'unnatural' distinction is unhelpful in discussing technology is a practical one. For the question immediately arises as to how do we make that distinction? And is it relevant? Is it more natural to live in draughty caves or in centrally heated houses? Many of the flowers that we enjoy in our back gardens are 'unnatural' in the sense that they have been generated by clever breeders over the centuries. The same can be said of our domestic crops and animals. Genetically the wheat strains that are now used to put bread on our tables are very different from the wheat that first began to be used as crops by settled farmers in the Middle East about 10,000 years ago. Nearly every moment of our waking lives we are doing something that could be described as 'unnatural'. Contraceptives are certainly 'unnatural'. Making sensible distinctions become even more difficult when we look at pathogens. There is nothing more 'natural' than for a virus or bacteria to multiply in a human host, but we try to prevent this happening whenever possible by vaccination and antibiotics, respectively. Genetically our own genomes are changing all the time by mutations that fail to be repaired. Is that natural or unnatural? Either way we try and prevent it by putting on UV block when we work outside (or sun-bathe).

Such points become particularly relevant when it comes to the GM debate. There are many aspects of this debate, but if we focus for a moment on the 'natural'/'unnatural' distinction, it is easy to see that this is a red herring in the context of this particular discussion. For the fact of the matter is that the whole created order is in a state of flux. The idea that there is some inviolable and fixed ousia (essence) of an organism comes directly from Aristotelian philosophy, not from the Bible. New species are coming into being all the time (albeit at a relatively slow rate on our human time-scale) whilst old species are disappearing at an alarming and far faster rate. There are very good reasons why we should exercise our stewardly responsibilities over DNA with care and wisdom, but I do not personally see how a putative distinction between the 'natural' and the 'unnatural' will help us in the difficult decisions that we face in this arena. Of course it is not the aim of GM to generate new species, but to genetically modify crops so that they become more resistant to pests, grow better in harsh climates, and so forth. Whilst we do not need that technology in the high-income countries because we have enough food already, it can certainly fulfil a role in low-income countries where hunger presents an ever-present reality. Every case has to be assessed on its own merits. So Calvin's comment with respect to our lands and crops that we should "endeavour to hand it down to posterity as he received it, or even better cultivated..." continues to be very relevant.

3. Technology and Idolatry.

Basden suggests that there are a number of ways in which technologies can become inappropriate or even idolatrous. These involve the distinction between 'traditional and systemic technologies' (section 3.5), between new and mature technologies (section 3.6) and the suggestion that technologies can participate in idolatrous world-views (section 3.8). Basden feels, I think, that my view of technology is somewhat benign and that as Christians we should be beating the drum more loudly to draw attention to the deleterious role that technology can play in secular world-views.

I could not agree more that technologies can be used for evil purposes and my paper tried to highlight the ambiguity of all technology in this respect, suggesting that technologies act like giant loudspeakers, broadcasting human aspirations so that all can see (and suffer when it all goes terribly wrong). Nevertheless, I have read a number of books on technology by Christian writers who tend to take on the whole a rather gloomy view of technology, and I have to say that I think that such books do not necessarily achieve a biblical balance in this discussion. Furthermore, the very broad generalisations that are often made in such writing, in which technology is blamed for various ills, do not always stand up to close scrutiny once the individual examples provided are dissected carefully.

The distinction that Basden wishes to make between traditional and systemic technologies provides an opportunity to illustrate this point. Clearly the distinction is a valid one. The person making hand-woven carpets on a loom at home (traditional) is very different from a factory making a thousand new cars every day on a scale that demands an extensive infrastructure to sustain its demands for energy, raw materials, sales networks etc (systemic). The types of technology raise different kinds of issues. But the problem, I think, comes in discerning why a traditional technology per se should align itself more closely to a biblical perspective on the world than the systemic technology. Let us imagine, for example, a member of a tribe in the Amazon jungle who is carefully anointing his spear with a deadly poison, extracted from the bark of a local tree, that will cause the slow and painful death of his enemy whom he plans on ambushing that very night. The technology is certainly traditional, but its intentions render it inappropriate. Meanwhile a couple of thousand miles away a giant factory in the USA is busy with systemic technology, churning out war-heads for missiles. The scale is very different, but it is the intentionality involved that provides some useful criterion for moral assessment, not the scale per se . And if, in both cases, the claim was that the technologies were being used for defensive purposes only, then the assessment would again be somewhat different.

I have picked a fairly easy example to make the point. So does the contrast between 'traditional' and 'systemic' technologies help us in assessing the application of complex contemporary technologies? What about the giant Three Georges dam, the largest in the world, that has recently been built across the Yangtze River in China? Dam-building can presumably be counted as a systemic technology, in this particular case vast in scope and consequences with a high dependence on a network of supporting industries and technologies. The project has aroused great controversy and the arguments pro and anti have been well rehearsed.

* In favour is the fact that floods on the Yangtze have claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in the last century alone. In 2002, floodwater ruined a million hectares of arable land in Hunan province and left a quarter of a million people homeless. The dam provides an effective way of controlling the world's third largest river. At the same time the hydroelectric power generated by the dam should eventually supply one-ninth of China's energy needs (by 2009 when the project is complete). China currently burns 50 million tonnes of coal a year in energy production. By using hydroelectric power generated by the dam, greenhouse gas emissions will be greatly reduced. Furthermore the gorges have been notoriously dangerous to navigate, but the added water depth will open up access to larger ships much further inland.

* Against is the fact that the giant 370 mile long lake generated by the dam will necessitate the relocation of more than a million people, the destruction of some of the most fertile land in China, the loss of valuable archaeological sites, severe ecological damage and a probable local average rise in temperature of 0.3°C.

Clearly the wisdom of Job is required to adjudicate in such issues and I do not pretend to have the expertise necessary to opine whether the pros or the antis have the better case. I cite this example for a different reason, namely, that it highlights the acutely difficult moral issues raised by the stewardly management of the earth's resources. Unfortunately the distinction between 'traditional' and 'systemic' is not going to help us, much of the time, in what counts as authentic worship in such situations. With the world's longest river, the choices are stark: leave it alone and guarantee a death-toll from flooding that will certainly surpass even the catastrophes of the last century (more than 400 million people live downstream) - or do something about it that will also have some other positive outcomes. Is it more dehumanising to save lives or to leave things as they are in the sure knowledge that many will die if we do nothing? God's command to subdue the earth does seem to imply that we should take action to save lives, when necessary, by taming unruly rivers, even when taking action necessitates the application of large-scale technologies. So looking at Basden's bullet-points in Section 3.5, it is not clear to me that they will help us to answer the critical questions e.g. in the Yangtze Dam there is not much sign, to the best of my knowledge, of natural materials in this project (the first bullet-point). But I do not see why this observation per se means that the technologies used "shout glory to Man rather than God". I would have thought that it was more important that the dam doesn't collapse (as Chinese dams have done in the past with terrible loss of life), rendered less likely in this case by the use of some rather 'unnatural' materials. Dams which glorify God are those that fulfil the purpose for which they were built effectively and don't fall down.

I also remain unconvinced that Basden's distinction between 'new' and 'mature' technologies will take us very far in assessing whether the technologies in question are those with which we can worship God authentically. Certainly new technologies often do not fulfil their early promise (the "paperless office" syndrome that Basden mentions). On the other hand, some turn out to be better than expected (the very gloomy predictions made about in vitro fertilisation technology have not been born out, although that is very far from saying that the technique is without problems and negative consequences as well). Surely each technology and its applications has to be assessed on its merits and demerits, irrespective of whether it is 'new' or 'mature'. Radar was developed for defence (not in itself a bad thing) as a new technology, and in its mature developed form on a far wider scale to prevent objects colliding with each other. The new and mature phases of radar development both appear perfectly valid.

Basden's discussion of 'technology and world views' (Section 3.8) is closely linked to his discussion of 'dehumanisation' (Section 3.7), drawing on thinkers such as Weber to put forward the idea that the "dehumanising effects of technology" may be "traced to loss of meaning". I think one has to be a little careful here. The Christian would certainly wish to say that any world-view that does not have the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ as its centre is threatened by loss of meaning. And that loss encompasses and impinges on every aspect of human thought and endeavour, including art, literature, science, technology, relationships, politics and so forth. So I am personally wary about claims that invest one particular aspect of the created order with particularly secular overtones. In the biblical world-view the created material world is repeatedly called good by God (Genesis Ch.1). The material world itself did not become evil after the Fall (a heresy nurtured by the teachings of the Manichaeans) but began to be used in evil ways by fallen humankind. This is why I placed John Milton's pertinent observation right at the start of my paper: "They are not skilful considerers of human things who imagine to remove sin by removing the matter of sin".

So, yes, of course technology can readily become incorporated into secular world-views that have no place for God at their centre, but then so can every other aspect of human endeavour. I therefore part company with Basden with his claim that particular technologies should be treated with suspicion because they are "inescapably tied in with certain world views". With the exception of technologies that have been created with solely evil intentions (the list is not that long), I think that virtually any technology can be transformed as it is used for the good of others and the glory of God. Just as we are called to "take every thought captive" in our endeavour to obey God, so we can "take every technology captive" by bringing it into the service of the kingdom of God. Basden suggests that "We are against certain technologies because of the associated world views". But this "guilt by association" argument works no better in technology than it does in church relationships. Mobile phones were recently used to blow up 200 people in Madrid. But that evil act should not be used to impute guilt by association to other mobile phone users. The Internet is used to propagate pornography on a massive scale. But the Internet can be used in a positive way without falling into the world-view that promotes or enjoys pornography. The Bible calls this being "in the world but not of it". If we tried to avoid every technology that was being used somewhere as part of an idolatrous world-view then it would be difficult to achieve such a biblical balance. Jesus made quite clear that evil is not intrinsic to our environment as if the material world was somehow tainted with sin, but rather it is "What comes out of a man is what makes him unclean" (Mark 7:20-23). So "Everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer" (I Tim. 3.4). This same principle can apply to the use of technology as it can to every other aspect of our interactions with God's created order.