Technology and Our Relationship with God

ANSELM RAMELOW, O.P. Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology Berkeley, CA

God's Original Plan and the Fall

Technology may appear to be a very secular thing, but to assume that technology can be understood without God would be a mistake. Technology is deeply involved in our relationship with God. This involvement is, moreover, profoundly ambivalent.1

To begin with the positive side of this ambivalence: the growing awareness of the dangers of technology should not lead Christians to think that technology is necessarily a bad thing. It is, in fact, not even merely a "necessary evil." Rather, we can find in the use of technology an unfolding of our God-given rational nature. If we believe that God "made us in his image and likeness," then this quite directly implies two things: (1) God is a maker (he made us), and (2) since he made us in his image and likeness, we are makers as well. The making of technology thus reflects our dignity as made in the image and likeness of God.2 Accordingly, the Church has been more positive towards the development of technology than one might expect, and some of our technologies (e.g., agricultural, architectural, and time-keeping technologies) have their roots in medieval monasteries.3

1 I would like to thank (in no particular order) Ted Peters, Jordan Wales, Albert Borgmann, Edward Feser, Noreen Herzfeld, Wolfgang Koch, Brian Green, Eric Salobir and Marius Dorobantu for comments on an earlier version of this paper. Remaining weakness are my own.2 Noreen Herzfeld, Technology of Religion (West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton, 2009), 10-17.3 For some examples, see Brian Patrick Green, "The Catholic Church and Technological

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Technology and Our Relationship with God

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