(Katallegete 4 (Fall/Winter 1972):8-16

Review questions

1. Why is it a mistake to look for a doctrine of human work as calling in the Bible? (8)

2. Where, then, did the idea of work as calling come from? (9)

3. Is Ellul’s account of the medieval view of calling consistent with the historical sketch presented by Hardy? (9)

4. What value was placed upon work during the Reformation and the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, particularly by the increasingly powerful and influential "bourgeoisie"(middle class)? (9-10)

5. What three influences "degraded" work during the nineteenth century? How? (11-12)

capitalism

"technique"

"machinism"

Do these criticisms still apply? Have you experienced how work can be stripped of a sense of calling by any of these three forces?

6. In what three ways has the church contributed to this separation between work and calling? (12)

Again, are any of these three prophetic criticisms obsolete, or are they still relevant?

7. In what two unsatisfactory ways have modern Christians attempted to claim that their work still expresses a calling from God? (13)

8. [Note the summary of his argument: "Our situation at present, consequently, is that we find ourselves torn between work which no longer has any significance at al (and which brings no satisfaction to man) and calling, which no longer finds any possibility of incarnation." (12)] Is it possible for anyone to claim that their work is a calling from God? Why not? (13)

9. Having cleared the deck of sentimental illusions and errors, Ellul turns to salvaging what he can from the doctrine of work as vocation. How should we see work? (It will help here to use the "dialectical" pattern of Ellul’s thought. First he explains what we cannot say, then he moves to what we can say.) (13-14)

10. If paid work cannot bear the freight of being a calling, how then are we to live our callings? (14)

What make his personal example (14-15) sufficiently different from work, so as to qualify as a calling?. Is his solution any different than that of the people who "find the main interest of their lives elsewhere"? (13)

11. Ellul argues that we need to participate in degraded, non-calling-type work in order to appreciate what our real calling is. (15) Would you agree?

12. His argument turns on the difference between work in the "order of necessity" and calling as -------. How would you fill in the blank here?