Confronting Technology: The Theology of Jacques Ellul
Ebook
We are living through a digital revolution which already touches every area of life and will continue to shape the future in as yet unforeseen ways. Digital technologies are an ordinary part of daily life, and yet they also present an unprecedented challenge to Christians to articulate a biblical, theological framework to navigate times of rapid change. The work of the French theologian Jacques Ellul is a theological time-bomb primed for times like these. Accounts of Ellul's career often divide off his sociology and theology, but this book argues that Ellul conceived a single project of bringing technology into confrontation with the Word of God, tackling the phenomenon he named technique, the pursuit of maximal power and efficiency implicit in the technological enterprise, with a profound depth of biblical and ethical insight. Centering himself on the apocalypse or revelation of Jesus Christ in history, Ellul offers a monumental, timely (though far from flawless) contribution to contemporary ethical debates about the uses and abuses of technologies. His work blazes a trail that Christians and all concerned for the future would do well to follow, as we avoid both the naivety of "technological neutrality" and the dread of "technological determinism."
“A fresh breeze is blowing through Ellul scholarship in the wake
of the one-hundredth anniversary of his birth. Matthew Prior’s
vigorous contribution to that burgeoning discussion highlights the
importance of several previously unknown writings by Ellul. He
offers a reparative reading of Ellul’s incisive theology that has
much to offer contemporary Christians concerned faithfully to
navigate the paradoxes of this technological age.”
—Brian Brock, University of Aberdeen
“Matthew Prior’s Confronting Technology: The Theology of Jacques
Ellul is nothing less than a masterpiece by a brilliant young
emerging scholar. . . . Prior’s command of the truly massive and
complex Ellul oeuvre (new discoveries coming almost every year
since Ellul’s death in 1994) is matched by his
critical-appreciative interaction with a comprehensive gallery of
secondary research and authorship, in both French and English.
Confronting Technology is a brilliant tour through the
creative thought of Ellul but moves beyond Ellul to suggest
exciting directions for today’s theological confrontation with
technology. All readers of Ellul and all students of theology and
technology should put this book on the top of their reading list.
It really is that good.”
—David W. Gill, International Jacques Ellul Society
“Never has there been a greater need to think deeply and
theologically about technology and its power. Navigating the work
of a writer who is notoriously complex, Confronting
Technology explores Jacques Ellul’s contribution to this debate
with rare clarity, insight, and sensitivity and so provides an
outstanding new resource for digital theology today. Without
providing simplistic answers, Prior shows us how Ellul read the
Bible and culture together—and invites us to do the same.”
—Philip Plyming, Durham University
- Title: Confronting Technology: The Theology of Jacques Ellul
- Author: Matthew Prior
- Publisher: Pickwick Publications
- Print Publication Date: 2020
- Logos Release Date: 2021
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781532671470, 9781532671456, 9781532671463, 1532671474, 1532671458, 1532671466
- Resource ID: LLS:9781532671470
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-29T14:51:42Z
Matthew T. Prior is an ordained minister in the Church of
England and is Tutor and Lecturer in Ethics at St. Mellitus
College, London, UK. He has an academic background in French
language and literature and is a member of the International
Jacques Ellul Society. This is his first book.