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Theology and Technique: Toward an Ethic of Non-Power
Theology and Technique is a posthumous, incomplete volume drafted in the 1970s that nevertheless constitutes a significant addition to the Ellul corpus. Working from Jacques Ellul’s original outline, a collaborative team including three of Ellul’s children, a grandson, and Ellul scholars has assembled previous partial publications that Ellul himself approved for eventual incorporation along with relevant unpublished essays and notes into a book which throws the relationship between Ellul’s radical theology and sociological critique into fresh perspective. Frédéric Rognon contributes an especially insightful general introduction. The translation by Christian Roy is a model of rendering the complexities of the French original into English. This latest Ellul publication will be essential to any serious attempt to appreciate the scope and depth of Ellul’s Christian engagement with the challenges of the contemporary world.
298 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 28, 2024
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About the author
Jacques Ellul
125 books453 followersBaptised Catholic, Ellul became an atheist and Marxist at 19, and a Christian of the Reformed Church at 22. During his Marxist days, he was a member of the French Communist Party. During World War II, he fought with the French Underground against the Nazi occupation of France.
Educated at the Universities of Bordeaux and Paris, he taught Sociology and the History of Law at the Universities of Strausbourg and Montpellier. In 1946 he returned to Bordeaux where he lived, wrote, served as Mayor, and taught until his death in 1994.
In the 40 books and hundreds of articles Ellul wrote in his lifetime, his dominant theme was always the threat to human freedom posed by modern technology. His tenor and methodology is objective and scholarly, and the perspective is a sociological one. Few of his books are overtly political -- even though they deal directly with political phenomena -- and several of his books, including "Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes" and "The Technological Society" are required reading in many graduate communication curricula.
Ellul was also a respected and serious Christian theologian whose 1948 work, "The Presence of the Kingdom," makes explicit a dual theme inherent, though subtly stated, in all of his writing, a sort of yin and yang of modern technological society: sin and sacramentality.
Educated at the Universities of Bordeaux and Paris, he taught Sociology and the History of Law at the Universities of Strausbourg and Montpellier. In 1946 he returned to Bordeaux where he lived, wrote, served as Mayor, and taught until his death in 1994.
In the 40 books and hundreds of articles Ellul wrote in his lifetime, his dominant theme was always the threat to human freedom posed by modern technology. His tenor and methodology is objective and scholarly, and the perspective is a sociological one. Few of his books are overtly political -- even though they deal directly with political phenomena -- and several of his books, including "Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes" and "The Technological Society" are required reading in many graduate communication curricula.
Ellul was also a respected and serious Christian theologian whose 1948 work, "The Presence of the Kingdom," makes explicit a dual theme inherent, though subtly stated, in all of his writing, a sort of yin and yang of modern technological society: sin and sacramentality.
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July 21, 2024
I came to Jacques Ellul through his writings on Christian anarchism and only discovered his critiques of the technical system after, and Theology and Technique represents the foundation of a very ambitious bridging of those two bodies of work. I'm grateful for the translation and publication of this draft work, though it is very much rough and unfinished. This one is for the hardcore Ellul stans only, though I hope it inspires a reexamination of Technique in our here and now if not a bearing of the torch and practice of an ethics of non-power presently.
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