Confronting Technology

The Theology of Jacques Ellul

Matthew T. Prior

Confronting Technology

The Theology of Jacques Ellul

Princeton Theological Monograph Series 243

Copyright © 2020 Matthew T. Prior. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Pickwick Publications

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

Eugene, OR 97401

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paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-7145-6

hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-7146-3

ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-7147-0

Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Names: Prior, Matthew T., author.

Title: Confronting technology : the theology of Jacques Ellul / by Matthew T. Prior.

Description: Eugene, OR : Pickwick Publications, 2020 | Princeton Theological Monograph Series 243 | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: isbn 978-1-5326-7145-6 (paperback) | isbn 978-1-5326-7146-3 (hardcover) | isbn 978-1-5326-7147-0 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Ellul Jacques—1912–1994. | Technology and civilization. | Technology—Social aspects.

Classification: BR115.T42 P75 2020 (print) | BR115.T42 P75 (ebook)

Manufactured in the U.S.A.03/10/20

Table of Contents

• Title Page

• Acknowledgments

• Abbreviations and Notes on Translation

• Introduction

• Why Do We Need a Theology of Technology?

• Technology and the Cultural Mandate

• Technology and Eschatology

• Who Was Jacques Ellul?

• Technique and Technology

• Hearing the Word in an Age of Technique: Ellul’s “Dialectic of Sociology and Theology”

• 1. Not by Sociology Alone

• Theology as the Key to Jacques Ellul?

• Ellul: The Marxist Theologian?

• Ellul, the Biblical Dialectician

• Ellul: The Barthian Sociologist?

• The Bible as the Key: Speaking a Living Word

• A “Faithful Betrayal”

• Ellul: A Twentieth-Century Kierkegaard?

• Internal Dialectics and Revolutionary Texts

• Conclusion

• 2. Rupture

• Erasing Cain Cain, the Primordial Technologist?

• Ellul’s Theological Hermeneutic: Canon, Myth, and Apocalypse

• Canon

• Myth

• Apocalypse

• Does Ellul Go Too Far?

• The Canonical Cain

• The Mythological Cain

• The Apocalyptic Cain

• From Cain to Christ: Judgment and Desacralization

• Desacralizing Jerusalem

• Jesus: Homeless in the City

• Jesus’ Approach to the “Mass Society”

• Incarnation as Desacralization, Adoption, and Substitution

• From Christ to New Jerusalem: Recapitulation and Reconciliation

• Conclusion

• 3. Apocalypse Then

• The Architecture of Revelation The Revelation of the Powers and of Divine Non-Power

• Apocalypse When?

• Apocalyse Then: The Destruction of the Powers and Universal Salvation

• What Are the Powers?

• The Incarnations of the Powers

• Ellul, Barth, and Das Nichtige

• The Chaoskampf and ...