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Theology and Technique
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 244

Theology and Technique

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has assembled previous partial publications that Ellul himself approved for eventual incorporation along with relevant unpublished essays and notes into a book which throws the relationship between Ellul's radical theology and sociological critique into fresh perspective. Frederic 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.

Confronting Technology
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 262

Confronting Technology

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,...

To Will and To Do (Volume I)
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 265

To Will and To Do (Volume I)

In To Will and To Do, twentieth-century French thinker Jacques Ellul presented his landmark theological contribution, yet the full text has never before been available in English. Incorporating recent insights on Ellul, and benefitting from the discovery of a lost manuscript, this new edition remedies this, combining a fresh translation of Volume One with a first English translation of Volume Two. Together, the two volumes constitute the first part of Ellul's planned four-part treatment of Christian ethics. In Volume One, Ellul examines the origin of the problem of Good and Evil, surveys the contemporary morality of Western society, and provocatively sketches the paradox of an impossible and...

To Will & To Do
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 226

To Will & To Do

To Will & To Do presents one of the most significant theological contributions of the dynamic twentieth-century thinker Jacques Ellul. Benefiting from recent scholarship on Ellul and a discovery of a lost manuscript, this new edition renders the full text available in English for the first time, combining a fresh translation of volume I with a first English translation of volume II. Together, the two volumes constitute the introductory first part of Ellul’s planned four-part treatment of Christian ethics. Volume I examines the origin of the problem of good and evil, outlines the contemporary morality of Western society, and provocatively sketches the paradox of an impossible and yet necess...

To Will and To Do
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 229

To Will and To Do

In To Will and To Do, twentieth-century French thinker Jacques Ellul presented his landmark theological contribution, yet the full text has never before been available in English. Incorporating recent insights on Ellul, and benefitting from the discovery of a lost manuscript, this new edition remedies this, combining a fresh translation of Volume One with a first English translation of Volume Two. Together, the two volumes constitute the first part of Ellul's planned four-part treatment of Christian ethics. In Volume One, Ellul examines the origin of the problem of Good and Evil, surveys the contemporary morality of Western society, and provocatively sketches the paradox of an impossible and...

Jacques Ellul and the Bible
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 261

Jacques Ellul and the Bible

The hermeneutic contribution of the French theologian and sociologist Jacques Ellul is given new prominence in this striking collection of essays, revealing him to be one of the twentieth century's most creative and insightful interpreters of the Bible. With a breadth of contributors ranging from established biblical scholars and theologians to pastoral practitioners, from top Ellul scholars to emerging voices - and including six first-time English translations of Ellul's own articles - this volume not only provides a detailed overview of Ellul's biblical approach but also constitutes a crucial moment in Ellul's theological reception. The essays gathered here represent a clear demonstration that the full potential of Ellul's theological interpretation of Scripture to rejuvenate and reconfigure contemporary biblical hermeneutics has yet to be seen.

A New Reading of Jacques Ellul
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 317

A New Reading of Jacques Ellul

This book presents an original and dynamic reading of the twentieth-century French sociologist and theological ethicist Jacques Ellul. Adopting Ellul’s use of ‘presence’ as a hermeneutical key to understanding his work, it examines the origins of Ellul’s approach to presence in his readings of Kierkegaard and the biblical book of Ecclesiastes, highlights the central structural role of presence in Ellul’s theological ethics, and elucidates a crucial turning point in Ellul’s theology following a personal crisis in Ellul’s faith and life. Drawing from numerous unpublished and untranslated texts, Jacob Marques Rollison argues that this crisis involves confrontation with a critique ...

Political Illusion and Reality
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 317

Political Illusion and Reality

Are all governments—east and west, Muslim and secular, authoritarian and constitutional, Republican and Democratic—fundamentally the same, all of them under the extraordinary, growing power of “technique” and bureaucracy? Is all politics, then, just an illusory affair of lies, deception, propaganda, partisan passions, and chaos on the surface of government and party? In his vast and penetrating writings, Bordeaux sociologist Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) points in those directions. Political Illusion and Reality is a collection of twenty-three essays on Ellul’s political thought. Veteran as well as younger Ellul scholars, political leaders, activists, and pastors, discuss aspects of Ellul’s thought as they relate to their own fields of study and political experience. Beginning with his 1936 essay “Fascism, Son of Liberalism,” translated and published here in English for the first time, Ellul and these authors will provoke readers to think some new thoughts about politics and government, and think more deeply about the main issues we face in our politically divided and troubled times.

Election, Barth, and the French Connection, 2nd Edition
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 290

Election, Barth, and the French Connection, 2nd Edition

Karl Barth’s famous account of the doctrine of election in his mammoth Dogmatics has been described as the heart of his theology—a great hymn to the grace of God in Christ. Discover the person who initially stimulated Barth’s mammoth reworking of the “classical” view of the doctrine—pastor/theologian Pierre Maury (1890–1956). Their close friendship and especially a seminal paper Maury gave in 1936 entitled “Election and Faith” helped stimulate Barth’s reflection. Discover some never-before-translated works of Maury as well as a revision of a previously published piece on predestination. In this revised and expanded second edition, seven theologians reflect on the significance of these works for us today from historical, textual, pastoral, and theological standpoints, and seek to draw conclusions for us in our contemporary setting.

Reason for Being
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 321

Reason for Being

In Reason for Being, the creative theologian and sociologist Jacques Ellul—whom John Goldingay described as “unexcelled as a theological exegete of the Old Testament” among twentieth-century thinkers—invites readers directly to the heart of his engagement with the biblical text. Intended as his concluding “last word,” Ellul here distills a half-century of careful meditations on Ecclesiastes into a moving treatise on wisdom, vanity, and the presence of God. Ellul follows the narrator, Qohelet, on an ironic path to the limits of human wisdom, a path which ends with wisdom’s recognition of its own vanity. This would lead to despair over the meaninglessness of our accomplishments and our very lives—if not for the surprising presence of God, who shows up when we least expect it. In the poetic prose of translator Joyce Main Hanks, Ellul’s Reason for Being resounds as an arresting interrogation, an invitation to honest self-examination, and a challenge to free dialogue with God here and now.