Bøger af Jacques Ellul

The Final Interviews Before Jacques Ellul DiedJacques Ellul on Politics, Technology, and Christianity is the best and most satisfying set of interviews ever carried out with Jacques Ellul and we are most fortunate to have this rich legacy of thought now available to a broader audience. Patrick Chastenet knew Ellul personally as well as intellectually. His questions display a rare balance of respect, boldness and insight that perhaps no one else could have achieved. Chastenet elicits Ellul''s thoughts in Ellul''s voice and refuses to edit or re-organize the text in any way that would diminish the realism and authenticity of the conversation. Chastenet truly takes the reader into Ellul''s salon for a rare and wonderful experience.David W. Gill, President of the International Jacques Ellul Society Patrick Chastenet''s interviews are a ""must read"" for anyone interested in Jacques Ellul or in issues pertaining to modern France. This book is full of important insights into an impressive range of issues, from technology and ecology to theology.Professor Joyce Hanks, University of ScrantonJacques Ellul (1912-1994) was Professor of the History of Institutions at the University of Bordeaux, France, from the end of World War II until his retirement in 1980. He is best known for his brilliant, path-finding analysis of our world in The Technological Society (original French edition, 1954) and many other writings, such as The Technological System, The Technological Bluff, and The Political Illusion. Ellul was also a powerful lay voice for a renewed and reformed Christian theology and ethics. Many of his Christian writings, such as Presence of the Kingdom, Living Faith, and Hope in Time of Abandonment continue to challenge and inspire. For more information, visit www.ellul.org, the web site of the International Jacques Ellul Society.Patrick Troude-Chastenet is Professor of Political Science at the University of Poitiers. He studied with Professor Ellul at the Institute for Political Studies, University of Bordeaux, 1974-76. He is author of an introduction to Ellul''s thought, Lire Ellul: Introduction a l''oeuvre socio-politique de Jacques Ellul (1992) and editor of two anthologies on Ellul''s thought: Sur Jacques Ellul: Un penseur de notre temps (1994) and a forthcoming collection from the international colloquium at Poitiers, October 2004, entitled Jacques Ellul: Libre examen d''une pensee sans frontieres. Chastenet is the founding president of L''Association Internationale Jacques Ellul (www.jacques-ellul.org) and founding editor of the annual Cahiers Jacques Ellul. The interviews in the present volume were conducted over a fourteen-year period, 1981-1994, and were originally published as Entretiens avec Jacques Ellul (1994).

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.

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 publication 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 Two, 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 yet necessary Christian ethics. In Volume Two, he carries this discussion forward, outlining the characteristics and conditions of Christian ethics, and analysing the relationship between ethics, the legal texts of the Bible, and dogmatic theology. He concludes by reimagining the theological use of the ¿analogy of faith¿ for scriptural interpretation. Throughout, Ellul remains in dialogue with Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Paul Ricoeur and others, helping to cement To Will and To Do as a major intervention in twentieth-century theological ethics.

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 publication 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 yet necessary Christian ethics. In Volume Two, he carries this discussion forward, outlining the characteristics and conditions of Christian ethics, and analysing the relationship between ethics, the legal texts of the Bible, and dogmatic theology. He concludes by reimagining the theological use of the ¿analogy of faith¿ for scriptural interpretation. Throughout, Ellul remains in dialogue with Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Paul Ricoeur and others, helping to cement To Will and To Do as a major intervention in twentieth-century theological ethics.

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.

Originally broadcast on CBC Radio's Ideas as a series of interviews, Ellul's first-person approach here makes his ideas accessible to readers looking for new ways of understanding our society. Perspectives on Our Age also gives unique new insight into Ellul's life, his work, and the origins and development of his beliefs and theories.

A new translation of Jacques Ellul's classic work, setting out a radical Christian response to the forces of technology and modernity.

On Being Rich and Poor is an unprecedented look at how one of the twentieth century's foremost thinkers grappled with some of today's most challenging issues.

This expanded edition of Ellul's talks features additional material, previously unavailable, that focuses on Christianity's potential service to humanity as a community that exemplifies a society where people are reconciled with one another and with God.

First-timeTranslation in English- - - The relationship between Christians and Jews has often been very tense, with misunderstandings of Paul''s teachings contributing to the problem. Jacques Ellul''s careful exegesis of Romans 9-11 demonstrates how God has not rejected Israel. The title is taken from the verse, ""Is there some injustice in God?"" The answer is a clear ""no."" God''s election simply expanded outward beyond Israel to reach all peoples of the earth. In the end, there will be a reconciliation of Jews and Christians within God''s plan of salvation.Written in 1991, three years before Ellul died, An Unjust God? brings a new understanding to a section of Scripture known for its conventional and limited interpretations. One significant feature of the book is Ellul''s personal experience of the suffering of Jews under the Nazi regime; and this has direct bearing for the way he links the sufferings of Israel with the sufferings of Jesus. Ellul is then bold enough to say that a major reason why the Jewish people have not accepted Jesus as Messiah is because the Christian Church has not done well to emulate the Jewish Savior of the world.""Unfazed by the deeply rutted and predictably interpretive pathways established in Romans 9-11, Ellul is massively open to hearing what God might actually be saying.""--From the Foreword by David W. Gill, President of International Jacques Ellul Society""Jacques Ellul reads the Scriptures closely, consequently getting surprising--and brilliant--insights that stun us. I don''t always agree with his conclusions, but he always stimulates me to contemplate afresh. May this book propel us all to cherish Israel and its biblical task more wholly.""--Marva Dawn, editor and translator of Sources and Trajectories: Eight Early Articles by Jacques Ellul that Set the StageJacques Ellul (1912-1994), a French sociologist and lay theologian, was Professor Emeritus of Law and of the History and Sociology of Institutions at the University of Bordeaux. He wrote more than forty books, including The Technological Society, The Humiliation of the Word, and Technological Bluff.

""This is not a commentary in the traditional sense. One might call it an existential commentary. An important aim of the author is to bring out the relevance of the story, of the person, mission, and situation of Jonah, to Christians in our own time."" ""Above all, this is a theological, or --more specifically -- a christological commentary. The author's chief aim is to relate the book, not to Christians, but to Christ. Ellul thinks Christ is the center of all Scripture, and he also takes seriously the specific reference which Christ makes to the sign of Jonah. If this reading is correct, and the Bible is indeed a unity, the exposition of Ellul, though not developed in detail, has a distinctive theological contribution to make."" ""Those who want acute theological insight, and are not afraid of plain, hard-hitting application, will read this vivid study with relish and profit."" -- From the Preface by G. W. Bromiley

Pointing to the many contradictions between the Bible and the practice of the church, Jacques Ellul asserts in this provocative and stimulating book that what we today call Christianity is actually far removed from the revelation of God. Successive generations have reinterpreted Scripture and modeled it after their own cultures, thus moving society further from the truth of the original gospel. The church also perverted the gospel message, for instead of simply doing away with pagan practice and belief, it reconstituted the sacred, set up its own religious forms, and thus resacralized the world. Ellul develops several areas in which this perversion is most obvious, including the church's emphasis on moralism and its teaching in the political sphere. The heart of the problem, he says, is that we have not accepted the fact that Christianity is a scandal; we attempt to make it acceptable and easy--and thus pervert its true message. Ultimately, however, Ellul remains hopeful. For, in spite of all that has been done to subvert the message of God, the Holy Spirit continues to move in the world. ""Christianity,"" writes Ellul, ""never carries the day decisively against Christ.""

Description:Living Faith is a groundbreaking exploration of the meaning and dynamics of Christian faith today by a major theologian and social critic of our time. Jacques Ellul thoughtfully examines all aspects of the phenomenon we call faith to distill the essential characteristics of true Christianity. He argues cogently for a crucial distinction between religion, based on a faith that is nothing more than a reflection of our own circumstances and consciousness, and genuine Christian Faith, which concerns itself primarily with revelation. Such a Living Faith, he points out, is an open, honest, courageous response to a divine disclosure of the Wholly Other God that impels us beyond comfortable answers to see ""everything in a light which is not that of reason, experience, or common sense.""Endorsements:""Disquieting yet optimistic . . . . Ellul distinguishes between the authentic and inauthentic manifestations of Christian faith and points the way toward a solid foundation for personal and social renewal.""--Spiritual Life""Stimulating and provocative . . . compels us to reflect on the current state of ''faith'' and the condition of our own faith and belief.""--The Christian Century""In the midst of darkness Ellul bears witness, in a highly self-critical form, to ''the specificity, the unique and irreplaceable character of the Christian faith [which] gives a point-by-point answer to our excesses and our misery.''""-- New Oxford ReviewAbout the Contributor(s):Jacques Ellul (1912-1994), a French sociologist and lay theologian, was Professor Emeritus of Law and of the History and Sociology of Institutions at the University of Bordeaux. He wrote more than forty books, including The Technological Society, The Humiliation of the Word, and The Technological Bluff.