Description
Book SynopsisThis 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 Drawing from numerous unpublished and untranslated texts, Jacob Marques Rollison argues that this crisis involves confrontation with a critique of presence manifest in Ellul’s reading of and engagement with Michel Foucault. Marques Rollison distills Ellul’s sociological critiques and theological responses to this crisis, presenting Ellul’s evolving theology against the background of major shifts in French intellectual life. In doing so, the author simultaneously calls for renewed engagement with Ellul’s prophetic thought, critically appraises Ellul’s dialectical theology and Marxist inheritances, and develops a robustly Protestant approach to theological communication ethics for our time.
Trade ReviewJacob Rollison has woven together numerous strands in the study of Ellul’s writings, presenting a fresh, welcomed challenge to postmodernist trends that devalue the role of language in today’s world. Anyone interested in a theologically-informed ‘ethics of communication’ will profit greatly from this engaging book. -- Ted Lewis, Executive Director for the International Jacques Ellul Society
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: Questions in Dialogue
Part I: Architecture
Chapter 1: Reason for Being: Ellul’s Existential Epistemology of the Present
Chapter 2: Community in the Present: Marx, Institutions, and Language
Part II: Movement
Chapter 3: The Dialogue of Sign and Presence: Presence and Signification in Ellul’s Theological Ethics
Chapter 4: Crises in Communication
Chapter 5: A Hopeful, Spoken Incognito: Presence in the Postmodern World
Conclusion: The Mystery of the Word
Appendix 1: Interpretive Summary of Ellul’s Article “The Dialogue of Sign and Presence” (1936?)
Appendix 2: Ellul’s Honorary Doctorate from the University of Aberdeen
Bibliography
About the Author
