Over the course of his life (1912–1994), Jacques Ellul penned over fifty books and over one thousand essays. Many of his writings are difficult to traverse and take for granted an in-depth understanding of his complex approach to the world. Additionally, Ellul wrote many different types of books, from history and sociology to biblical studies and poetry. It is quite easy to find oneself lost in the forest of Ellul’s writings, or to read only one genre of his oeuvre and unknowingly neglect other key works. Ironically, after one reads several of Ellul’s books, one might have a poorer understanding of Ellul than if one had read only one. The only way to overcome this is to understand the big picture of what Ellul is saying, to see how each book fits (or does not fit) with all his other works. His work is like a jigsaw puzzle: readers need the picture of the puzzle on the box, so to speak, in order to orient each individual piece to that whole. But because his work is so multifaceted, it can take a lot of time and reading to see this big picture. In the following, we hope to make this task easier by sketching the big picture. This book introduces readers to a number of Ellul’s primary theological and sociological writings, providing a solid foundation for further study.1
Ellul described his work as separated into two dialectically related veins: one theological and one sociological. To use an analogy Ellul was fond of, his work is like two rails of a train track: separate but parallel, moving toward the same goal. His sociology and theology obeyed different methods and had different ends, but the whole interest is the confrontation between these two ways of understanding the world. To make this confrontation explicit, Ellul coupled several of his sociological books with theological counterpoints. For example, The Politics of God and the Politics Man (a study of the biblical book of 2 Kings) can be read as a theological counterpoint to The Political Illusion (an analysis and critique of modern political systems). Also, The Meaning of the City (a biblical study of the theme of cities, human works, and political authority) reads as the counterpoint to The Technological Society (a sociological analysis of the technological world and worldview). This list can go on, but the important idea is this: in order to fully understand Ellul, one must read selections from both sides of his work. One must engage both the theological and the sociological dialectically. Many tend to focus on only one track of Ellul’s writings, thus ending up with an incomplete understanding of Ellul; this leads to a dead end and misses his point. As Andrew Goddard explains: “Ellul’s work as a whole forms ‘a composition in counterpoint.’ Any attempt to understand his thought that concentrates excessively on one of the two strands or ignores the relation between them is therefore liable to distort his thinking.”2
In this brief introduction to some of Ellul’s major writings, we separate his work into two broad categories: theological and sociological. Ellul’s specifically theological writings can themselves be generally divided into two kinds. The first includes theological ethics, in critical dialogue with what might be described as philosophical systematic theology; the second is a kind of meditative biblical exegesis. Ellul’s theological-ethical works include books such as Presence in the Modern World, Violence: Reflections from a Christian Perspective, and Hope in Time of Abandonment. These writings are particularly interesting because of Ellul’s critical engagement with philosophers and theologians such as Søren Kierkegaard, Karl Marx, and Karl Barth; they are part of a much larger conversation. Also, these books showcase Ellul’s unique engagement with dialectical thought—which, in the continental tradition, largely comes to him from G. W. F. Hegel via Kierkegaard, Marx, and Barth. From a philosopher’s perspective, these theological works might thus prove more interesting than Ellul’s biblical studies, as they explicitly engage this wider conversation. Furthermore, Ellul’s specific writings of biblical commentary often take part in theological and philosophical conversations detailed in his other theological works, making clear the need to be familiar with them as well. In the following, we will focus more heavily on Ellul’s ethical-theological writings, though his biblical studies will not be completely neglected.
Ellul’s nontheological writings are often described as sociological. This can be a misleading designation. These works, such as The Technological Society (which is among his most influential works) hardly stay within what we consider to be sociology today; they address readers with a much broader perspective, encroaching on regions thoroughly philosophical. Like his other sociological books, The Technological Society strays far from the path of purely descriptive sociological analysis; it ends up reading more like the critical theory of the Frankfurt School philosophers. Furthermore, all of Ellul’s sociological works are laden with serious ethical critiques of technique, modern politics, and propaganda. For these reasons, Ellul’s sociological studies might more properly be called philosophy; in any case, they represent a kind of scholarly work that pushes against contemporary disciplinary boundaries. While we have adopted the theological/sociological division for convenience in this text, both sides of Ellul’s work are in fact profoundly informed by a complex mixture of sociological, philosophical, and theological premises and categories of thought. It is helpful to remember this when reading Ellul.
In the following, six chapters focus on Ellul’s primary theological writings, and six focus on his essential sociological books. The theological chapters examine Presence in the Modern World, Violence: Reflections from a Christian Perspective, The Meaning of the City, Hope in Time of Abandonment, and Apocalypse: The Book of Revelation. The sixth chapter serves to introduce Ellul’s works explicitly on theological ethics, examining the arguments in To Will & to Do. The sociological works presented and discussed are The Technological Society, Propaganda, The Political Illusion, Autopsy of Revolution, The New Demons, and The Humiliation of the Word.3 We have selected these books for two main reasons. First, we chose works that Ellul himself believed were his strongest (such as Hope in Time of Abandonment, which he called one of his favorite of his own works). Second, the books we discuss contain a high density of themes that permeate all of Ellul’s writings—such as his rejection of power and violence, his criticism of the technological mindset and its corresponding values, and his rejection of modern politics and propaganda. Of course, other selections would have been possible; there are many other themes that run throughout Ellul’s work, which should crop up as one reads through the pages of this brief guide.
In each subsequent chapter, we lay out an overview of the book under discussion. Each overview will include a presentation of the book’s central arguments and themes. Finally, each chapter closes with a short summary. The book itself concludes with a glossary of terms to help readers orient themselves in Ellul’s corpus and with a bibliography with plenty of suggestions for further reading.
Over the years, many people have asked where to begin when reading Ellul. This is a difficult question to answer; we have thoughtfully responded by writing this work, which we are confident will provide a firm foundation for further study. Clearly there is no substitute for reading Ellul’s own writings, but many do not have the time or energy to wade through Ellul’s many books. With this in mind, we hope that the following pages will prove enlightening and encouraging to those exploring Ellul for the first time.
1. This work is an introduction to Ellul through some of his major writings. As our intended audience is the anglophone reader, we will focus on Ellul’s books that are translated and available in English. For those interested in general information about Ellul, see the website of the International Jacques Ellul Society, ellul.org. For those interested in Ellul’s life, we recommend Greenman et al., Understanding Jacques Ellul; or for a more detailed treatment, Goddard, Living the Word, Resisting the World.
2. Goddard, Living the Word, Resisting the World, 53–54.
3. With the exception of chapter 6, on Ellul’s theological ethics, each strand of Ellul’s work is presented in chronological order, based on each book’s first publication date.