A Biblical Theology of Technology

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I. Goals for the course

  • To help you become a technologically literate Christian, who knows how to use technology well to the glory of God, and who also refrains from poor use of technology.
  • To assess the problems we are facing with technology and offer solutions and insight, but to avoid legalism and judgmental attitudes towards other Christian’s decisions about technology.
  • To foster a culture in our church of purposeful interaction with technology, where we do not follow the masses to do evil (Exod 23:2).

II. Technology’s place in God’s story

  • Definition of technology: any tool that humans make for any purpose, including physical tools and techniques.
  • Examples of technology in the Bible: writing (ink, paper, pens) and alphabets (the Bible itself is a product of technology!); staffs, plows, axes, adzes, razors, knives, scythes, pruning hooks, and threshing sledges, chariots, bows and arrows, armor, spears, swords, and siege-machines; wagons, boats, yokes, and harness; brick-making, fire, pottery and pottery kilns, city walls and gates, techniques for building houses, stone-working and metal-refining and metal-working implements, techniques for tanning hides, harps and trumpets, tents, blankets, clothing and needles, traps, snares, fish-hooks, and fish-nets, wells and cisterns, medicine, cosmetics, wine-making, cheese-making, bread-making, baskets, cups, bowls, and plates, oil lamps, furniture, coins.
  • Creation: God created Adam and Eve to take dominion of the earth (Gen 1:28).
    • This involves using the resources of God’s world in intelligent ways.
    • Hints of technology’s potential in Eden: the cultivated grove of fruit trees, the gold in the land of Havilah.
  • Fall: Adam and Eve immediately employed technology to deal with their sin, sewing fig leaves together (Gen 3:7).
  • Themes in technology’s role since the fall:
    • Technology is used to empower and facilitate sin: e.g., the tower of Babel (Gen 11), military technology for dominating others (Josh 17:16).
      • God opposes this pride. Ps 20:7: “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.”
    • God endorses and employs technology in the work of redemption:
      • He commanded Noah to build the ark, employing pitch and woodworking: Gen 6:14.
      • He commands people to write: Exod 17:14; Deut 31:19; Jer 30:2. God himself writes on tablets! (Exod 31:18)
      • He commanded the building of the tabernacle and the temple, with its furnishings: (Exodus 25–30).
      • He commands us to make music with instruments: Ps 33:2.
      • God is depicted as a shepherd whose staff comforts us (Ps 23:4).
    • God teaches people technology:
      • He gifted Bezalel for his craftsmanship in the tabernacle: Exod 31:1–6 (first use of “wisdom” in the Bible!).
      • He teaches the everyday worker: farming and food-processing techniques that conform to creation are “from the LORD of hosts”; a farmer’s God “teaches him” (Isa 28:23–29).
    • The redeemed and unredeemed employ technology. Often, the unredeemed are faster to develop it (Gen 4:20–22).
    • The cross was a hideous technology of torture, which God employed to win our salvation.
  • Technology in glory: the new Jerusalem features cultivated trees, gold and precious gems worked into a beautiful, artful city, and people praising God using instruments (Rev 21–22).

Discussion questions

  1. Based on the above survey, what is the Bible’s attitude toward technology?
    1. How would the Bible respond to the anti-technology luddite?
    2. How would the Bible respond to the early-adopter technophile?

  2. Based on the above survey, what is the goal of technology in God’s world?
    One possible answer: to use our God-given intellect and skill to harness the potential of creation for human flourishing, to the glory of God.

  3. Christians have had an uneasy relationship with science and technology (e.g., Galileo’s trial, the Scopes trial). Evaluate these statements (thanks to T. Reinke):
    1. Human innovation is an imposition on the created order.
    2. Human innovation knows no limits.
    3. Human innovation can unleash powers beyond God’s control, and which will make God irrelevant. (Obviously wrong, but are you afraid of AI? Are you afraid of bioengineering?)
    4. Human flourishing depends on our adoption or rejection of technology.

  4. What questions do you have about technology? What are problems that you are facing in connection with it?