A Theological Understanding of Technology

Tool, Technique, and Telos

Is technology neutral?

Most people assume it is. A technology is a tool. A wheelbarrow moves stones. A wrench tightens the drain plug of an engine. A multimeter measures voltage across a circuit. What matters is how you use it. That sounds reasonable, but it reduces technology to one dimension. Technology is more than a tool. Until we see what else it is, we will keep endorsing what should be questioned, fearing what we should embrace, and never asking about purpose.

A theological understanding of technology begins with foundational doctrines taught in Genesis. The first is the image of God. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). The image of God is the whole person, constituted to know God, represent God, and relate to God in a way no other creature can. Image-bearers are appointed by God to stand before Him in covenant, to reflect His character into creation, and to exercise dominion on His behalf. Reason, creativity, language, and moral agency all flow from this. Only image-bearers receive the mandate. Therefore, only image-bearers are accountable for how they fulfill it.

The second is the creation mandate, also called the cultural mandate. "Fill the earth and subdue it" (Genesis 1:28). "The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it" (Genesis 2:15). God commanded humanity to build, cultivate, and exercise dominion over creation, not after Eden but in Eden. Making is a pre-Fall calling, a vocation, patterned after the Maker, and it is intrinsically good. The creation mandate implies progression: from garden to city, from raw potential to realized cultivation, from the first man tending a single plot to a civilization that fills the earth. Technology is how image-bearers fulfill that calling. It is a cultural endeavor, developing creation under the mandate God gave.

The third is the antithesis. The consequence of Adam and Eve's rebellion was enmity. God spoke to the serpent: "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel" (Genesis 3:15). Here God declared war between two seeds: the seed of the woman, which leads to Christ, and the seed of the serpent, which leads to rebellion. Two lines. Two directions. Every human endeavor falls on one side or the other. Augustine traces the antithesis in City of God: two cities, two loves, building side by side from the beginning. The City of God is built by love of God. The City of Man is built by love of self. The antithesis divides them. Yet God did not abandon the world. His common grace restrains sin and continues to distribute the blessings of the creation mandate across human endeavors such as making, art, and science.

The image of God establishes who is making. The mandate declares what image-bearers are called to make. The Fall did not revoke the mandate. But the antithesis runs through it, pulling image-bearers toward the City of God or the City of Man. From image, mandate, and antithesis, three questions emerge for a theological understanding of technology. Tool: What are we making? Technique: By what standard are we making it? Telos: Does it glorify God and advance the creation mandate? Each question reveals a perspective the others cannot provide. Each can be rightly ordered under God or disordered in rebellion against Him. Every technology is a cultural endeavor building toward one city or another. The Decalogue sets the direction.

Tool: What Are We Making?

The tool perspective is existential. It concerns the maker's identity before God, who is making, and why. The image of God establishes his identity. The creation mandate establishes his calling. Before he asks what a technology does, he must know who he is.

God entrusted the development of creation to those made in His image. The plow breaks ground that hands cannot. The wheel moves what backs cannot carry. The infrared sensor detects what the eye cannot see. Each tool extends the capacity of the image-bearer in the direction the mandate points, from garden to city, from raw potential to a creation developed for the glory of its Maker.

When the image-bearer picks up a tool, he exercises dominion by extending his God-given capacity to develop, order, and cultivate creation. The farmer, the engineer, and the programmer all do the same thing at different scales: taking what God embedded in creation and drawing it out. These capacities did not disappear at the Fall. God preserved them. Augustine marveled at this in City of God XXII.24, cataloging the arts of weaving, building, agriculture, navigation, and medicine as blessings God did not withdraw even under the curse. He marveled because these gifts testify to the dignity of the image-bearer even under judgment. The tool reveals the maker's God-given nature, whether the maker acknowledges God or not. The Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck refers to this as common grace. In Reformed Dogmatics, he argues that grace restores nature. The creation mandate is not corrupted beyond use. It is preserved.

But not every tool simply extends the maker outward. Some tools reshape the maker. A plow may not reshape the farmer's judgment. But, an algorithm trained on the behavior of millions reshapes the attention, desire, and reasoning of everyone it touches. The existential question is not only who is making, but what making does to the maker. When a tool begins to reform the image-bearer rather than serve him, the existential question becomes urgent.

The image-bearer who knows his own identity fulfills the mandate with intention. That is what existential means here: the self before God, accountable for what he builds. He asks what he is making before he asks how. He asks whether the tool serves the mandate or himself. He asks whether the tool is forming its users into more faithful image-bearers or less human ones. He builds with accountability to the One who gave the calling: not a refusal of technology but a technology ordered under the lordship of Christ.

On the contrary, the believer who fears technology and refuses to engage does not honor the mandate. He abandons it. Tool disordered is abdication. But tool rightly ordered is vocation. He knows whose image he bears, and he builds accordingly.

Technique: By What Standard Are We Making It?

A technology is more than a tool. It encompasses a technique, and technique is normative. It concerns how the work is done, under what conditions, and by what standard. These are the norms and constraints that govern making. The method always serves some master. The standard that should govern technique is God's law.

A farmer uses satellite data to manage crop health. An engineer models wind loads to strengthen a bridge. These techniques are examples of stewardship: doing the work well because the One who gave the work deserves excellence. The apostle Paul reminds us, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men” (Colossians 3:23).

The first commandment means no method, no system, no optimization framework occupies the place that belongs to God alone. Technique under the Decalogue serves the mandate. Technique without it becomes a rival to the Maker. Scripture shows the contrast. At Babel, the builders said, “let us make a name for ourselves” (Genesis 11:4): brick for stone, tar for mortar, but the standard was themselves. At Sinai, God said, “let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst” (Exodus 25:8). The standard was God’s own specification, executed in obedience. Sinai follows the exodus. God redeemed Israel first, then gave the standard. At Babel, the standard was self. At Sinai, it was God.

Jacques Ellul saw what happens when technique loses its governing standard. In The Technological Society (1954), he defined technique as the pursuit of absolute efficiency in every field of human activity. When efficiency becomes the standard, technique becomes its own law, replacing the mandate. The AI industry is its purest contemporary expression. The governing question for the largest labs is not “What does human flourishing require?” but “What is the fastest path to artificial general intelligence?” By every indication, efficiency is the reigning standard. Humans are inputs, not ends in themselves. When profit depends on the speed of technological advancement, efficiency becomes the governing logic with no consideration for human flourishing. Ellul warned that technique “cannot be otherwise than totalitarian” (125).

But technique was never meant to govern itself. When God gave the instructions to build that tabernacle, He filled Bezalel with His Spirit and wisdom to cut stone, work metal, and weave fabric (Exodus 35:31-35). The One who gave the mandate gave the skill to fulfill it, and the wisdom to govern it. Solomon declares, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10). Technique rightly ordered submits to God’s law. Technique disordered becomes its own law.

Telos: Does It Glorify God and Advance the Creation Mandate?

A technology is more than a tool governed by a technique. It embodies a telos, and telos is situational. It concerns the purpose of a technology and whether that purpose aligns with the one God assigned. The creation mandate has a direction: from garden to city, from raw potential to a civilization that fills the earth with the glory of its Maker. Telos asks whether a technology advances that direction or bends away from it.

The Technique section asked about the method. Telos asks about the destination. Ellul saw that the modern world has lost both questions, but the second is worse. In The Presence of the Kingdom, he observed that the world no longer debates whether ends justify means. It has abandoned the question of ends altogether. For the Christian, telos is not optional. Ellul insisted the end is the Kingdom of God.

Now it is clear that technology is never neutral. Every technology encodes a direction: toward the flourishing of image-bearers or away from it. A recommendation algorithm engineered to harvest attention, a weapons system designed to circumvent human accountability, a platform built to manufacture desire. Each encodes a purpose. The question is whose. The plow serves the mandate. A social media platform that treats image-bearers as data to be harvested does not. The difference is not efficiency. It is whether the technology serves the God who gave the mandate or substitutes another end in His place.

Augustine saw it clearly. Two loves produce two cities, and only one of them is building toward the glory of God. Augustine’s framework endures because it is not about ancient empires. It is about directed love. Every act of making serves one love or the other, and technology is no exception.

The City of Man builds toward the self: security without God, significance without worship, civilization as its own justification. Cain built the first city after being cursed by the ground. He built because God's provision was no longer his. Every technology the City of Man produces carries this logic forward. The algorithm that harvests attention builds toward a world ordered around human appetite and the suppression of the need for God. Its telos is Babel: make a name for ourselves, reach the heavens on our terms, construct a human order that needs no Lord.

The City of God builds toward the glory of God reflected in the flourishing of everything He made. It builds because the mandate is real, the calling is good, and the Builder who gave it will bring it to completion. Its technology serves image-bearers rather than consuming them. It tells the truth rather than generating plausible falsehoods. It cultivates contentment rather than manufacturing desire. It builds toward the New Jerusalem, the city whose builder and maker is God (Hebrews 11:10).

Telos rightly ordered glorifies God and advances the civilization He intends. Telos disordered builds toward something less. This is how the Decalogue orients. The ninth commandment forbids lying and points toward a civilization built on truth. The tenth forbids covetousness and points toward a civilization built on the sufficiency of God. Technology oriented toward divine glory advances the creation mandate. Technology oriented toward self advances the City of Man. The Westminster Shorter Catechism asks the most important question a human being can ask: “What is the chief end of man?” The answer: “to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” That is the goal. Rightly ordered telos honors the One who gave the mandate.

Conclusion

Theological evaluation begins and ends with the sovereignty of God. A technology is more than a tool, more than a technique, more than a telos. It is all three, and all three must be asked together. The maker is an image-bearer under a mandate. The method is stewardship under a standard. The end is the glory of God and the flourishing of all He made.

Collapse any one of the perspectives and a theological understanding falls short. Technology without telos has tools and technique but nothing to anchor them to. Theological pessimism sees the antithesis and prescribes withdrawal, abandoning the mandate God never revoked. The mandate compels the image-bearer to build. Common grace equips him to do so. The antithesis reminds him to discern.

So is technology neutral? No. Every tool serves a calling, every technique serves a standard, and every telos either honors God or rivals Him. The technologies we develop, AI above all, are now shaping all of us at a scale no previous generation has faced. Every technology is a cultural endeavor building toward one city or another. The image-bearer who knows this builds under the lordship of Christ. The one who does not is building for a different city. The Decalogue reveals the path.

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References

Augustine. The City of God. Abridged. Translated by Gerald G. Walsh, Demetrius B. Zema, Grace Monahan, and Daniel J. Honan. Edited by Vernon J. Bourke. Garden City, NY: Image Books, 1958.

Bavinck, Herman. Reformed Ethics. Vol. 1, Created, Fallen, and Converted Humanity. Edited by John Bolt. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019.

Bavinck, Herman. Reformed Dogmatics. Vol. 1, Prolegomena. Edited by John Bolt. Translated by John Vriend. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003.

Ellul, Jacques. The Technological Society. Translated by John Wilkinson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964. Originally published as La Technique ou l’Enjeu du siècle (Paris, 1954).

Ellul, Jacques. The Presence of the Kingdom. Translated by Olive Wyon. New York: Seabury Press, 1967. Originally published as Présence au monde moderne (Geneva, 1948).

Poythress, Vern S. Making Sense of Man: Using Biblical Perspectives to Develop a Theology of Humanity. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2024.

Poythress, Vern S. Making Sense of the World: How the Trinity Helps to Explain Reality. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2024.

The Westminster Shorter Catechism. Q. 1. In The Westminster Standards. 1647.

The Westminster Confession of Faith. 7.2. In The Westminster Standards. 1646.

Scripture quotations are from the English Standard Version (ESV).