Quite a few books have been written examining late modern technology from the vantage point of Christian ethics. They tend to concentrate on assessing either ethical issues associated with various technologies (e.g. biotechnology), or underlying ideologies driving technological development (e.g. capitalism). Christian Ethics in a Technological Age is one of those rare books which undertake both tasks, and accomplishes them in a highly engaging and illuminating manner.
Brock's principal argument is that many, if not most, customary processes for technology assessment are insufficient because they fail to recognise presupposed moral commitments which predetermine the outcomes of these assessments. Utilising a largely utilitarian weighing of costs and benefits, technological development is usually a foregone conclusion unless exorbitant cost or high potential for harm can be demonstrated. Little regard is given to assessing how even ‘successful’ technologies might subsequently shape or misshape patterns of daily life and living.
This inattention stems from the myopic moral commitments driving the assessment procedures which are employed. In response to this short-sightedness, Brock develops a more expansive moral vision by drawing upon selected theological doctrines (particularly Christology and ecclesiology) and practices (especially worship). Part I undertakes the critical task of enucleating the philosophical claims shaping the late modern technological age. Brock makes this daunting enterprise manageable by focusing on the works of three prominent philosophers: Martin Heidegger, George Grant and Michel Foucault. He summarises and evaluates their respective descriptions of technology as form of life, metaphysical ideal and habituation in a concise and incisive manner.
In part II, Brock develops his constructive proposal for forming and practising the Christian moral life in light of the technological background examined in the preceding chapters. The centrepiece of his proposal is christological, namely, that Jesus Christ is the core of moral theology and thereby makes concrete claims upon the lives of his followers. Moreover, these claims are made known within the church and shape (or should shape) consequent action within broader social, cultural and political spheres. Drawing primarily upon St Augustine, Karl Barth and Bernd Wannenwetsch, Brock offers a highly engaging account of moral practices grounded in, but not limited to, the church, one which enables an assessment of and resistance to the uses of technology, which distort the normative shape of daily human life, without resorting to a wholesale condemnation or rejection. The limited scope of this review does not allow the kind of detailed summary of Brock's constructive proposal which it deserves, but it should be noted that his discussions of reconciliation, worship, work and sabbath, and fertility and infertility, are particularly insightful.
Brock concludes that the primary task of Christian ethics in a technological age is to create, in and through the church, a more humane ethos and suitable habitat; one centred upon Christ rather human initiative. The resulting moral life is therefore one of joyful obedience instead of an artefact of technological mastery. Or, in more expansive terms, a life centred upon the reality of Christ rather than the artifice of technology.
What is especially welcomed is Brock's emphasis upon the mundane instead of the grandiose. He recognises that it is in such ordinary activities as work, marriage, family and worship that the moral life is formed and lived out, and precisely in these common pursuits that technologies exert their most distorting, but largely unacknowledged, influence. And in this understated emphasis Brock has opened a window upon the technological age which provides a clear and clarifying vision of the grand vista in and against which Christian ethics is now formed.
