Wyatt Graham in Mere O today, in a critical review of Paul Kingsnorth called “To Be a Christian Is to Sanctify the Machine”:

But I also wonder at Paul’s words in 1 Timothy 4:4–5: “everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, provided it is received with thanksgiving, for it is sanctified by God’s word and by prayer.”

But the Greek is more literal than this translation suggests, as is the lovely Latin: omnis creatura Dei bona—every creature of God is good. Is the Machine a creature and thus ipso facto good? Is every one of our tools, including the system as a whole? There’s a good deal of question-begging here, and hence some re-defining what the Machine is in order to make it “sanctifiable.”

I say this as a critic of Kingsnorth’s book. I just don’t think this style of Reformed response is adequate to the challenge of the technological society.