Beyond Modern Dualisms: Reconstructing Techno-Theology Through Animism and Divine Ethics

Techno-theology is reconsidered from a standpoint beyond modern dualisms (spirit/matter; human/nonhuman), asking how contemporary technologies come to mediate ultimate concern and thereby reconfigure meaning, agency, and moral responsibility. The article argues that techno-theology is not a new religious movement but an analytic lens for tracing the mutual mediation between technological systems and theological imaginaries. It shows, first, how technologies increasingly function as carriers of ultimacy, reorganizing authority, hope, and moral expectation. Second, it diagnoses a recurrent modern impasse: even where crude dualisms are rejected, responsibility is practically redistributed across sociotechnical arrangements in ways that diffuse accountability. Third, it proposes “divine ethics” as a minimal evaluative grammar for distinguishing idolatrous re-enchantment (salvation-by-escalation) from relational re-enchantment (limits, accountability, care). Divine ethics is operationalized through three constraints—capacity–responsibility alignment, precaution under irreversible and intergenerational risk, and future-oriented institutionalization—prioritizing prevention over post hoc blame.