theo|digital

It’s confirmed, I’ve definitely got some beefs with Dr. Schuchardt. But his scriptural redux here is even more clever than the first. Laughed out loud.

If you like, go back and watch the entire video, and you’ll notice he quotes the very mentor I thought he was likely to be following—Neil Postman—who is the father of the school of media ecology that tends to focus on the negative effects of media.

His negativity I think colors the quality of his analysis. For instance, trying to speak against mediated communication, he draws three rules for ministry from Jesus:
1. You have to be there
2. You have to speak in as un-mediated a manner as possible
3. You have to do the work of the gospel

Regarding the New Testament: for starters, what of the centurion’s daughter—healed in the absence of presence being a model of faith! Or Paul’s epistles to the churches? Are we to think that his ministry impact was diluted by the scribes, scrolls, and messangers? Hopefully not—Christianity is actually based on a doctrine of mediation: revelation in Scripture.

Further, are we intended to look at the examples of mediation in a pre-modern, craft literate society and these are normative for today? In this case, cars are no longer appropriate for ministry, I’d think.

I suggest that it is rhetoric without substance to say that God has not spoken to someone via e-mail or a TV screen, therefore God does prefer digital media. With things like Facebook only about 4 years old, aren’t we jumping the gun a little (the printed book has had 500 years, the manuscript about 3,000). But this wouldn’t be my biggest concern. It would be that Dr. Schuchardt might consider an audible voice of God would be considered unmediated (God doesn’t have vocal chords: sound waves and air are most certainly God communicating through something else), but further that “direct” communication from God is privileged over mediated communication. This is true of some more extreme versions of Pentecostalism, but I don’t think fits standard, for instance, Protestant language which would see the Word and Sacraments as the primary realities of God’s communication and action. Both real, but both mediated by the stuff of humanity and creation.