theo|digital

The first 55 pages, as I was printing it.  There are 153 pages total.

Well, it’s been a difficult road. I’ve been on a brief hiatus from the thesis for about five days—last Friday I turned in a full draft for my advisor’s editing pen. I’m afraid it’ll be rather torn up when it comes back. Instead of feeling relief as I expected, it was probably a low point, feeling like much of my 135 pages of writing was actually rather poor.

I’m feeling a little bit better now (though I haven’t gotten it back yet), although I’m acutely aware of two mental lists: one of edits in each chapter that must happen before I turn in a final draft—things like missing paragraphs, errors, footnote corrections, etc. The other is on general content—sections that I think could use an overhaul. The problem here is that this list is pretty long. I could probably edit and re-write for about a year before I felt like there was stuff here worthy of turning in.

Instead, I think I’m going to have to do the hard work of settling for something that doesn’t meet my expectations, or better put—lower some unrealistic expectations. This is my first attempt at answering a fairly complex question: how does scripture exist and work in a digital context? There are a variety of approaches, and inexhaustible list of questions, and not a few unprovable conjectures. As I hope to continue thinking about these questions for a long time, I’d rather think about this as an opening stab.

Because my advisor (who has enough responsibilities poured on him that I’m not sure how even finds time to read) doesn’t have my copy back yet, there’s not a lot I can complete from my editing lists until I get it back. Even so, I finished writing the short personal introduction today and this afternoon plan on generating a good draft of my bibliography (from Zotero) —something I didn’t include in my draft.

Final copies to readers will probably have to be done by 29 Oct around 2:30pm—Scot McKnight is only around on campus on Thursday afternoon until about this time, and I need to make sure he has enough time to read it.

On my quest to settle into a theological stream of thought that recognizes my roots in evangelicalism, but has become too uneasy with many of its claims, Vanhoozer articulates helpful thoughts. This was from my summer reading for a chapter in my thesis that surveyed some current proposals in the doctrine of scripture:

To mention the gospel and theology in the same breath is, of course, to raise the question of “evangelicalism.” So-called Evangelicals are not, of course, the only Christians interested in the gospel. Yet their self-designation signals their ambition: to be people of the gospel. …

What began as a reform movement in confessional orthodoxy has become a “movement” in its own right, complete with institutions that often simply ape their surrounding secular culture. … Practices that owe more to managerial, therapeutic, consumerist, and entertainment cultures increasingly characterize Evangelical churches, so much so that they are in danger of becoming the de facto, if not the de jure, authority for the Evangelical way of life. Jesus himself remains popular, to be sure, his cruciform way, less so.
…
Canonical-linguistic theology represents a way beyond the debilitating stand-off between propositionalist and nonpropositionalist modes of conceiving revelation, Scripture, and theology. Evangelicals have been quick to decry the influence of modernism on liberal theology but not to see the beam of modern epistemology in their own eye. The present work articulates what an evangelical theology with a postpropositionalist Scripture principle and an ear cocked to the postmodern condition should look like.

From The Drama Of Doctrine: A Canonical-Linguistic Approach To Christian Theology

A text, then, is a communicative act with matter (propositional content) and energy (illocutionary force). … It is important to acknowledge that authors may intend to communicate complex, multilayered intentions.

There is an instructive dialogue in the opening pages of The Hobbit. The scene is Gandalf’s first visit to Bilbo Baggins:

“Good morning!” said Bilbo, and he meant it…

“What do you mean?” he [Gandalf] said. “Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?”

“All of them at once, ” said Bilbo. And a very fine morning for a pipe of tabacco out of doors, into the bargain.”

A bit later Biblo uses the same locutionary act [Chris:  words] with a very different illocutionary intent [Chris:  purpose]:

“Good morning! We don’t want any adventures here, thank you!”

“What a lot of things you do use Good morning for!” said Gandalf. “Now you means that you want to get rid of me, and that it won’t be good till I move off.”

I love it.  From Vanhoozer’s First Theology: God, Scripture and Hermeneutics, 178

Wow, has this been a trip. 15 days of final drafts, stuffing bags and sorting camping gear, reading reports, downloading audio books, filing paperwork, hurried goodbyes, hands on the steering wheel, catching up with old friends, fast food, endless Interstate, fast food, endless Interstate, fast food, making lists, shaking hands, phone calls, human resources department, project groups, troubleshooting, prayer hours, schedules, orientations, low-ropes courses, arms full, late meetings, raincoats, new people, new people, new people, cabins, Elk, photocopies, Safeway, tourists, Elk, staff cafeteria, losing my Nalgene, finding my Nalgene, coffee filters, quick decisions, new people…

and finally a Day Off.

Today I’m taking a Sabbath that’s been long in coming. And although there are still a few big early things to complete for LT, it seems like we’ve done the first few hurdles, and things are coming together. Which allows me to let my shoulders sink a little, and disconnect the to-do list from my head.

One of my personal fun tasks this summer hopefully is redesigning this blog and maybe even porting it to a new service (WordPress anyone?). We’ll see if this happens.

I will post a few things on LT, and hopefully a number of continues posts on theology and media ecology, since I plan to continue my thesis reading and writing (at a much slower pace, but enough to keep the brain warm for the Fall).

More soon.

Sorta funny redux of the verse. I just discovered Read Schuchardt today, who turns out to be a Media Ecology prof (phd NYU) here in Chicagoland at Wheaton. This a few of his other comments on this lecture weren’t bad, but I have a feeling that Schuchardt is a bit of a Christian kermudgen on media experience more a la Neil Postman than Marshall McLuhan, so I’m not sure we’d be best buddies. I’m a little more of an optimist.

This is funny to me at this point, and definitely almost counts a nerd joke in the stuff I’m studying.  Two things that might help it be better  1)  Marshall McLuhan, one of the founders of media ecology, died in 1980, and 2)  He released a book in 1967 The Medium is the Massage which was a play on his quote, “the medium is the message” that was laid out in a print photo collage that foreshadowed internet media…

The remix is by Jamie O’Neil, who seems to have some great forthcoming work on the remix as epistemology, which I think I’ll want to read for my thesis. This is one of the categories I haven’t thought as much on… trying to stay closer to “information” than “media” – though after convergence, I don’t know who I’m kidding, but I gotta stay sane somehow.

“Printed books are slow. It takes a lot of time to read a book or to find information in libraries of books. Printed books are narrow. The “bandwidth” of the printed page contains no sound, no motion, and no easy way to connect to other books. Printed books are solo performances. They project the statements of an individual or small collaborative group and create a mental feedback loop confined in most cases to the reader’s mind alone.

Our traditional schools, built for the industrial age, are bound to printed books. They reward most those who can decode and learn in this confinement. Schools will change only when the curriculum no longer shows up on the loading dock but shows up over wired and through the air, when it can be updated every day and can be customized by the user.”

Gary Rowe, creator of CNN Newsroom, in an essay entitled “Publishing Words and Images:  Schools and Learning in the Millennial Shift,” From One Medium to Another: Basic Issues for Communicating the Scriptures in New Media.

To speak of “contextual theology” today typically calls to mind one of two possible approaches to theology and culture, distinguishable by both their roots and their intention. In fact, though they share the same label, they’re not often found in the same seminary walls.

Evangelical seminaries are likely to locate the discussion in the missiology department, where examination of culture has an evangelical impetus. With roots in the successes and failures in the nineteenth century Western missionary societies, these approaches are primarily praxilogical, discussing custom and ritual and global cultures. Anthropology and sociology are engaged for their descriptive powers, and synthesizing theologians like Paul Hiebert and Steven Bevans are referenced, in an effort to understand the incarnation and communication of the gospel especially in non-western environment.

Mainline seminaries, on the other hand, are likely visit contextual theologies as an invited critique on the Western hegemony of the academy. The approach is postmodern and plural, and builds on the foundational stones of liberation, feminist, and black theologies, citing Gustavo Gutierrez, Mary Daly, and James Cone. In intention, these voices are studied to rectify a missing voice to marginalized people groups, a segment that is destined to continue its expansion even beyond Womanist theology, minjung theology, Queer theology, Carribean theology, etc.

Each approach maintains some suspicion of the other, not least because of their perceived (and not without cause) position as liberal or evangelical approaches. But both share in common a marginalization in the standard theology classroom. The implicit assumption? The accepted stream of Western theology is neutral, generic, and context free. Of course, nobody wants to say this explicitly, but that course titles allow “Feminist theologies” or “African Christologies” but not “European Reformed Theologies” or “Germanic Pre-Modern Doctrine” underscores the point. The Frankfort school’s Herbert Marcuse helpfully speaks of “repressive tolerance” to describe a hegemonic system that allows minority views with open arms, but in treating them as such uses them as evidence to reinforce the dominant view. And Dutch Catholic Frans Wijsen reinforces that even today contextual theologies are treated like “exotic fruits to supplement their traditional Western theological dishes.”

If these two approaches were to have more than just casual interaction, one might imagine they’d band together on a protest march with slogan posters held high: “All theologies are contextual theologies!”