Blogology, Part 2: The Blog as a non-Biblical Genre for a Biblical Practice

– July 4, 2012Posted in: BigBible

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My maiden voyage in blogging as Big Bible’s new theological editor was met with some lively comments in response—wonderful!

I’ve taken on the task of crafting a series of posts devoted to the theology of blogging. That simply means that these posts are hosting a conversation about how Christians are to think about and practice blog-writing and blog-reading from within a framework of theological logic and biblical integrity. I usually do not respond to comments in an entire post, but the push-back and questions helped me think more clearly, I think, and those thoughts deserve some more space for follow-up discussion.

Basically, I am writing here about how Christian writers and readers should engage with the blog as a media genre.

In Blogology, Part 1, we considered blogging as public discourse, and for those of us writing from an explicitly Christian point of view with aims of discussing God and the Bible, blogging is public theological discourse (see esp. Dt 6:4-9). As such, the Bible supplies certain guidelines for how we use the genre of the blog.

I wrote in that previous post, that “blogging is a contemporary mode of an ancient biblical practice.” Now, to be clear, blogging itself is not an ancient biblical practice. Blogging is non-Biblical, in other words. The ancient biblical practice I was referring to is that of public theological discourse.

But non-Biblical does not necessarily mean un-Biblical!

The Bible itself seems to canonize, if you will, the practice of believers taking new media genres and employing them for this ancient task of theological discourse.

A Brief Story of the Bible’s own Media Use

What we know of as Scripture originated in oral societies in which commands and stories were regularly recited in public and private spheres (“when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise”—Dt. 6:7). The first written medium for Scripture, as far as the Bible tells us, is a pair of stone slabs.

Bu down in Egypt, folks had figured out how to smash papyrus with a resin here and there in order to make paper (from “papyrus”) scrolls. Letter-writing could be quite expensive, but the Roman Empire’s infrastructure permitted the sort of travel that kept the post coming. The writers of the Bible plied their communicative crafts over a lengthy span of history that saw sweeping technological developments in media arts. Aside from the powerful media technology of idol-crafting, the Bible’s faithful who help write the Bible adopted new media forms for the same task of public theological discourse.

And sometimes their use of media genres adjust the genre so much that they created new ones. Paul’s epistles are similar to other ancient letters, but he makes a number of notable changes from standard format at times (like getting after the Galatians straightaway without much formal chit-chat!). More appreciably, the Gospel writers took the Greco-Roman “bios” (historiographical biography) and expanded the genre so it could fit the divine figure of Jesus.

“Genre-Flexibility” and the Blog

Genres and media forms certainly shape the material they bear. But that does not mean that the technological means should trump the theological ends—integrity of motives and integrity of content sustains regardless of genre when it comes to the ancient biblical practice of theological discourse.

Now, none of us are trying to write “scripture” when we blog. But the brief story recounted above of the Bible’s own shifts in media usage enables us to embrace new genres with some degree of confidence… but not without a devotion to being careful with our public speech.

One commenter made a very interesting point that demands consideration:

If Christians are going to engage effectively with new media, we need to find a spirituality that can embrace soundbites and controversy. Sure, there are risks in doing that. But I maintain that those risks are no more serious than the far more popular error of turning blogging into some sort of monastic pursuit and then whining about why more people don’t read our blogs.

The wisdom here is that a particular media genre dictates a certain media practices. I am writing a book right now, plus a doctoral thesis. I go about these tasks differently than I do here or at the personal theoblog I maintain. I suppose I would encourage genre-flexibility among Christians. Yeah, I like that: genre-flexibility. By this mean that we should be able to engage and employ a wide range of media forms… but we should do so with a theologically governed ethic that honors this ancient task of theological discourse.

Tags: Deuteronomy, online theological discourse, theology of blogging

About AndyByers

An American living in England and working on a PhD i narrative theology in John’s Gospel at Durham University. I have an MDiv from Beeson Divinity School and a ThM from Duke. My first book is about cynicism toward the church and disillusionment with God—Faith Without Illusions: Following Jesus as a Cynic-Saint (IVP Likewise, 2011). The next project underway is with Cascade Books, tentatively called ‘TheoMedia.’ I am also serving as the theological editor for the UK’s Big Bible blog.

Mark Howe

Your survey of media in the Bible seems highly selective to me. With regard to the specifics of the appropriate style for “theological discourse” – itself an extrabiblical category – I would suggest we could include

* Ezekiel making visual aids from excrement

* Isaiah running around “naked” (which, whatever it means, certainly wan”t decorous)

* John the Baptist ranting about broods of vipers

* Jesus using absurd, extreme language about camels, planks in eyes and so on

* Jesus talking about tearing down and rebuilding temples – rhetoric so extreme that it sounded like a terrorist threat to the original hearers. (If he had tweeted it, he would have been arrested, and the atheist Stephen Fry would be defending him. I wonder how many Christians would say “but there was no excuse for *how* he said it!” at this point…)

* Jesus launching very pointed attacks on those he “dialogued” with – “whitewashed tombs” is ad hominem, isn’t it?

* Paul fantasizing in Galatians about those he “dialogued” with slipping with the circumcision knife and castrating themselves.

* Paul dedicating a sizeable proportion of the whole of 2 Corinthians to ranting about the “superapostles”

* The church deciding to transmit all this behaviour – much of which would get you banned from many Christian websites – from generation to generation, and eventually committing it to the Canon because it was considered to be inspired by the Holy Spirit.

So, yes, absolutely, let’s have a “theologically governed ethic”. But would it be too much to ask that this ethic be broad enough to not exclude the most important voices in Scripture?

Insisting – as so many Christians do – on “theological discourse” rules for social media is just another route to elitism. Because theologians call each other dumbasses all the time – it’s just that they require an entire paragraph of long words to express that heart attitude.
- Andy Byers
  
  Thanks for expanding the list, Mark. I was more interested in media formats in the blog post, and space is limited, of course. We could add that bronze serpent in Numbers and, one of my favourites, Balaam’s donkey—one of God’s own means of personal communication!
  
  And you are right that there are controversial prophetic actions and harsh rhetoric in Scripture. I’m not silencing those (in fact, I’ve written on their value in a book on cynicism toward God and the church). As the 1st post on Blogology described a bit, I’m convinced that regardless of media format, there is indeed a theological ethic that should govern our speech (perhaps I should say, “culturally-appropriate” theological ethic, to qualify our distance from biblical contexts?).
  
  I am not sure how these simple suggestions for theological guidelines in discussing God in public could be perceived as “elitist.” “Faithful,” I hope. Paul emphasized “edification” or “building up” as a guideline for how the Corinthians interacted in worship (1 Cor 12, 14). I am not sure why calling for edification and demonstration of care in our writing would be perceived as problematic.
  
  Thanks,
  ~Andy
  - Mark Howe
    
    Elijah demonstrating the biblical approach to inter-faith dialogue by suggesting Baal is taking a comfort break – to put it much much more coyly than the Hebrew – could also go in the list.
    
    Yes, what we write should be edifying and should build people up. But, again, the man you quote in support of this wrote 2 Corinthians 11. He wrote about his opponents emasculating themselves about 10 verses away from his oft-quoted passage about the fruit of the Spirit. So it seems to me that we have a fairly small range of options here:
    
    1: We say that Paul was a one-off and therefore we should do as he says and not as he does. And that the same applies to Jesus, the prophets…
    
    2: We say that, eg, jibes about emasculation were considered harmless banter in the First Century.
    
    3: We say that Paul was a nasty man and that we shouldn’t listen to him at all because he didn’t consistently display the fruit of the Spirit for which we wouldn’t have a definition unless we listened to him. And we do something similar with Jesus, the prophets…
    
    4: We accept that, amazing as it seems in most Christian subcultures, the powerful invective used by Jesus, Paul and others must be edifying on some level, and consider the shocking possibility that God might accept or even require that his people today care enough about issues to stop playing games with etiquette in order to change the world.
    
    I’m all for a Christian ethic for communication, but for me it has to start with, err, communicating, not with playing Christian word games. Paul in particular was a master at picking up existing genres and using them to communicate his radical message in a way that left no-one indifferent.
    
    If he was around today I think he’d be working on his Top Gear genre of gospel preaching right now. He would be despised for doing so by lots of eloquent Christians like the ones who ran the Corinthian church. And he would be helping to set the agenda of debate across society, rather than feeling very smug about using nice words that no-one is reading.
    - Andy Byers
      
      Sounds like you spend a lot of time reading dull Christian blogs, bro! Maybe I am too selective in the blogs I read, which are not easily accused of “playing Christian word games” and demonstrating hypersensitive “etiquette.”
      
      On the other end, though, it sounds like you are calling for invective blogging as a great media practice for Christians. I guess those are the sort that generate a lot of page views… but also cause a lot of damage (and hiking the site stats may not be the best of goals).
      
      Jesus was face-to-face with those folks he harangued, and the stakes were quite different than those faced by most theobloggers today sipping a latte while typing on a MacBook. And Paul had a rich, complex history with the Corinthians—a missing letter that was full of much harsher words than 2 Cor was written “out of much anguish of heart and with many tears, not to cause you pain but to let you know the abundant love I have for you” (2 Cor 2:4). If that is your disposition while writing an invective, controversial blog post—a disposition born out of a deep history and profound love and heart-wrenching compassion—then go for it.
http://mobileministrymagazine.com Mobile Ministry Magazine

As soon as I saw the title to this, I thought of a talk at BibleTech some years back by Ellen Frankel titled “How the Ancient Rabbis Invented Web 2.0 Before Its Time” (http://www.bibletechconference.com/media/2009/frankel_bt09.mp3). I remember a lot about that talk, especially how it was so clearly noted by Ms. Frankel just how much we aren’t reinventing much of anything with blogs, discussion boards, etc. when it comes to conversations about the faith. Its a digital package, but not much different in terms of content than before other than the number of people conversing.

Thanks for provoking a great memory. I really enjoyed that talk then, and still think that much of the discourse on Christians and tech misses this input and insight from the “thicker” branch of our foundation.
- http://twitter.com/Byers_Andy Andrew Byers
  
  Thanks for this note. That talk sounds really helpful…
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Brian H.

We are comparing lots of different modes of communication here. You can make the case that it’s apples and oranges. We are trying to reconcile synchronous and asynchronous methods of communication and come up with an “ethic” that caters to both.

When I speak with a brother or sister in Christ, I am constantly aware of the Holy Spirit, and he is constantly checking me and giving me the OK to say certain things. Paul warns us about the abuse of our freedom in Christ. Some brothers can handle certain speech. Others would really struggle with the same. This is great and more easily discerned (I hope) in a conversation or real-time chat.

A problem, however, arises when we begin talking about “conversations” (maybe more appropriately called dialogues) that do not happen in real-time. I am, in fact, replying to something that was written almost two weeks ago. Therefore, when we write something that will not be read in real-time, we certainly need to consider different things. It just doesn’t seem fair to use the real-time examples recorded in the Scriptures for how we are to conduct our written conversations.

One might read this reply and think I would advocate something safer when writing blog posts for long-term dialogues. In fact, I suggest the opposite. I tend to agree with @google-91ea6ce75ec5b12b7f4f3fdea7c0b59e:disqus who is calling for broader writing and writing down more of ourselves and our experiences. I don’t think people connect with theological conversation. Is that a conversation you desire to have all the time? MAYBE some of the time I like that. Sometimes I want to sit down with Jamie the Very Worst Missionary and hear the reality of her working out her walk with God the same way I do–with joy, confusion, fear, reality. If readers prefer something different than that (say, theological discussions all the time), then that is out there, too.

To suggest that there is a “biblical ethic” for asynchronous dialogues seems like apples and oranges to me.
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