Correction - 'Faith comes through hearing' is Romans 10:17, not Luke 4:16 (which is the verse which establishes that Jesus could read, hence the mix-up).
Podcasts rule! It is EXCELLENT that you have taken them up.
In your conversation here with Mary Harrington and in your inaugural podcast with Kruptos, you treat a profound subject that draws me in powerfully.
You have discovered the bridge that connects us to our distant past, our current moment and indeed the direction of travel in which we are all heading.
I stumbled across this old podcast and found it quite generative. I’m posting this comment more to articulate my own thinking but would of course appreciate engagement if there is any to be had.
Disclaimers: I haven’t read the article on which the interview is based, nor have I read Ong.
On one hand, I found the association between memes,pattern recognition , and a holistic/potentially religious view of the world compelling. I have also personally experienced small flashes of how the more unified view of reality can point one towards God (I haven’t experienced this through the Internet).
On the other hand, in extolling the virtues of pre-literate/visual/memetic perception, I found that this line of thought seems not to notice the implications of what God has done in the world by choosing to deliver a written scripture into a pre-literate world. Instead of encouraging and accommodating himself to a visual or pre-literate culture, God choose to deliver a dense, layered written document, and encouraging his people to immerse themselves in it. There’s a reason the Jews became known as “the people of the book“. This suggests that the development of literate perception is not a failure or a problem, but instead, at least partially, something divinely intended and integral to human development.
Very true - but it's not clear to me that universal literacy is necessary to receive God's word if the church is functioning correctly (with regular oral readings and sermons)
What you say is true, I suppose (although my own Protestantism might have some quibbles here).
I still think the point stands, though. God didn’t choose an oral tradition. He chose to deliver a text, and one that rewards repeated, prolonged, careful engagement. Therefore the mode of perception formed by literacy seems to be divinely approved to some extent.
Even in a world where only the clergy are literate, we have a situation where the leaders of the Church, responsible for the formation of their people, are going to have a “literate worldview”. It seems inevitable, and therefore divinely sanctioned, that in the course of their shepherding this way of seeing is transmitted, to a degree.
At the very least, this complicates the argument that pre-literacy conduces better to faith, for surely God would want the leaders of his church to model the faith he desires from his people at large.
Maybe the key lies in the *kind* of text we’re talking about. The Scriptures are not a logic chopping, analytic text generally speaking. The predominant mode is narrative, poetry, and a large proportion of patterned ritual or architectural instructions, where the meaning is in the doing. That having been said, the Pauline epistles can be pretty philosophical when you get down to it.
Excellent comment - I appreciate it. I will reflect on this. There is the quirk of the first few centuries of the church, while the composition of the bible was ongoing and key aspects of the truth would have had to be passed on through spoken word and ritual. But your point holds weight
An example of memetic culture that is within the last 2 centuries... one of the periods of unrest in British India ended up with a few items being passed about the countryside. I think it was a hunk of ordinary bread... but for some reason this resonated with the natives of the countryside such that the British Rajh had to put down a serious revolt.
Symbols--sometimes unusual symbols--can have great power.
Correction - 'Faith comes through hearing' is Romans 10:17, not Luke 4:16 (which is the verse which establishes that Jesus could read, hence the mix-up).
Podcasts rule! It is EXCELLENT that you have taken them up.
In your conversation here with Mary Harrington and in your inaugural podcast with Kruptos, you treat a profound subject that draws me in powerfully.
You have discovered the bridge that connects us to our distant past, our current moment and indeed the direction of travel in which we are all heading.
Great to hear
I stumbled across this old podcast and found it quite generative. I’m posting this comment more to articulate my own thinking but would of course appreciate engagement if there is any to be had.
Disclaimers: I haven’t read the article on which the interview is based, nor have I read Ong.
On one hand, I found the association between memes,pattern recognition , and a holistic/potentially religious view of the world compelling. I have also personally experienced small flashes of how the more unified view of reality can point one towards God (I haven’t experienced this through the Internet).
On the other hand, in extolling the virtues of pre-literate/visual/memetic perception, I found that this line of thought seems not to notice the implications of what God has done in the world by choosing to deliver a written scripture into a pre-literate world. Instead of encouraging and accommodating himself to a visual or pre-literate culture, God choose to deliver a dense, layered written document, and encouraging his people to immerse themselves in it. There’s a reason the Jews became known as “the people of the book“. This suggests that the development of literate perception is not a failure or a problem, but instead, at least partially, something divinely intended and integral to human development.
Very true - but it's not clear to me that universal literacy is necessary to receive God's word if the church is functioning correctly (with regular oral readings and sermons)
Thanks for your engagement and reply.
What you say is true, I suppose (although my own Protestantism might have some quibbles here).
I still think the point stands, though. God didn’t choose an oral tradition. He chose to deliver a text, and one that rewards repeated, prolonged, careful engagement. Therefore the mode of perception formed by literacy seems to be divinely approved to some extent.
Even in a world where only the clergy are literate, we have a situation where the leaders of the Church, responsible for the formation of their people, are going to have a “literate worldview”. It seems inevitable, and therefore divinely sanctioned, that in the course of their shepherding this way of seeing is transmitted, to a degree.
At the very least, this complicates the argument that pre-literacy conduces better to faith, for surely God would want the leaders of his church to model the faith he desires from his people at large.
Maybe the key lies in the *kind* of text we’re talking about. The Scriptures are not a logic chopping, analytic text generally speaking. The predominant mode is narrative, poetry, and a large proportion of patterned ritual or architectural instructions, where the meaning is in the doing. That having been said, the Pauline epistles can be pretty philosophical when you get down to it.
Excellent comment - I appreciate it. I will reflect on this. There is the quirk of the first few centuries of the church, while the composition of the bible was ongoing and key aspects of the truth would have had to be passed on through spoken word and ritual. But your point holds weight
An example of memetic culture that is within the last 2 centuries... one of the periods of unrest in British India ended up with a few items being passed about the countryside. I think it was a hunk of ordinary bread... but for some reason this resonated with the natives of the countryside such that the British Rajh had to put down a serious revolt.
Symbols--sometimes unusual symbols--can have great power.