WHAT HAS COMMUNICATIONS TO DO WITH THEOLOGY
Theological Implications of the Information and Communication Technologies
Keywords:
Theology, Communication, JesusAbstract
It is Tertullian’s famous rhetorical question, in the second century Christian era that has prompted me to make this enquiry. Tertullian (c.160-225)1 in his book, Against the Heretics asked: “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What has academy to do with the Church?”2 This question continues to evoke a lot of interest among theologians. Tertullian is airing a major concern of the early Church as it was emerging out of Palestine into the Greco-Roman world. This question recounts the encounter of Christian theology and thinking with the predominantly philosophical Greek worldviews. The gist of the question is: “What has Greek thought and philosophy to do with Christianity and its Biblical heritage?”
References
Tertullian, The Prescription against Heretics, Ch.7. Available from www.newadvent.org/fathers/0311.htm (July 12, 2011).
Eric A. Havelock, Preface to Plato, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963; Havelock, The Muse Learns to Write. Reflections on Orality and Literacy from Antiquity to the Present, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986; M. McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, 1964; W. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologising of the Word, London: Routledge, 1982; Derrick de Kerckhove, The Skin of Culture. Investigating the new Electronic Reality, Toronto: Sommerville, 1995.
Havelock, Preface to Plato, 219.
Eric A. Havelock, The Muse Learns to Write. Reflections on Orality and Literacy from Antiquity to the Present, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986, 4-5.
