Guttenberg Changed Everything

          It matters because technology changes what we think about and how we read scripture. When Guttenberg invented the printing press, the first thing he printed was Bibles. For the first 1500 years of Christianity before that, most Christians didn’t read, so they didn’t read the Bible. And most people didn’t have Bibles (or any other books) because they were too expensive. In the first century, Christians gathered together in congregations to hear and search through scripture together (Acts 17:11). In the middle ages, Christians were taught biblical truth by priests. But the Catholic church did not see the Bible by itself as the Authority for God’s truth but the Bible plus the Church (i.e. the priests who gathered in councils to decide—and explain in creeds—how to correctly interpret biblical truth). The printing press changed all that..

            As Bibles became easier to produce, they became more numerous and less expensive. More people learned to read and more began reading the Bible on their own. Equally important, when converted from hand written letters to a type-script, the very words of scripture became somehow more real to us, more “solid,” more Authoritative. And for many that Authority shifted, then, from the Church to scripture itself. I’m saying here that the very form which the Bible took, along with the ability to mass produce it, changed the way Christians thought about the Bible.

            The first result of this change was the Protestant Reformation, when some theologians questioned the traditions and interpretations being taught by Catholicism. The second result was Church disunity in the rise of Christian denominations. While the Reformation forced Catholicism to look at itself and make changes within, most reforming took place through groups of people starting their own churches. I believe the Church as a whole benefited from these reforms, recovering much biblical truth that was ignored. And, at least in part, we have the printing press to thank for it.

Some Negative Results

            If denominational splitting had eventually ended, there might be little negative criticism to make, but that such splits continued for hundreds of years and happen today suggests that the printing press had one major negative effect on our view of scripture.

            When non-Catholic Christians decided that the Bible was the Authority for knowing God’s truth, we actually placed that Authority in the hands of individual people. We ignored an important question: “If the Bible is our source for truth, how do we know we are reading it correctly?” While we worked hard at creating methods of interpretation that seemed sound to us, we continued to fight over the meaning of the Bible, creating many more splits and denominations. We made two mistakes. First, instead of making God our source for truth, we made it a book (even if it was His book), allowing us to leave God out of the equation. In other words we said, “The Bible is God’s Word; we can read the Bible; we can therefore be certain that we know God’s Word.” But how did we know we were reading it correctly? Secondly we arrogantly assumed that we could figure out what the Bible means on our own. We forgot the first century practice of reading scripture together.

            I remember being taught the importance of learning how to read scripture on my own and of spending devotional time in the “Word” (and, of course, only the printing press made this possible). However, while I think individual Bible study important, I still remember the day I was smacked in the face with its potential problem. It happened when I ran across Proverbs 1:5b,6a which says that “…a man of understanding will acquire wise counsel, / To understand a proverb and a figure…” (New American Standard). The Bible itself teaches us the importance of corporate Bible study.

            I believe many churches are entering a time of realizing that the Word of God is not limited to scripture but that we learn from Christ who is the Word incarnate, the Holy Spirit who is the Word within us, scripture which is the Word spoken in the past to be “living and active” in the present, wise Christians in their writings and teachings, our friends/fellow believers in our local church bodies, prayer and the pursuit of a personal relationship with God (the source of all Truth), and even from the experiences and thinking abilities God has given us in life. But this is not my primary point. My primary point is to say that technology has affected the way we view scripture—with both positive and negative results.

            And with that point made I can turn to what is now the more pressing question: what is technology doing to our view of scripture now? How does putting the Bible on a computer (or even in movies) affect the way we use it and see it? That will be the topic for next month’s article.