Let’s return to McLuhan’s concept of media as extensions of man.
He elaborated on that foundation by saying that media doesn’t simply extend a part of the human body; it changes that which it extends. The wheel is an extension of a foot but a wheel can move a heavier load farther and faster than a human foot can. Technology always changes the form, scale, or speed of that which it extends.
This change has to do with sense ratios. In any media environment, certain senses are dominant over others. In a culture whose language has no written alphabet, the sense of hearing will be dominant over the sense of sight (McLuhan says in spoken language all the senses are highly engaged). When the printing press was invented, it sparked a great change in sense ratios as sight became increasingly more dominant. McLuhan says, “the effects of technology do not occur at the level of opinions or concepts, but alter sense ratios or patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance.” New technologies rearrange our senses so they work in different ways than they did before. When different senses are extended, different environments are created that make some things impossible and create previously nonexistent possibilities for other new things. This is how new technologies create new ways of relating to the world and to each other.
McLuhan says that even different languages encourage different sense ratios: “Our own mother tongues are things in which we participate totally. They change our perception. So if we spoke Chinese we would have a different sense of hearing, smell, and touch. The same is true with printing, radio, movies, and TV. They actually alter our organs of perception without our knowing it.” This has important implications for intercultural ministry that deserve to be further explored. It also emphasizes the fact that the technologies we create are not neutral; they act on us and shape us in ways that are powerful but often unnoticeable.
This foundational understanding of sense ratios will help us understand the large-scale view of technology and the church throughout its entire history. In order to do this, we’ll add to our discussion an American by the name of Walter J. Ong (1912–2003), who was a Jesuit Catholic priest and a scholar whose work integrated diverse fields of study. His most well known work is Orality and Literacy, in which he builds on the work of linguists, anthropologists, and other scholars to bring to light the ways in which a culture’s exposure to different forms of language are definitive. In this book he the differences between cultures that are rooted in spoken language and cultures that are built on written or printed language. He argues that almost every part of modern Western culture, even the way we think, is inescapably conditioned and shaped by the technology of the written and printed word.
It’s important to note that language is a technology that acts like the other technologies we’ve discussed. There are a few distinctions between the different ways the technology of language can exist in a culture. First, a culture might have language that exists only in spoken form. This is actually the majority of all languages that have ever existed. Second, a culture might have a written language in the form of hieroglyphics, symbols, or characters. Examples of this would be Mandarin. The major distinction comes third, in cultures that have a phonetic alphabet.
There are also distinctions about how these forms of language are transmitted. There is verbal transmission, then manuscript culture, in which the language exists in written form. Both of these are still usually considered “oral” cultures because even though they might contain written language, their primary effect is still through spoken language. This is possible because written manuscripts took a lot of time and money and professional skill to accomplish. They were few and far between, and not many people knew how to read, so the cultures were still based in orality. An example of this would be the Hebrews in both the Old and New Testaments, who had written language but were still cultures strongly characterized by the spoken word. Many cultures today would still fall into this category — not just remote people groups with little access to modern technology, but in places such as modern African-American communities in the American South.
These oral cultures stand in contrast to cultures defined by the influence of written or printed language, which is referred to as “literacy.” This could be in the form of hand-written manuscripts, but mostly it refers to the domination of written language that resulted from the printing press. Most globally powerful cultures today would be considered literate cultures. Because of recent developments in electronic and digital technology, the twentieth century saw the beginning of what Ong refers to as secondary orality. Secondary orality happens when a culture previously based in literacy adapts electronic and digital technology that reintroduces parts of orality to create something that resembles both, but is in itself distinct.
The different ways languages exist and are transmitted each promote a different ratio of the senses. We saw this already in McLuhan’s analysis of the ways in which the microphone changed the Roman Catholic liturgy. In order to understand better how these changes to sense ratios affect the church, let’s look at a few more snapshots of Christianity in different technological contexts.
First, let’s look at the phonetic alphabet, which was one of the most drastic technological developments in humanity.
According to Walter Ong,
“…the shift from oral to written speech is essentially a shift from sound to visual space…”
This describes the way in which the alphabet changed sense ratios from sound domination to vision domination. McLuhan elaborates on the importance of the phonetic alphabet by saying, “…the phonetic alphabet, by a few letters only, was able to encompass all languages. Such an achievement, however, involved the separation of both signs and sounds from their semantic and dramatic meanings… The same separation of sight and sound and meaning that is peculiar to the phonetic alphabet also extends to its social and psychological effects.” There is a level of abstraction in all forms of writing or communication, but that abstraction is greatly magnified in the phonetic alphabet. In essence, the phonetic alphabet separated thought from action. It created abstraction and fragmentation in humanity in a way that hadn’t existed before. It is a separating of the physical and non-physical, and as McLuhan said, that didn’t just change language. It also changed humans socially and psychologically.
One of the main changes it enacted was in the way people thought about words. Ong writes, “Sound… exists only when it is going out of existence. I cannot have all of a word present at once: when I say ‘existence,” by the time I get to the ‘-tence,’ the ‘exist-’ is gone. The alphabet implies that matters are otherwise, that a word is a thing, not an event, that it is present all at once, and that it can be cut up into little pieces, which can even be written forwards and pronounced backwards…” So in spoken language, words are events, but in written language, words are things, objects, and commodities.
This abstraction of words from events into things affects even our theology and church practices. Perhaps the influence of written language has encouraged us to view scripture not as an event in which man meets with God but as a commodity to be consumed in order to know God. Could it be that the written scriptures are easier for us to objectify in this way? The same thing could happen in corporate worship. Instead of viewing worship as an event in which man and God meet in a special way, worship becomes a thing to be obtained. Instead of the sacraments being an event in which we receive Christ, they are things we consume in order to help us remember Christ. The common thread in this form of abstraction is the changing of experience into object.
The alphabet allowed things to happen that couldn’t have happened before. Ong says that the Greeks, in creating the first alphabet with vowels, found the ability to rise above other civilizations as far as intellectual work was concerned. He credits this as the cause of their great philosophical achievements and other accomplishments. This is important for Christians to understand because the church was, and still is, heavily influenced by this Greek culture and philosophy that was only possible through a very specific technology.
Connected but not exclusive to the effects of the phonetic alphabet are the effects of writing in general. According to Walter Ong, the major monotheistic religions such as Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam would not have existed without writing because they all have ancient sacred texts. Writing, partnered with the alphabet, enabled western scholasticism and the proliferation of philosophy and other academic disciplines. Writing allows introspection to a degree and specificity that couldn’t occur in orality. Writing encouraged a linear way of thinking that didn’t exist before and created new possibilities. Much of our western theology is built on a foundation of western philosophies and ways of determining knowledge, and almost all of it is the result of writing. For example, there would be no systematic theology without writing because systematic theology is based on western logic and linear thought. The abstraction we see in the phonetic alphabet is magnified even further by this flood of printed language.
Ong describes the tension between orality and literacy when he writes,
“Oral cultures indeed produce powerful and beautiful verbal performances of high artistic and human worth, which are no longer even possible once writing has taken possession of the psyche. Nevertheless, without writing, human consciousness cannot achieve its fuller potentials, cannot produce other beautiful and powerful creations. In this sense, orality needs to produce and is destined to produce writing. Literacy, as will be seen, is absolutely necessary for the development not only of science but also of history, philosophy, explicative understanding of literature and of any art, and indeed for the explanation of language (including oral speech) itself.”
Ong is careful to explain that orality is not the ideal that we should seek to return to, and neither is literacy something to which we should aspire.
One of the ways in which we can see the fragmentation and abstraction of language affecting our theology is in our understanding of the sacraments, which we already briefly discussed. Remember, in the phonetic alphabet we have the separation of symbol and meaning and the separation of thought and action, and in writing and printing that fragmentation is amplified. This is really just another way of expressing a separation of the medium and the message. Because our language and technologies shape us, we shouldn’t be surprised to find that it shapes our ideas of God and the sacraments.
The abstraction in language and technology shows up in communion as the abstraction of the presence of Christ in the bread and wine. It is not possible to have a memorialist view of communion without the phonetic alphabet and writing. Separating the person and work of Jesus is separating the actions and ideas in the phonetic alphabet. Only with the separation of sign and meaning, of thought and action, of the medium and the message, could we believe that Christ is not in some way truly present in communion.
When words are events, Jesus is someone in whom we participate through the event of communion; when words are things, Jesus is someone we think about during communion.
Is not this fragmentation the opposite of the incarnation? Those who say that Christ is not truly present in communion fall for the same trick as the technological idiots — that the medium is not really the message.
Another way orality and literacy studies can inform our theology is by helping us understand the significance of references to different forms of language in scripture. Throughout the Bible, we can see God consistently identifying himself with specific forms of language over others. Although God gives the Ten Commandments carved in stone and directs his people to write down the law, the main way he communicates with his people in the Old Testament is through speech. He speaks the earth into existence, he talks out loud to Moses, he speaks to and through the prophets, and he appears to Elijah in a whisper.
There aren’t many instances of, “Thus writes the LORD,” but scripture is filled with “Thus says the LORD.”
God identifies himself with spoken language when he calls Jesus the divine logos, the Word of God, in the book of John. We have accounts of what Jesus said, but as far as we know, God incarnate left us no written messages. The God we serve is not a God of writing but a God who expresses himself primarily in audible form. Christians therefore are not truly “people of the book” but rather “people of the Word.” This doesn’t mean that scripture isn’t inspired or important; however, we must realize that much scripture actually existed in verbal form before it was written down.
How does this identification with spoken language inform our theology and practices? Consider the difference between communicating with someone through a letter or through speech. When we think of God as a God of the written word, he is mediated, distant, and not truly present. But if we think of God as a God of the written word, then his communication with us cannot occur without his actual presence. When God speaks, he is present with us. We serve a God who doesn’t write us letters but who speaks to and through his children because he is present with them in the incarnate Son and in the Spirit. Our technologies either encourage or discourage us to reflect this wholeness, presence, and reality in our communication with God and with each other.
With the onset of secondary orality via electronic and digital technologies, we can expect our theology and practices to change in new ways, and it already has. This is evident in our previous example of the microphone causing Latin to be replaced by the vernacular in Roman Catholic masses. McLuhan builds on that claim when he says that Vatican II was the Roman Catholic Church’s response to the effects of television. McLuhan and Ong spoke of these changes before the advent of the Internet, social media, and smart phones, which have now redefined our sense ratios.
The onset of secondary orality is drastically changing the way in which formal theology is practiced. The authors of “The Influence of Information Technologies on Theology” claim digital technologies are changing the way theology is approached by “affecting the content for and of theology, the resources theologians work with, the communication methods linking people, and the cognitive processes with which we approach any intellectual work.”They elaborate on what this means here:
“From a sociological perspective, the categories by which we define our theological thinking and processes will begin to shift. Practice will definitely influence function. The social and ritual practice of scholarly research and interaction will move from the probative, text-driven, sequentially conceptual base of the ‘book’ to the associative, imagistic, and nonlinear information networks of the Internet. This new ‘rite’ of scholars as cyber-practitioners will allow for more fluidity of signification in theological thought and argument.”
Our digital technology creates winners and losers in the sense that it excludes some people from the theological conversation and includes others. People who have no access to digital technology or no connections with Western publishing companies or universities are often left out of the global theological conversation. Digital technology is disrupting the domination of linear thought and driving scholasticism to return to an integrative, nonlinear mode of thinking. And it brings countless other changes into existence as well. It does not matter if the church eagerly anticipates these changes or fights against them; they are here. Studying scholars like Ong will greatly benefit the church as it either accepts or rejects technologies that determine who has a voice in global theology.
Because our technological choices either include or exclude people from theological conversations, our technologies are ways in which we can build a global church culture of inclusion. While digital technology may seem like a great solution because it is so accessible to anyone with a cell phone, we must consider what kind of inclusion is enabled by such technology. Does digital technology allow for people to be included in a way in which their true presence is valued?
Understanding the ways that the abstraction in language seeps into all areas of our thoughts, beliefs, and practices is necessary in order for the church to build relationships and environments that are characterized by wholeness, presence, and reality. Through orality and literacy studies we can better understand how different people groups operate with different sense ratios, which will help us better reach them with the gospel. It will help us understand how to include all of our brothers and sisters in the life of the local and global church, and it will help us live in a reality in which we are all truly present together before God.