Which theologians would have been successful bloggers? Or, which theologians do you reckon would have had blogs if they had been available at the time?
Luther - the pamphleteer and controversialist in Luther would have been attracted to the medium of blogging. He was a master disseminator of his own ideas using the printing press. His colourful language would have got him a seat in Australian parliaments. And he was quick on his feet. Perhaps verbosity would have got in his way.
Newman - A controversialist too, but with an acid tongue and an piercing application of sarcasm when needed. Aren't the 'Tracts for the Times' really just blog entries?
Augustine - a more ponderous thinker and not equipped for the brevity necessary for good blogging perhaps: but quite the controversialist and up for a good argument. You certainly wouldn't have wanted Augustine lobbing comments on your blog!
Tertullian - a master of Latin style, an orator and a lawyer. Great with the extended metaphor, and the wry observation. A little mad - it helps!
Broughton Knox - our local Aussie theologian never wrote much, but had a flair for the compact observation, the scribbled down note, the timely saying. Also a noted controversialist in the vein of a Luther. His piece on nude sunbathing in (I think) the Selected Works Vol 1 is a blog entry pure and simple!
Any others?
9 comments:
Athanasius - a blog would have been a great way for him to lob insults at his enemies whilst in exile and keep Nicene orthodoxy on the theological agenda of his readers.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon: a blog to my students.
Going a little further afield, Nietzsche practically invented the blog. Apart from two or three more extended essays (which are themselves fragmentary and could have been loose series), he only wrote blog posts.
Jonathan Edwards would have been a great theology blogger. His Miscellanies were the blogs of his day. In Miscellany 262, he virtually invented blogging. He said that in the future,
"better contrivances for assisting one another through the whole earth by more expedite, easy, and safe communication between distant regions than now. The invention of the mariner’s compass is a thing discovered by God to the world to that end. And how exceedingly has that one thing enlarged and facilitated communication. And who can doubt but that yet God will make it more perfect, so that there need not be such a tedious voyage in order to hear from the other hemisphere? And so the country about the poles need no longer be hid to us, but the whole earth may be as one community, one body in Christ".
No, Byron - surely it was Pascal who invented the blog!
#321. Children are astonished to see their comrades respected.
#883. The wretches who have obliged me to speak on the basis of religion.
to be honest - I don't think theologians can make good blogs, can anyone name a current big player who blogs well?
What an astonishing opinion!
There are of course many successful theology blogs. Some are by people who have published a considerable amount in print - LeRon Schults, Paul Helm, Scot McKnight, Ben Witherington III. Just to name a few.
John the Evangelist!!!
How could you forget him!
Philosophical collections of teaching on specific topics, at times a bit abstract, even obscuring his identity in his own work! He would totally have been a blogger!
I wish I'd said that first John Dekker! You are of course right. Pascal's Thoughts is distilled from a lifetime of blogging.
So I'll have to nominate another who would have blogged incessantly, John Dunmore Lang, the fiery 19th century Presbyterian minister and statesman. He often 'blogged' about his rivals in the newspapers of the day (and was thrown in gaol for libel for his trouble).
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