A major problem we have with how the bible is read is that it is old wine that we try to put in new wineskins over an over again that ruin the flavor. This is not necessarily a theological issue as people from competing traditions argue endlessly. It is in large part due to the media itself.
Media theorist Marshall McLuhan made a distinction between two kinds of media. Hot media require low sensory participation, but are information rich. Books are the primary example of this as are phone conversations and discussions in general. Because they are so information rich, they require more participation from the consumer of the message. When we read books we actively create images of the setting, the characters, the sound of the language, non-verbal communication, etc. Cool media are highly involving from sensory input, but require less participation from the consumer because they essentially fill in all those cognitive and epistemological gaps usually constructed with the consumer's imagination. Television (perhaps sans TiVo) is a clear examples of this.
Since the sixties, when McLuhan was theorizing, there are various other kinds of virtual reality media and various applications in computing that dovetail these two media by making high sensory input highly interactive and engaging. However, the bible seems to be caught between hot and cold and finds itself in conflict with both.
The bible, being a book, is in its nature a hot media. It requires that participation of the consumer to make sense. It requires a high level of interaction and engagement which means that the various psycho-social attributes of the consumer will also interact with the engagement of the text. Ostensibly this seems obvious enough, or at least it should.
However, in the cool media structures of any 21st Century Western culture, there is an assumption that meaning is more or less a given. Truth is a passive object in which humans do not participate in how it is constructed and so participate in how the meaning of truth is rendered. Truth is a passive object to be consumed as it is without question.
The problem with the bible is that when one renders its seat of truth as a cool medium by virtue of its status as a something with its source in divine revelation that exists outside and prior to human participation, its inherent status as one medium (hot) becomes artificially forced into a structure that it simply does not fit (cool).
The bible in its very media form is a hot media that requires consumer participation and engagement to render its meaning and so, construct its truth. Once we ignore this necessary quality of the text, we are distorting its nature and so, are distorting the truth that it renders for us, and with us. The content of the bible is no different since it is filled with symbol, narrative, and other media structures that are hot as well. Thus, truth is something constructed through a participatory engagement on many levels and we cannot conclude what that truth is apart from this participation and construction of it.
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I think it is an interesting argument making this distinction between hot and cool media in regards to our understanding of biblical texts. But it is worth pointing out that long before there was such a thing as cool media there were fundamentalists arguing that the Bible was the word of God to be received without much interactive participation.
I think it is an interesting argument making this distinction between hot and cool media in regards to our understanding of biblical texts. But it is worth pointing out that long before there was such a thing as cool media there were fundamentalists arguing that the Bible was the word of God to be received without much interactive participation.
[...] biblical "meta-hermeneutics"?: hot media, cool environments [...]