Back to Theology Paper where you left Can "the Word" be captured in print?
No. It can be attempted, as long as one knows that it is not the words or the book which contains them that hold the power. No representation can replace the subject of that representation, but can only serve to recall the experience of that subject. So the Bible is valuable in it's role as mediator of truth…….but it does not "contain" truth. To say it "contains" truth comes dangerously close to implying that truth exists inside its boundaries.
Divorced from context, the power of the words diminish in their role to mediate the "power" of the recalled experience. I sense a large element of non-contextual reading and understanding when I see and hear people appeal to "the Word of God" to help establish a particular position.
In the words of the Bible, we have the representation of the key events in the history of the people of Israel, and in the beginnings of the New Testament era. Paul, the church's Communication director, pioneered the efforts to "spread" the gospel, and used a variety of previously established communication methods.
The epistles represented pioneering efforts to do ministry over distance. They were "follow up" contacts, offering a secondary kind of "presence" to the new churches.
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