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TheoMedia: The Media of God and the Digital Age
The church is unsure of itself in the twenty-first century's media culture. Some Christians denounce digital media while others embrace the latest gadgets and apps as soon as they appear. Many of us are stumbling along amidst the tweets, status updates, podcasts, and blog posts, wondering if we have ventured into a realm beyond the scope of biblical wisdom. Though there is such a thing as "new media" Andrew Byers reminds us that the actual concept of media is ancient, theological, and even biblical. In fact, there is such a thing as the media of God. "TheoMedia" are means by which God communicates and reveals himself--creation, divine speech, inspired writings, the visual symbol of the cross, and more. Christians are actually called to media saturation. But the media that are to most prominently saturate our lives are the media of God. If God creates and uses media, then Scripture provides a theological logic by which we can create and use media in the digital age. This book is not an unqualified endorsement of the latest media products or a tirade against media technology. Instead, Byers calls us to rethink our understanding of media in terms of the media of God in the biblical story of redemption.
- GenresReligionChristianity
252 pages, Paperback
First published July 22, 2013
3 people are currently reading
30 people want to read
About the author
Andrew Byers
10 books4 followersAndy Byers is Free Church Tutor and Teaching Fellow at Cranmer Hall, Durham University, and Chaplain to St Mary's College, Durham University.
Andy holds degrees from Duke University (Th.M.), Beeson Divinity School (M.Div.), and recently completed his PhD in the Department of Theology at Durham. His thesis, “Johannine Theosis: The Fourth Gospel’s Narrative Ecclesiology of Participation and Deification,” explores the vision of Christian community in John’s Gospel. Alongside his academic work, Andy has spent twelve years in pastoral ministry.
He and his wife, Miranda, enjoy daily adventures with their four small children.
Andy holds degrees from Duke University (Th.M.), Beeson Divinity School (M.Div.), and recently completed his PhD in the Department of Theology at Durham. His thesis, “Johannine Theosis: The Fourth Gospel’s Narrative Ecclesiology of Participation and Deification,” explores the vision of Christian community in John’s Gospel. Alongside his academic work, Andy has spent twelve years in pastoral ministry.
He and his wife, Miranda, enjoy daily adventures with their four small children.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 15, 2014
TheoMedia is a refreshing theological take on how Christians should approach the world of digital media. So many books on Christianity and social media are shallow theologically or just practical guides on how to set up facebook pages for churches and suchlike – TheoMedia is important as a publication in this field because, as Andy writes:
“we cannot just plod haphazardly into the digital age with the hope that the historians will one day figure out what the church did well and not so well when new media dawned on the scene.” (p.18)
Andy takes on the difficult task of understanding what is happening theologically to us in our media saturated world and of offering a potential guide as to how we navigate this new world sensitively and biblically. This means that the book is by no means an easy read – it is challenging intellectually but stimulating and Andy has a particularly good way with words making the book eminently quotable!
The main argument of the book is that God reveals himself through media – literally from the word ‘go’ – and that, in the ancient Hebrew prayer of the Shema from Deuteronomy, championed by Jesus as the most important command, we are called to be saturated in the media of God – what Andy terms TheoMedia. This, argues Andy, is the way in which we can interpret all other media that we are bombarded with by the minute online – by ensuring that we are saturated in the media of God.
As the book progresses, Andy works through salvation history as we see it worked through the Bible – beginning at Genesis and ending in Revelation and providing a commentary on the media of God in action through scripture. On occasion these chapters tip over into reading like sermons – but Andy is a pastor and preacher so this is to be expected – and it’s always compelling.
Byers is at his best when discussing the Incarnation and its application to the digital world – I found this section of the book thrilling and inspiring:
“The Incarnation is about God reaching to the furthest extent possible by the most unsuspecting means to establish and sustain relationships. This surely means that the church should infiltrate the sphere of the Internet.” (p. 170)
Then, of course, Byers discusses that we ourselves are made in the image of God:
“If we ourselves are TheoMedia, means by which God communicates and reveals himself through his Spirit, then our blog posts, status updates, tweets, artistic images, and online comments should be products of a life transformed by Christ and indwelled by his Spirit. As restored image bearers, our online presence and activity should image the Triune God.” (p.196)
No theological stone is left unturned in this book. As I was reading I occasionally started to say ‘yes, but…’ and then Byers covered the objection I had to the point he’d been making! The fact that the book both covers huge theological themes such as Christology and gives a focused look at the biblical record of ‘TheoMedia’ amazes me – the book is ambitious in scope and actually achieves its goal in just 200 pages.
At intervals the book has sections called ‘TheoMedia notes’ – these are like blog posts on particular themes related to the chapters. These can be read as standalone pieces, sort of mini-essays, and because of this I found the structure of the book a little confusing at times. Having said this, I found it very refreshing that Andy acknowledges the messiness of understanding our lives rather than trying to tidy everything up with an overarching theory:
“Media are messy. The Corinthian Christians were hard-pressed in the first century to find any meat that had not been sacrificed to some idol…Negotiating new media in a media saturated culture is just one of our most recent messy tasks in a long line of others.” (p.38)
This is probably the best book I have read yet on digital media and Christian faith and I commend it to you. It both lays out a theological framework for understanding new media and provides a challenge to each of us to be equipped and saturated by the media of God: TheoMedia. I will end this review with Andy’s own final words in the book:
“nothing would be more irrelevant to the world than a relevant church that is competent with digital media but inept with the media of God.” (p.232)
Now where did I put my bible?
“we cannot just plod haphazardly into the digital age with the hope that the historians will one day figure out what the church did well and not so well when new media dawned on the scene.” (p.18)
Andy takes on the difficult task of understanding what is happening theologically to us in our media saturated world and of offering a potential guide as to how we navigate this new world sensitively and biblically. This means that the book is by no means an easy read – it is challenging intellectually but stimulating and Andy has a particularly good way with words making the book eminently quotable!
The main argument of the book is that God reveals himself through media – literally from the word ‘go’ – and that, in the ancient Hebrew prayer of the Shema from Deuteronomy, championed by Jesus as the most important command, we are called to be saturated in the media of God – what Andy terms TheoMedia. This, argues Andy, is the way in which we can interpret all other media that we are bombarded with by the minute online – by ensuring that we are saturated in the media of God.
As the book progresses, Andy works through salvation history as we see it worked through the Bible – beginning at Genesis and ending in Revelation and providing a commentary on the media of God in action through scripture. On occasion these chapters tip over into reading like sermons – but Andy is a pastor and preacher so this is to be expected – and it’s always compelling.
Byers is at his best when discussing the Incarnation and its application to the digital world – I found this section of the book thrilling and inspiring:
“The Incarnation is about God reaching to the furthest extent possible by the most unsuspecting means to establish and sustain relationships. This surely means that the church should infiltrate the sphere of the Internet.” (p. 170)
Then, of course, Byers discusses that we ourselves are made in the image of God:
“If we ourselves are TheoMedia, means by which God communicates and reveals himself through his Spirit, then our blog posts, status updates, tweets, artistic images, and online comments should be products of a life transformed by Christ and indwelled by his Spirit. As restored image bearers, our online presence and activity should image the Triune God.” (p.196)
No theological stone is left unturned in this book. As I was reading I occasionally started to say ‘yes, but…’ and then Byers covered the objection I had to the point he’d been making! The fact that the book both covers huge theological themes such as Christology and gives a focused look at the biblical record of ‘TheoMedia’ amazes me – the book is ambitious in scope and actually achieves its goal in just 200 pages.
At intervals the book has sections called ‘TheoMedia notes’ – these are like blog posts on particular themes related to the chapters. These can be read as standalone pieces, sort of mini-essays, and because of this I found the structure of the book a little confusing at times. Having said this, I found it very refreshing that Andy acknowledges the messiness of understanding our lives rather than trying to tidy everything up with an overarching theory:
“Media are messy. The Corinthian Christians were hard-pressed in the first century to find any meat that had not been sacrificed to some idol…Negotiating new media in a media saturated culture is just one of our most recent messy tasks in a long line of others.” (p.38)
This is probably the best book I have read yet on digital media and Christian faith and I commend it to you. It both lays out a theological framework for understanding new media and provides a challenge to each of us to be equipped and saturated by the media of God: TheoMedia. I will end this review with Andy’s own final words in the book:
“nothing would be more irrelevant to the world than a relevant church that is competent with digital media but inept with the media of God.” (p.232)
Now where did I put my bible?
April 12, 2017
I've just noticed that of the five books I've given five stars so far this year, three of them are by people I know personally. Evidently people I know write the best books. As a peculiar corollary of this, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I was mentioned in the acknowledgements , albeit indirectly (indulge me for a moment):
I was one of those students, although, i confess, I offered nothing in return, and can't even remember any of the content.
This is probably because I was, at the time, at the wrong stage of my intellectual development. Now, however, this book was extremely timely for me. Iv'e been thinking a lot recently about the philosophy and theory of information and communication. One aspect of this that I had neglected was that of the medium. Whenever information is transmitted, there is always a medium through which it travels. We tend to think of 'the media' as something modern, but one of the points Byers is so emphatically keen to make is that 'media' have always been around, and the only thing different about today is that we have a whole plethora of forms of medium which are quite new. While there are a correspondingly large number of books aimed at helping Christians to engage with new media ethically and constructively, there has been little attempt to root this in a historic and scriptural understanding of faith. There is an implicit feeling that our pre-modern texts and institutions have nothing to say - because nothing could have been said - about the media intrinsic to modernity.
It is this assumption which Byers sets out to challenge, and refutes resoundingly. The ideas and language of media permeate the Bible from the beginning to the end. 'In the beginning', says John's gospel, 'was the word.' God's act of creation is an act of speaking, and the words he speaks are the media for his creation. God creates man in the world as his image, and to be an image is to be his medium. But then, it all goes wrong; and it goes wrong because of the serpent, and the first thing the serpent does is pervert God's commandment - he intervenes himself as a medium and muddles the unambiguous words. One of the first effects is that Adam and Eve's nakedness - their perfect shared information - is covered up.
And so on, and so on. Byers takes the reader on a journey through the whole length of the biblical vision of God's creation, showing at every turn how media shape it, carry it, and define it. (No spoilers, but he dwells on the shema, the prophets, the crucifixion and resurrection). He does all this with compelling clarity and an engaging passion.
The final question is, how should this affect Christian attitudes to new media, from the radio to Twitter? Byers has a fair amount of good, practical advice, as well as plenty of amusing anecdotes about his children. The underlying principles, no matter what the medium, are always the same. Media are only as bad as the people on either side.
The students attending the 2012 "House Party" event sponsored by Kings Church Durham sat through my... sermon series on TheoMedia... [they] offered lively interaction and posed helpful questions.
I was one of those students, although, i confess, I offered nothing in return, and can't even remember any of the content.
This is probably because I was, at the time, at the wrong stage of my intellectual development. Now, however, this book was extremely timely for me. Iv'e been thinking a lot recently about the philosophy and theory of information and communication. One aspect of this that I had neglected was that of the medium. Whenever information is transmitted, there is always a medium through which it travels. We tend to think of 'the media' as something modern, but one of the points Byers is so emphatically keen to make is that 'media' have always been around, and the only thing different about today is that we have a whole plethora of forms of medium which are quite new. While there are a correspondingly large number of books aimed at helping Christians to engage with new media ethically and constructively, there has been little attempt to root this in a historic and scriptural understanding of faith. There is an implicit feeling that our pre-modern texts and institutions have nothing to say - because nothing could have been said - about the media intrinsic to modernity.
It is this assumption which Byers sets out to challenge, and refutes resoundingly. The ideas and language of media permeate the Bible from the beginning to the end. 'In the beginning', says John's gospel, 'was the word.' God's act of creation is an act of speaking, and the words he speaks are the media for his creation. God creates man in the world as his image, and to be an image is to be his medium. But then, it all goes wrong; and it goes wrong because of the serpent, and the first thing the serpent does is pervert God's commandment - he intervenes himself as a medium and muddles the unambiguous words. One of the first effects is that Adam and Eve's nakedness - their perfect shared information - is covered up.
And so on, and so on. Byers takes the reader on a journey through the whole length of the biblical vision of God's creation, showing at every turn how media shape it, carry it, and define it. (No spoilers, but he dwells on the shema, the prophets, the crucifixion and resurrection). He does all this with compelling clarity and an engaging passion.
The final question is, how should this affect Christian attitudes to new media, from the radio to Twitter? Byers has a fair amount of good, practical advice, as well as plenty of amusing anecdotes about his children. The underlying principles, no matter what the medium, are always the same. Media are only as bad as the people on either side.
May 31, 2015
Never have I read a theology book with such beautiful, poetic prose. Valuable insights and a fresh perspective on how God uses various forms of media, aka TheoMedia, to communicate with us. More conceptual than practical, but provides a solid foundation upon which to build and formulate methods of engaging with contemporary media issues.
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