Neil Postman Swings and Misses on Biblical Exegesis and It's Relationship to Media and Cultural Influence

I haven't picked a fight with anyone lately, so in the interest of picking a fight with those who can't fight back I will pick a fight with a dead guy - Neil Postman.  But never fear, his ideas and influence are very much alive and his fans are legion so I am sure someone out there will come and give me a good smackdown.

Before the fight starts let me say that I am a big fan of my opponent in many ways, I still believe that, though I disagree with some things, his book Amusing Ourselves to Death is outstanding and worth reading, particularly his insights in how we have lost the ability to follow a lengthy, sustained argument.  That caveat aside I want to pick this fight with some words that Joe Carter (referencing Rod Dreher at Crunchy Con) quoted from Mr. Postman in his 33 Things post today.

In studying the Bible as a young man, I found intimations of the idea that forms of media favor particular kinds of content and therefore are capable of taking command of a culture. I refer specifically to the Decalogue, the Second Commandment of which prohibits the Israelites from making any concrete images of anything, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water beneath the earth.” I wondered then, as so many others have, as to why the God of these people would have included instructions on how they were to symbolize, or not symbolize, their experience. It is a strange injunction to include as part of an ethical system unless its author assumed a connection between forms of human communication and the quality of a culture. We may hazard a guess that a people who are being asked to embrace an abstract, universal deity would be rendered unfit to do so by the habit of drawing pictures or making statues or depicting their ideas in any concrete, iconographic forms. The God of the Jews was to exist in the Word and through the Word, an unprecedented conception requiring the highest order of abstract thinking. Iconography thus became blasphemy so that a new kind of God could enter a culture. People like ourselves who are in the process of converting their culture from word-centered to image-centered might profit by reflecting on this Mosaic injunction. But even if I am wrong in these conjectures, it is, I believe, a wise and particularly relevant supposition that the media of communication available to a culture are a dominant influence on the formation of the culture’s intellectual and social preoccupations.

I contend that Postman strikes out on this from an exegetical standpoint.  That he strikes out in this argument does not nullify his overall argument, that forms of media influence cultural development, but I think it does show he doesn't connect all the right dots, or he doesn't connect the dots rightly.  I agree with his last statment:

But even if I am wrong in these conjectures, it is, I believe, a wise and particularly relevant supposition that the media of communication available to a culture are a dominant influence on the formation of the culture’s intellectual and social preoccupations.

I think he is wrong in his conjectures but a case can still be made for the influence of communication media on a culture.  Here is where I believe his conjectures are wrong.

Strike One - Postman misunderstands the nature of God as "an abstract, universal deity."

Strike Two - Postman misunderstands how God was to exist among the Jewish people - "in and through the word."

Strike Three - Postman misunderstands the nature and purpose of iconography.

I'll argue those three contentions after the jump. 

 

Remember that I am first and foremost arguing against Postman's exegesis and theology.  To do so will require a closer examination of the text.

Strike One - Postman misunderstands the nature of God as "an abstract, universal deity."

First of all, Postman gets it right that God is a universal deity - He is the God of all, He is no mere tribal deity.

But secondly it falls on two accounts.  It falls firstly because God does not represent Himself to His people as an abstraction.  It falls secondly because He does not represent Himself to the rest of creation as an abstraction.

It may be helpful to define "abstract" and "abstraction:" a bit.  If you go to Google and enter "define: abstract" here is what you'll get from the Princeton wordnet.

• consider a concept without thinking of a specific example; consider abstractly or theoretically 
• pilfer: make off with belongings of others 
• existing only in the mind; separated from embodiment; "abstract words like `truth' and `justice'" 
• abstraction: a concept or idea not associated with any specific instance; "he loved her only in the abstract--not in person" 
• consider apart from a particular case or instance; "Let's abstract away from this particular example" 
• not representing or imitating external reality or the objects of nature; "a large abstract painting" 
• outline: a sketchy summary of the main points of an argument or theory 
• give an abstract (of) 
• dealing with a subject in the abstract without practical purpose or intention; "abstract reasoning"; "abstract science"

I do understand that "abstraction" has many technical nuances (which you can read about here and here in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), but my guess is that Postman had the ideas of non-specificity and and non-embodiment in mind.  I could be wrong though.  But if I am close to being right about this, then Postman is wrong.  He bases his argument on the second commandment, which is based on the preamble to the Ten Commandments, found in Exodus 20:2:

^20:2 “I, the Lord, am your God, who brought you from the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery. 

Biblical Studies Press. (2006; 2006). The NET Bible First Edition; Bible. English. NET Bible.; The NET Bible (Ex 20:2). Biblical Studies Press.

God defines Himself in concrete terms, in terms of concrete identification and concrete actions.  God is not "a" God, nor is he "the God" of other nations.  He is "the" God of "a" specific people - the people of Israel.  And He is further concretized by identifying with a specific action - the Exodus. 

But having said that, maybe I just contradicted myself above and in fact defined God as a tribal God.  No, God is the God of all creation and even over nations who cannot name Him as their God.  The fact that He identifies Himself to Israel as "your God" shows that He has a covenantal relationship to them which is unlike His relationship with other nations.  Yet, He still has a (concrete) relationship with other nations.  He rules them (2 Chronicles 20:6, Psalm 47:8),  terrifies them (Psalm 14:5), and warns them (Jonah), among other things.

In short God is the covenant God of Israel and the judge of all the nations.  And while "covenant" and "judgment" may be abstractions or ideas, the God who keeps covenant is a specificity, a concrete entity, and the one who pronounces judgment does so in a concrete fashion.

Strike Two - Postman misunderstands how God was to exist among the Jewish people - "in and through the word."

Postman says:

The God of the Jews was to exist in the Word and through the Word, an unprecedented conception requiring the highest order of abstract thinking.

Let me go on record as saying that I have the highest regard for the Word of God, I am an unapologetic inerrantist, I believe that God exalts His word above His name, and I believe that God mediates His presence to us through the Word.  Yet, I have to go back to the context which Postman is drawing from to say that his idea of how God dwells among his people is insufficient.  That He dwells with His people is a given.  And if Postman wants to say that "through the word" is one way he dwells with them I am on board.  But in the context we need to see how God dwells with His people.

After the giving of the Ten Commandments God gives further instructions on the application of the Ten Commandments to specific situations then in Exodus 25 we see the instructions for the Tabernacle.  Exodus 25:8 is especially important for this discussion:

Let them make for me a sanctuary,¹⁶ so that I may live among them. 

^{16 16} tn The word here is מִקְדּשׁ (miqdash), “a sanctuary” or “holy place”; cf. NLT “sacred residence.” The purpose of building it is to enable Yahweh to reside (×•Ö°×©×Ö¸×›Ö·× Ö°×ªÖ¼Ö´×™, véshakhanti) in their midst. U. Cassuto reminds the reader that God did not need a place to dwell, but the Israelites needed a dwelling place for him, so that they would look to it and be reminded that he was in their midst (Exodus, 327). 

Biblical Studies Press. (2006; 2006). The NET Bible First Edition; Bible. English. NET Bible.; The NET Bible (Ex 25:8). Biblical Studies Press.

I left the NET Bible note for you in the above quote because it is instructive. God is everywhere, He does not need man to make Him a place to dwell, but man is forgetful and needs reminders that God dwells with His people. In other words, in His graciousness and condescension God will mediate His presence to man as a reminder to man.  Postman says that God mediated His presence through the Word, the Word says that God mediated His presence through the tabernacle.

There is still a powerful argument for the primacy of the Word, even here.  It is by the Word of God that the tabernacle is built, so we can say that the Word is foundational even here.  Still, for the Israelite everyman, God's existence was mediated through the Tabernacle, and by extension, through the priesthood and the ceremonies that were performed therein.

This does not denigrate the importance of the Word at all.  Also, I am not yet taking into account the epochal changes between then and now.  This mediation via tabernacle was to give way to the temple which was to give way to the incarnate Christ, which has given way to church (the body of Christ, the temple of the Holy Spirit), which will be consummated in a New Heavens and a New Earth when the body of Christ dwells forever in the literal, physical presence of Christ. What was mediated in the tabernacle is now mediated to us in the Word (and the sacraments), and so there is a roundabout way in which Postman's case for the supremacy of the Word can be made for today's audience.

But again, I am critiquing his exegesis and theology of how the God of the Jews existed among the Jews. But this will still have some bearing on Postman's overall point, which will be seen as I look at strike three.

Strike Three - Postman misunderstands the nature and purpose of iconography. 

Here I want to say that Postman is basically correct, but his error comes in that he overstates his case and fails to nuance it properly.  He says: 

Iconography thus became blasphemy so that a new kind of God could enter a culture.

It is not true that iconography became blasphemy.  It is the worship of icons that became blasphemy.  Postman quotes the first part of the second commandment in Exodus 20:4:

“You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water below."

And leaves out the second part in verse 5:

You shall not bow down to them or serve them

I contend that the two sentences must be taken together to constitute blasphemy.  The blasphemy occurs when the images are worshipped, not constructed.  I say this in view of the construction of the tabernacle. As you look through the instructions for the construction of the tabernacle in Exodus 25ff you see several places where images or icons are to be a part of the tabernacle.  Specifically, you will find images of cherubim, almond flowers and pomegranates.  For this topic the image of the cherubim is important and I'll show this with Exodus 25:18 and the NET Bible explanatory note for "cherubim."

^25:18 You are to make two cherubim³⁰ of gold; 

^{30 30} tn The evidence suggests that the cherubim were composite angelic creatures that always indicated the nearness of God. So here images of them were to be crafted and put on each end of the ark of the covenant to signify that they were there. Ezekiel 1 describes four cherubim as each having human faces, four wings, and parts of different animals for their bodies. Traditions of them appear in the other cultures as well. They serve to guard the holy places and to bear the throne of God. Here they were to be beaten out as part of the lid.

The cherubim itself is a composite image (icon) made up of the images of man and aniimals. And it is important to note that it is between these two icons, the cherubim, where God will meet His people: 

^25:22I will meet with you there, and from above the atonement lid, from between the two cherubim that are over the ark of the testimony, I will speak with you about all that I will command you for the Israelites.

And, if you look at the construction of the temple in I Kings 5ff and II Chronicles 2ff you see more imagery of cherubs, bulls, pomegranates, palm trees, flowers in bloom. 

I bring all of this up to say that icongraphy had a place in the worship of the God of the Jews, but icons were not to be worshipped.  We can understand this in terms of the sign and the thing signified.  God is "signified" in all of this and our worship is to be directed toward Him and Him alone.  Idolatry, or blasphemy, occurs when we worship the sign. Thus it is not icongraphy per se which is blasphemous, it is the worship of the icons. 

It seems to me that it would be better to see Postman arguing for a writing based culture, not a word based culture. In all that I said above I don't mean to say that the Jewish culture was an image/icon based culture.  It was a word based culture, but it was an oral culture.  Cultural values were mainly transferred through the spoken word, not the image or writing.  Thus, the dominant media form of the Jewish culture was neither written nor image, but oral.  And I contend that Postman's appeal to the Jewish culture cannot sustain his view that a writing based culture is superior to an image based culture.   

God certainly deals in abstractions, He is a universal God and He forbids the worshipping of images, but He presents Himself to us as the "concrete" God with a special and "concrete" relationship to a particular people which He evidenced in specific and "concrete" acts of history, and He does authorize a proper use of images in worship and culture. 

Which brings us back to Postman's closing statement -  I think he is wrong in his conjectures, but he may be right in saying "I believe, a wise and particularly relevant supposition that the media of communication available to a culture are a dominant influence on the formation of the culture’s intellectual and social preoccupations." Instinct tells me he may be right, but I also want to ask the chicken and egg question.  Is the media available the dominant influence on the formation of a culture's intellectual and social preoccupations or are a culture's intellectual and social preoccupations the dominant influence on the media they use? 

And how do we prove the superiority of one over the other.  The kind of writing based culture Postman favors has only been available for the last 400-500 years so what of cultures before then.  What about the cultural achievements of ancient cultures like the Incas, Egyptians, Greeks and Romans.  True, writing was available to some of them, but it seems to me that even in those instances it was available only to elites, and I wonder if the literacy of these elites can account for the cultural achievements of their societies.  Maybe they can. 

Even with the Christian faith, in the first century, the activation of our faith was credited to hearing the spoken word, not reading the written word (Romans 10:17) and the gospel has advanced greatly in the absence of widespread Biblical literacy (think the early church and the Chinese church under communism). 

So I write all of this because I think the time has come to challenge Postman.  I still love to read him and consider him one of our wisest and most provocative thinkers, but I think his ideas have been accepted uncritically by conservatives and Christians.  For one, he hinted that we were coming to a time where an increasingly image based culture would mean the end of reading.  I have wondered about this for some time now.  When I was a kid I never read a book, I had learned to read but never read anything besides box scores until I was in college.  I can remember rinky-dink bookstores in the mall that no one ever went to and can't remember my parents buying books.  Now we are in an age when many of Postman's predictions have come true - we are more saturated with images than ever.  At the same time, some of the most booming businesses in the world are bookstores.  I know my children have read wider and deeper than I did until I got into my mid-twenties. And contrary to Steve Jobs and literary-apocalypticists, reading is up.  My point is (and I could be wrong and am more than willing to be corrected) that many of us relied on Postman's assessment and things aren't all working out quite as badly as he foresaw. 

And my final point is that, when you want to make cultural commentary based on the Bible, make sure you do good exegesis and good theology.

Technorati tags: theology, religion, Christian, Christianity, society, culture, cultural analysis, image, images, writing, philosophy, Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, books

Comments

[Terry]

You should write longer posts. You should also get a new photo.

[Benjamin Redelings]

Thanks for this long and sustained argument :-)

CAVEAT: I have only read one of his books, but I also like some of the stuff that Postman has said, and I think his questions about how our different media may have shifted our values more towards the sensational are great questions.

1. Might this sentence apply more generally to Postman's method?

"Here I want to say that Postman is basically correct, but his error comes in that he overstates his case and fails to nuance it properly."

2. Might this "overstatement" actually be a serious problem in that it makes it difficult to ever recognize error?

I think you've done a great job showing that by failing to really engage the text that he is reading, he uses the words of Exodus, but reads his OWN meanings into it instead of really considering the concepts that are found in the text. So Postman may be speaking the "word of Postman" while directly quoting the "word of God"?

For example, the concept of "word", and the reason for the importance of images, are imposed by Postman on the text, instead of being heard by Postman from the text. Thus Postman is using the text as a mirror in which to view himself, while CLAIMING to be viewing something, like a painting, that is independent confirmation - that is outside himself.

3. This is actually somewhat difficult to avoid - it is much easier to impose our own personal theology on the text (e.g. the universal, abstract, God) than to handle the complexities that the text contains.

4. And yet the most interesting subjects (how has Christ chosen to mediate himself?) are raised once one allows the seemingly rough edges of the text to conflict with our nice, smooth, theology.

And yet, I guess this deeper analysis in some sense follows from Postman's own encouragement for long and sustained argument :-P

-BenRI

P.S. Perhaps I am exaggerating to make a point, just like Postman. To complete the irony, I suppose I could blame it on the limited space of the box I am typing this comment in :-) But I hope that there is a difference, in that there exists a longer, more rigorous form of the claim that I've made in shorter, exaggerated form here.

[Read Cowern]

Will you please elaborate on the sentence in this post which contains your statement, "...God exalts His word above His name"?

I am puzzled about which Scripture you reference for this statement.

Much love,

[Ron Ray]

I believe you must know that you really aren't arguing on the same(contextual/epistemological) page with the rational exegesis of Mr. Postman. At least you try hard to give him his due as you see it.

Perhaps it's just the lure of page hits for your blog that you allow to take precedence over respecting exegetical lines of demarcation, and knowing and respecting which side of the line each chooses to take a stand.

regards.

[David Wayne]

Ron - I have no problem acknowledging I may have missed something here and am not in Postman's league - however, I and my readers would be much more helped if you could delineate where I have missed the mark rather than just offering a few ad hominem attacks.

[Ted Bond]

Hello David-

I just stumbled upon your blog because I was looking for this Postman quote, so I apologize if I am speaking out of context, but I couldn't resist. You'll probably hate what I am going to say.

You are too concerned with the getting the correct reading of scripture. Postman was reading scripture, not as an exegete, or a theologian, but just as a "young man" and he observed something that led him to a higher view of the God of Israel. Maybe his perception was not theologically correct, or anything close to how the scripture would have been understood by those who originally received it, but that's ok. The fact that these words, which were written in a completely foreign context to our own, can still inspire a young man today (or 50 years ago), is evidence that it truly is scripture. If, however, we view scripture as being static and having only one correct interpretation, we remove its ability to inspire anyone who does not have the right exegetical/theological perspective.

To do so is to break the very commandment we are discussing. Among other implications of the 2nd commandment is that God is not Static or under our control in any way. Unlike an idol which can be set in a place of worship and attended to or ignored as we please. The God of the Bible does not stay where we put Him, He does not do what we expect, and He is not necessarily the same to one person as He is to another. If, however, we take scripture as static in its meaning, we have tried to make God stay where we want him.

Postman simply observes that God had put a restriction on the mediums he considers worthy of his representation. Why would God do this? The commandment does not say, it only says that God is jealous. Postman is free to postulate as to God's motivations, and we are free to see God differently. I know its very post modern, but it is important that we don't trample on peoples observations, especially if we want to be genuine teachers and not just theologians and exegetes.

Final point. Consider Genesis 18. In the second part of the chapter Abraham bargains with God for the protection of Sodom and Gomorrah. Ultimately, Abraham is wrong and God destroys the cities, but God is exceedingly patient with Abraham's requests, and Abraham is exceptionally audacious in his approach. When I read this story, I see a God who loves to be explored, and is willing to patient even when we are wrong in our suppositions. For God, the issue is not whether we have the correct understanding of scripture, its about relationship, bottom line.

-Ted Bond