Why Blog? Further Reflections

Way back in January, when I launched Storied Theology, I posted a few thoughts on why I got back into blogging. Having been in the saddle now for eight months or so, I have a few more reflections. I think it’s good for our theological debates and it’s a wonderful source of continuing theological education.

Ben Myers recently published an article in which he processes some of the dynamics of blogging as theology. I commend it to you.

My own experience with this world of biblioblogging is that it has been a great way to more quickly become part of the biblical studies community, especially with other young New Testament PhDs. When I go to our annual conferences, I know dozens of late-20s to mid-30s scholars and/or scholars in training. I have gotten to know some of their work, and am able to have conversations about theological and biblical topics both online and offline due to the relationships that this medium has helped create.

The positive relational angle also manifests in the debates themselves. I take my recent exchange with Dan Wallace to be a case in point. I’ve never met Dan, he just popped up in my comments a couple days ago. We’re in the process of hashing out some differences over Jesus, the Law, and the nature of biblical authority. This is a low-key, non-polemical context. In the online world I don’t feel so much ownership of my position that I couldn’t change based on the discussion. It’s not peer review and doesn’t need to be.

The blogsphere is broadening how I develop relationships with biblical studies colleagues whose feedback and challenge makes my own thinking better.

And this bleeds into the second set of points. The blog is great for Continuing Theological Education (CTE). And I mean this in two directions.

One is what I’ve just alluded to: it’s good for my own CTE. People challenge my thoughts and my thoughts become more articulate, or my positions change, or I learn about a resource I was previously unaware of. This also happens in the process of writing itself, of course. But as often as not the place I learn or have my perspective shifted is in the push-back or extensions of the thought that happen as you, the reader, jump in on the comments.

But one way that I have been more excited about the CTE angle recently has been from the presence of former students on the blog. One challenge we biblical scholars face is that everyone comes into our class knowing how to read the Bible and what it says, and we engage in this lengthy process of trying to reframe thinking, to give new theological constructs, to transform our students’ imaginations.

And, believe it or not, even with a superb teacher such as myself, sometimes this takes longer than one 10-week quarter.

One exciting thing I’ve seen on the blog over the past 8 months is students continuing to come around, to wrestle with some of the big-picture ideas and how they work out in he details. The blog becomes an on-going post-classroom experience in which I can keep the educational conversation going–and where a number of students have shown that their understanding of what I’m up to (for good or for ill!) is continuing to crystallize.

And so, the blog must go on.