Does blogging make you a theologian?

A few days ago Dan at TheyBlinked commented "The next generation of theologians will start as bloggers" Steve Taylor picked up the idea here and here, trying to think out loud about what the relationship is between theology and this blog village.

What is the place of blogging in the church communities we belong to? Some people have made extraordinarily inflated claims for the blog, suggesting that it might replace old forms of discourse, and even become the basis of a new kind of community. Steve says that blogs democratise knowledge. All of us that blog must think it has some value on some level, or we wouldn't do it, and we wouldn't read other people's blogs.

I agree with Steve that there is a sense in which all talk about God is 'theology'. But technically speaking, theology is a specialist discipline - identifiably different from Biblical studies, such as Tom Wright is famous for; from the sociology of religion that Pete Ward does; different from ecclesiastical history, and from devotional writing, even though all these areas and more besides contribute to and interact with theology.

I do not subscribe to the idea that blogs do - or should - democratise knowledge. They have, however, made a conversation space where people with something in common - like the Emerging Church - and who carry varying degrees of knowledge about a variety of specialisms, can meet in cyberspace and swap ideas. And they do highlight what the current areas of interest are. I count myself as a theologian of the church - not an ivory tower theologian - and blogs are one way of staying alert to the issues people are actually thinking and talking about.

Neither do I buy Dan's comment (though it's a nice piece of revolutionary polemic!). Blogging doesn't make you a theolgoian, because blogging is not the main space but the overspill of ideas. The best blogs, like the best books, are not their own main source of material. They comment on the reading and practice of the blog-writer - in other words, they are written by people who have something to say. Blogs are often like marginalia - they are the spill-over comments, the little points where your main work touches on the news of the day, or where specialist information suddenly becomes highly relevant. For in-depth thought you need full length essays, book-length developments (whether in print or on-screen).

"Democratising knowledge" is a worrying phrase. I know the background - I know the potential for knowledge to feed the abuse of power. Nevertheless, we should be careful not to think that a democracy of knowledge in the Church means we don't need specialists. The Church needs thinkers who can do the ground work (much of which is pretty grinding!) that most people don't have time for, and bring the riches of that knowledge back for everyone to share. This is not an elitist statement, unless you regard theology as superior to all other subjects. It is a realistic statement that celebrates the different gifts and the enormous potential we have if we allow each person to be good at what they are good at. When my computer breaks down (or my sidebar disappears!), I don't want a democracy of knowledge, I want a specialist. I want someone who knows stuff that I don't have the time, the inclination or the innate instincts for, to come over and fix it. I want one of my post-grad computer scientists to come and be impressively brilliant doing things that I don't even begin to understand, and then translate the bits I need to know into everyday English. Of course I don't expect the specialist to patronise me or treat me like an idiot. But I do want the benefit of their knowledge.

My expertise - what I have to offer to the church, and to the blog-village - is in theology. I doubt that makes me a better blogger, and I know for a fact it doesn't make me a better Christian. It doesn't mean I know more about God than you do; it doesn't mean you can't disagree with me; it doesn't mean I'm right all the time. It just means that I have an area of specialist knowledge that is often useful to the church. Most Emerging Church blog-readers don't have the time or the inclination to slog through four years learning New Testament Greek, or reading everything from St Paul to Pannenberg in order to be able to comment confidently and succinctly on atonement theory or the doctrine of the Trinity. Why should they? They're already too busy studying medicine, psychology, software, education...

Einstein once commented that the sign of a genius, a true expert, is that they can make something intensely complex sound simple; they can explain the mysteries of the universe to the lay-person in words she can understand. My favourite post-grad computer boffin can do this. Dave can speak proper English, and give me some glimmer of understanding into what he's doing with software development, and how it might change the world of communications. The knowledge I've accrued is potentially just as life-enhancing and world-changing as the knowledge Dave has. I'm not Einstein, but I hope I might manage to make some of that understandable to others. Surely our mission in life is to make what we know accessible, as and when it's wanted, so everyone can enjoy the benefits.