Communication Theology: Some Basics
By Bernard R. Bonnot
[Father Bonnot helped, for many years, to organize Communication Theology Seminars at annual meetings of the Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA).]
Today no single system of thought dominates theology as Thomism once did. Theologians now use many approaches, including Thomism, within the general context set by the Second Vatican Council. This complexity interfaces with the emerging new communication technologies and their constantly novel applications, to provide abundant grist for the theological mill. To avoid spinning our reflective wheels while making no real theological advance, we must be selective. Karl Rahner, among others, advises holding our reflections close to the mysteries of faith central to the Catholic hierarchy of truths. This reflection considers communication within the mysteries of Trinity, Creation, Revelation and Incarnation.
Communicators need to reflect on their communication experiences precisely as religious, as experiences of God. For Christians, that experience is in Christ and the Spirit. Theologians can encourage communicators to multiply, record, and collect their reflections. Then the theologians can deepen those reflections and relate them to the corpus of traditional and contemporary theology. Feeding those deeper reflections back to communicators and the church at large will help shape the self-understanding (theoria) of communicators and their professional practice (praxis) in the context of both church and world. The entire exercise will help communications mature as a ministry.
Trinity
The most fundamental and essential teaching in the hierarchy of truths of faith is the mystery of the Trinity (Catechism of the Catholic Church, #234). God, as revealed by Jesus, is three persons constituting one Godhead. Trinity sets Christian faith apart from other religions as dramatically as does the mystery of Incarnation. Contemporary theologians understand the Trinity's inner life as self-communicating love, a dynamic and intimate sharing among Three. The technical term for the result is communio, while the term for the process is circumincessio. This approach provides promising grounds for considering communication as a core ministry, one at the heart of what the Church is all about. In addition, Trinity stands as source, model, and goal of all godly and Christian communication.
The Church has long affirmed the centrality of communication in Christian faith and life, but only implicitly. Our standard explicit terms for what we are about -- apostolate, missions, making disciples, teaching, preaching, sanctifying, magisterium, and today evangelization -- veil their inner substance, communication. This has caused 'communication' to be perceived as little more than a technique and tool, something that may be used to get something important done but not something important -- in itself.
This perception marginalizes the ministry of communication in church thought, esteem, and budgeting. Yet in the Trinity, communication is both process and product. Communio is what God is all about, the reality, the substance. Reflection on Trinity manifests how central communication is to our life as church, as indicated in the 1971 Vatican document, Communio et progressio (#8). This document affirms that “in the Christian faith, the unity and brotherhood of man are the chief aims of all communication and these find their source and model in the central mystery of the eternal communion between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who live a single divine life”.
Creation and Revelation
Once we approach God as self-communicating trinitarian love, we see the mysteries of Creation and Revelation as part of that self-communicating dynamic. The reality in all these mysteries of faith is the same, only the dimension is different. "Trinity" references God communicating internally; Creation and Revelation refer to God communicating externally. Creation references God communicating materially, cosmically; Revelation refers to God communicating verbally, intellectually, or epistemologically. Faith reflecting on these experiences can bring into focus not only the results -- creation as object, revelation as truth -- but also the process generating those realities: God self-communicating. Modern technological developments are catalyzing that theological shift.
Humans marvel at creation and its potentialities. We constantly probe, explore, discover, and map it, transforming our wonder into knowledge. We look for new frontiers and find ways to settle into what we find. Our fascination with creation is a happy one. What intrigues us is nothing less than God self-communicating with splendiferous love. At times we get so bedazzled by the splendor that we lose sight of God.
Today, a major frontier of our fascination is, precisely, communication. We wonder at the significance of a wave of a hand, the meaning of waving flags, the power of brain waves, the reach of electronic waves. Some of today’s most significant and dramatic technological breakthroughs are our progress in the field and the incredible experiences modern communication afford. A challenge for religious communicators and theologians is to see them as religious and theological breakthroughs as well.
This is difficult. We incline to worry the new modes of communication will alienate us from God. Theological reflection can help us bring Creation, Revelation, and the technology of modern communication together, expanding our appreciation of the many ways the Divine Communicator reveals love to us through the ceaseless wonders of creation, including its many different ‘waves.’
With this perspective, we can appreciate the Church's use of communication and our individual enjoyment of the media with the insights they occasion. We begin to cherish them as experiences of God communicating and revealing. The media are truly analogical. They participate by means of the nature they manifest. We should, therefore, appreciate the electronic media as far more than 'tools' enhancing some other truly worthwhile ministry. We should venerate them in ways analogical to the way we venerate vestments and vessels, icons and sanctuaries, music and stained-glass windows. They are sacred and holy. The Church’s official publication for the liturgical rituals, the 1989 Book of Blessings, evidences this attitude by including a formal "Order for the Blessing of Centers of Social Communications." Its liturgical texts clearly connect communication with creation and revelation: lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi.
Incarnation
The Word became flesh, human, one of us living among us. In Jesus, the self-communicating love of the triune God became fully revealed, tabernacling itself in a special dimension of creation -- the human. Jesus, the head of Creation, the fullness of Revelation, is the full reality of God self-communicating humanly to humans. In Jesus, the divine Word, conceived and first spoken in the womb of Trinity, (God's eternal brain wave, if you will), reverberated in the womb of the Virgin and vibrated forth into the womb of humankind, taking flesh, resounding among us. In Jesus, the Word expressed itself humanly, in flesh, blood, and bone, seen and sensed, loved and embraced; in movements and touches, in sights and sounds, in emotions felt and shared, like the warming waves of the sun.
Human communication is never concept and idea alone. It is the "the giving of self in love" (Communio et progressio, #11), and the giving is of, and through, body. So came God in Jesus. Labeling the mystery of Jesus as "incarnation" abstracts his reality into a truth, a dogma. It alienates us from experiencing Jesus as communication. For the reality of Incarnation is our Triune Lover self-communicating to humans as a person, humanly available, and as a community of persons, the Mystical Jesus, in whom, and through whom, God lives and acts. In Jesus, God shares with us face-to-face in self-sacrificing love and keeps doing so until the communication is complete, the giving is done, communio is consummated.
The reflections of communication theology help us see both communication and Incarnation as media-tions. Such theological reflection will help our Church move beyond the dominance of words -- spoken or printed -- in our sharing of faith, enabling us to embrace also such media as image and personality, drama and dialogue, sitcom and story, music and dance. Reflection on the Incarnation confirms the rumor, the hunch, the insight, that these are equally valid means of communicating God's love, though less familiar. Such reflection will also validate electronically mediated forms of God’s communication. Belief in Incarnation enables us to affirm these newer modes of ministry as effective, just as the traditional and mainly verbal modes of preaching, teaching, writing and reading. Thus, one theologian/campus minister testified that the most effective medium for sharing the Gospel with today's young adults is, in a word, drama.
Theological reflection on Incarnation helps today’s communicators grow into a deeper appreciation of their electronic waving of images and sounds to others. It manifests their craft as a new iconography, a holy projecting of convictions, emotions, beliefs, and experiences which others can use to open their lives to the Divine. Medieval theologians saw in Jesus, the Incarnate Word, and Perfect Icon, a communicatio idiomatum, an intimate exchange (communio) of the human and the divine. And we moderns can perceive our electronic communication as a new, and perhaps improved, way the human and divine find and enter into one another (circumincessio), generating communio with one another and God in, and through, Jesus.
Reflection on the Incarnation will incline our thoughts about communication to emphasize the Word. So, it is important to remember Incarnation results from the Trinitarian missioning of both Word and Spirit. Mary conceives not merely when she hears the angel's word but more precisely when she says "yes" and is "overshadowed." Perhaps the meaning will strike us more profoundly if we say that she was 'irradiated,' or 'electrified' by the Spirit. Communication theology takes this dynamic role of the Spirit into account. Indeed, as Trager noted, as we research which kind of waves reach furthest into human consciousness, we will understand more and more fully that the Spirit is the source of our most profound communications experiences.
Communication activities extend the divine into the human in many ways, including those electronic, and through this we experience Word, Spirit and, ultimately, Father. Through communication, Trinity comes alive and we humans come to know the living God.