Abstract
What potential does digital humanities have to shape the practice of theology? Are there theological questions at stake? This essay is exploratory, aspiring to identify points of contact between the digital humanities and theology.
Highlights
Wie geht’s heute with theology and the digital humanities? The offhanded worry that Karl Barth expressed in a conversation with theology students from Wuppertal has emerged as a central preoccupation of twenty-first century humanists
Where do we go from here? What potential does digital humanities have to shape the practice of theology? Are there theological questions at stake? This essay is exploratory, aspiring to identify points of contact between the digital humanities and theology
As Barth asked in Evangelical Theology, “Should not the isolated existence of theology be understood as an abnormal fact when judged by the nature of theology, as well as by that of the other sciences?”9 Theology exists because the world is out of whack or, to use the idiomatic Christian term, “fallen.”
Summary
Barth: “Das ist immer gefährlich, wenn die «Denkmodelle» kommen, wo dann das Neue Testament so hineingefüttert wird - so wie in einen Roboter oder wie nennt man das?” Zwischenruf: “einen Computer!” Barth: “Computer, ja. Observers frequently note that religious studies scholars have not kept pace with researchers in other disciplines in the application of digital humanities methods.[2] This point applies a fortiori to theologians. Theologians have shown scant interest to this point in the tools for linking data, mapping, network analysis, text mining, and visualizing information that are fueling digital scholarship in other disciplines. Theological questions have surfaced in the digital humanities, but they have not received much attention from professional theologians. My goal is not to survey this emerging nexus, but to look at major trends and to suggest some potential applications in theology. With apologies to those who work in different media, my focus is squarely on texts. What I ask is simple: how does digital humanities promise to alter the way we read and write theology?
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