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As far as theology is concerned, “www” might stand for “wild, wild west.” Whatever law may hold sway in the civilized territories of academic theology, it is unenforceable out on the range. I am tempted to divide the following survey into categories like “freebooters, homesteaders, border raiders, natives, and gunslingers,” but I will let the metaphor rest with the observation that internet theology, unlike other academic disciplines, has not been guided or normalized by the presence of any established institutional presence. With a few exceptions, the most useful internet theology websites are the work of fans and amateurs, students and private citizens who do what they do out of love for the subject. No major school has taken the step of putting its imprint on internet theology by committing capital to produce a definitive or unavoidable website. This situation is quite different from fields like philosophy or biblical studies, where prestigious schools and sought-after scholars have established a presence that provides a norm and standard against which all the non-professional material can be evaluated. For serious scholarship, there is still no replacing the “deep web” of databases available through libraries. These exclusive subscription-based services make available a world of journals. The leading providers are Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost, JSTOR (Journal Storage), Project Muse, and Wilson Select Plus. Unless you are electronically connected with a good library, there is a high wall keeping you out of these resources, but that wall is beginning to come down. For one thing, many journals are now making their back issues available online (with a one-year or five-year lag time from the current issue). The contents of these journals can be located using normal search engines or portals like Findarticles.com, which delivers an impressive range of free material (Theology Today, The Christian Century, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Ecumenical Review, etc.). If Google has its way in international court, its projects “Google scholar” and “Google print” will drastically lower the wall between regular web and deep web resources. The best thing about theology on the internet is the easy availability of classic texts, converted from print to digitized text, and housed at resources sites, the king of which is surely the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL.org). Here one can find multiple versions of Augustine’s Confessions, Calvin’s Institutes, and Wesley’s sermons. Anything in the public domain can be put online, but who determines what actually gets converted? For now, the answer is love: any denomination or tradition that loves its own heritage enough to make it available digitally will invest the time and money to convert the works. Newadvent.org has an edition of T. Aquinas’ Summa Theologica so useful that you may never need to consult a printed edition; as well as the complete 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia, whose historical articles are excellent but whose theology articles enshrine a somewhat narrow Vatican I Roman Catholicism. Project Canterbury (anglicanhistory.org) is a massive undertaking that has put a variety of Anglican resources online, while newmanreader.org provides all the J.H. Newman anybody could want. The Wesley Center for Applied Theology (Wesley.nnu.edu) has done its part in publishing Wesleyan resources, including all 30 volumes of John Wesley’s Christian Library. There are some printed texts so hard to find that their publication on the internet is the best thing ever to happen to them: various obscure holiness writings are online at truthinheart.com, along with the works of Charles Finney, Asa Mahan, and John Fletcher. Meanwhile, stempublishing.com has lovingly prepared digital editions of Bible studies by J.N. Darby and Brethren groups so small that they never had names. The conversion of print into digital media is thus a great and growing power of the web. But has internet technology conjured any new theological resources? Not much and not yet. The relative affordability of publishing a journal online has allowed a few new theology journals to come into existence: Quodlibet.net is one example, and the Journal for Christian Theological Research at www.luthersem.edu/ctrf/JCTR/default.htm is another. Many others have appeared overnight, but they tend to vanish just as quickly, leaving dead URLs in their place. For discussion not available anywhere else, there is always the world of discussion groups, online forums, and weblogs. When you decide to spend time in these settings, you should recognize that you are embracing an alternative lifestyle that will have you staring at the computer for long hours. That may be worth doing, because at their best these venues, especially the blogs, allow you to overhear street-level conversations about doctrine and life. If the bloggers enable the “comments” feature, little communities can form where readers share their theological and spiritual musings with unusual candor. Internetmonk.com and reallivepreacher.com are good examples of this. To find out what is available, use a blog aggregator like blogdigger.com or Google’s blog search (http://blogsearch.google.com/). At their worst, however, the world of blogs and forums is an ugly place full of trolls who swamp every discussion by typing faster than the voices of reason. A more professional class of theology blogs is just beginning to emerge. Peter Leithart (leithart.com) is a good example of a prolific theologian who puts his daily musings and readings online for all to see. Other substantive blogs include Scot McKnight’s jesuscreed.org, michaelfbird.blogspot.com, faith-theology.blogspot.com, and scriptoriumdaily.com. The internet is a great thing, and someday somebody should do something
with it for theology. Disciplines like biblical studies or philosophy can
boast of indispensable online reference tools, but to date theology cannot.
The theological entries at Wikipedia are as good as anything currently
available, are generally trustworthy, and always readable. Among the many
pages that provide lists and links of internet resources, the best is the
page maintained by the theology.htm. A uniquely useful resource list is rctr.org, where J. Downs not only combs the web for interesting items, but also posts the table of contents from numerous print journals. The fact that a young scholar can single-handedly produce such a resource without compensation underlines the fact that few major institutions are even trying to compete in this field. By Fred Sanders, Ph.D., Associate
Professor of Theology, |
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