AND GOD CREATED PRINTING

As I write in this volume and the next about my view of men and things, there is no way to pass over the importance of printing. Lately I have been reading about Martin Luther’s role in the great Protestant Reformation, which was both social and religious, and I was reminded of the fact that there could never have been such a reformation had it not been for the printing press, which at that time was barely a half century old. But in that half century some eight million books were printed! What a contrast to centuries past when but few books could be produced by the tedious process of copying by hand!

While the Chinese had movable type as early as 1040 A.D. they made little use of it, mainly because their language had thousands of word-characters. Printing on a large scale had to await the printing press invented by that enterprising German, Johann Gutenberg, in about 1455, who had the advantage of working with only a 26-letter alphabet. And what could be more appropriate than that the first book off the press was a Bible, in Latin of course since that was the language of the church.

In reading about Luther my eyes fell upon a sentence that so excited me that I had to call my printer and tell him about it. The historian tells how Luther was one of the most gifted German writers in history and how he wrote in clear, simple style to the masses in their vernacular, leaving it to the scholars to write only to each other in their lofty Latin. Using pamphlets as his vehicle he reached out to all of Europe with his ideas of reformation. Erasmus, the most influential scholar at that time, is quoted as saying: “Luther’s books are everywhere and in every language; no one would believe how widely he has moved men.”

Then the historian made the statement that captured my heart and mind: Printing was the Reformation; Gutenberg made Luther possible.

How beautifully true! Since I agree with Alexander Campbell that the Protestant Reformation was one of God’s greatest gifts to human kind, including Roman Catholics, I really identified with the historian in the way he summarized it. Printing was the Reformation! My printer was pleased to learn that his form of art had made it so well in anyone’s history. And the historian assures us that it was the printing press that made Luther --- no Gutenberg no Luther!

My mind wandered with those words . . . and God said, let there be a printing press upon the earth, and it was so; and God saw that it was good. God created the printing press by creating that old genius, Johann Gutenberg, whose first press could produce more elaborate work than the modern machines! God knew what he was doing. The Chinese had the know-how, but God had to raise up a people who would carve down the alphabet to just 26 letters, making mass printing possible.

We are left to wonder why the printing press was so late in coming. It meant that the masses could not have their own copy of the Scriptures for 15 long centuries. Even longer, for it is only in recent centuries, what some call “modern times,” that nearly everyone, at least in the western world, could have a Bible of his own. The Bible was chained to the pulpit, not so much because the church did not want the people to have access to it, but because of its great value and scarcity. Even with the printing press it was a long time before people could afford a Bible. Illiteracy was another factor, for many people could not have read a Bible if they had one.

This super-abundance of having a Bible in every room of the house is very recent in Christian history, and it may be debatable as to whether it is a blessing. We have succeeded in making the Bible the most published, the most purchased book in the world, but it is also largely unread and little understood. One wonders if the church still had to learn the Scriptures by hearing them read and taught in the assembly, whether the rank and file of believers would not know more. At least we would probably read the Scriptures more seriously and more extensively and do less sermonizing. That would be a blessing!

And how many heretics and sects have been created with a Bible in every purse or hip pocket? And how much has a universal prevalence of the Bible contributed to its deification by many? Even among ourselves the Bible has come to be viewed as “the Word of God” (is it or is Jesus?), and the basis of fellowship. And to be accepted into many fellowships one must come up with a rather exact understanding of particular biblical teaching.

None of these things might have been if we had the limitations of the early Christians, who not only had no New Testament but no Scripture at all in their possession. They learned the Scriptures by hearing them read at meetings, and like their Jewish forebears they committed certain portions to memory. They taught them to their children. But “the Bible” was not their bond of unity and fellowship, for there was no such thing as we know it. It was the Person that the Scriptures spoke of, the Christ proclaimed by the apostles, that made them one and gave them a glorious fellowship. “Unity upon the Bible” is a modern myth. There is no such thing, never has been, never will be. Jesus and only Jesus can unite us. No book can do it, not even the Bible, which the church will always interpret differently.

If this kind of thinking bothers you, I would remind you that for the vast majority of the time since Pentecost the church has had no Bible such as we have it today. And it pleased God to wait for many centuries before providing the means, the printing press and still later the economics and the literacy, for everyone to have a Bible. But we have always had Jesus and sufficient access to “what was written” to know the basic facts of our faith. With a plethora of Bibles has come a preoccupation with a myriad of details. It has even given us that strange animal known as “the silence of the Scriptures.”

I am not saying of course that the wide distribution of Scripture, made possible by recent wealth and technology, is not a blessing. But I am saying that like so many blessings it is a mixed blessing. But what is there in this world, however good, that is not mixed with evil? This is one way to point out that we generally hold some questionable views about the Bible, especially in making it the basis and object of our faith. The earliest believers would not know what we were taking about! They would see such Scriptures as they had as the basis of their faith only as they pointed to the Christ, heaven’s gift to sinful man. And loyalty to Christ was their only test. We terribly err if we go beyond this.

But it is the printing press, along with uncommon wealth and the free market, that has placed a Bible in every room of my home, and I thank God. And I marvel at what printing and publication makes possible in a world that would seem closed without them. An illustration much more modest than Luther’s reformation, which printing made possible, is this little journal. My efforts are directed toward a very small segment of that church Luther sought to reform, and it is the printed page that gives wings to my message, just as it did to his.

I thought of this recently when a Texas preacher was being asked whom he knew among us. Various Church of Christ leaders were asked about, some of whom he knew and some he did not. “Do you know Carl Ketcherside and Leroy Garrett?,” he was asked. He laughed at the question and replied, “Of course, everyone knows them.” He was of course restricting himself to the Church of Christ world. He could have added, even if with some exaggeration, that everyone knows what we stand for and what we are trying to do, whether they be friend or foe.

And why? The miracle of printing. Carl and Nell Ketcherside, using their kitchen table for their layout, sent Mission Messenger far and wide for some 36 years, calling for unity based upon the truth rather than doctrinal conformity, and reaching multiplied thousands whose lives could not have been touched in any other way. The written message not only has the advantage of being read over and over again, but it can be retrieved from the fire after it has been tossed there in anger. There’s nothing like the truth that emanates from the pages of a charred journal! And sometimes the copies are not read until years afterwards, only after being stashed away through indifference.

The printed page has fired many a revolution, Luther’s being only one. But they’ve all had one thing in common with Luther: they’ve addressed themselves to the rank and file, the peasants, or the folk in the pews, leaving it to the “professionals” to write stuff that nobody reads or couldn’t read if they chose to. The historian I was reading said Luther always did it with a touch of humor, another important ingredient in any reformation. We need to be invited to laugh at ourselves more than we do. And Luther did it mostly with pamphlets something like an issue of this journal. It is amazing the changes that can be wrought by a modest little paper, and it doesn’t take multitudes to do it.

In lauding the printing press we must not overstate the case, for some of the church’s most glorious victories needed no such technology. The chances are that our brethren of bygone centuries understood the message more clearly and loved it more dearly than ourselves, with or without such an advantage. God was a long time in giving us printing, and one of these days, amidst the crises of the tomorrows, we may be without it again, including the Bible. But there is no power, demonic or angelic, that can take Jesus from us, let come what may.

So, it was the printing press that God created on the eighth day, not the Dallas Cowboys. And what a difference that has made. The printing press, I mean! --- the Editor