Orality: The Embodied Word in the Age of AI – Part 1

Introduction

Curiously, when I tell people of my work and interest in orality, there is often a pause followed by an awkward face with raised eyebrows.

‘Morality? You are into morality?’ The tone usually carries some element of surprise.

‘No, I am not a champion for morality (although I am for that too); I am a catalyst for orality.’

‘Oh,’ is the typical response and people don’t always know where to go from there. So, I find I have to offer a shorthand definition along the lines of ‘Orality is any communication that relies on the spoken and embodied word.’ When people catch the spoken part, they normally nod in apparent understanding and the conversation tends to pick up speed from there. The oral word is the spoken word and most of us get that. Granted. But what is often missed by those unfamiliar with the term orality or who have not reflected up a theology of communication within mission practice is the embodied aspect of that shorthand definition.¹

The embodied component of orality deserves fresh consideration, specifically as so many of us gathered in-person in Incheon at the Fourth Lausanne Congress. While thousands participated online thanks to the gift of digital technology, what made the Congress so special for many was being on-site in person. There is no substitute for embodying the church of Jesus Christ together with our bodies and our voices. This is not to diminish the virtual participation and contribution, but merely to note that some connections are only possible when we are in a space together, and are not necessarily possible in the same way when we are only relating through our screens. Bodies matter in communication and, perhaps surprisingly for some, bodies are essential in all oral communication. This has implications that we are still exploring but that necessitate reflection, particularly in today’s ever-changing communication mediascape.

 

There is no substitute for embodying the church of Jesus Christ together with our bodies and our voices.

For those who maintain the notion (consciously or not) that orality is only relevant for rural, village-based initiatives, we suggest that orality, both its spoken and embodied components, have an increasingly but often overlooked relevance to our cultural discussions as we wade into the deeper waters of the digital life and AI. Orality informs new digital realities such as AI in ways that many of us have (perhaps) not fully appreciated.

Before continuing however, I want to address a lingering hesitation regarding orality. This concern appears in some form of the question, ‘Are you seeking to diminish the authority of the biblical text by promoting oral strategies?’ The short answer is a resounding no. The main thrust of the following argument throughout this article relates to the significance of orality for helping a lost world encounter Jesus Christ as revealed through the biblical text. We are so thankful for the gift of the biblical text and want to calm any concerns that we might be otherwise.

Rather than diminish Scriptural engagement, our goal is actually the exact opposite. We want all peoples to be able to engage God’s Word in its entirety so they and their communities can be transformed through the power of the Holy Spirit. Our desire is not to do away with the biblical text but to make it more accessible, specifically for the eighty percent of the world’s population who prefer oral-based rather than text-based Scripture engagement strategies. In light of such realities, our burden is to help the church communicate God’s Word in the ways (and modes) that will be most helpful for intentionally engaging people today. As I hope will become clear, orality cannot be lightly set aside—even in our digital environments. With that caveat in mind, let us consider orality as spoken, embodied communication.

A Brief Consideration on the Pattern of Divine Communication

One way to approach the spoken-ness and embodied-ness of orality is to consider the prophet Ezekiel. In chapter 24, Ezekiel is told that the desire of his eyes will be taken from him and within a few verses, we are told that his wife has died. Yet, the prophet is commanded not to mourn. It is a heartbreaking incident that, for many, raises all kinds of uncomfortable questions: Did God take Ezekiel’s wife? Why can he not mourn her? Does God not have sympathy or compassion for a deceased spouse? We could easily get caught up in the theological and emotional minutiae of this traumatic event in Ezekiel’s ministry. This is not the place to navigate all of those significant questions; nevertheless, I want to posit that this account provides a helpful glimpse into the nature of divine communication between God and his people.

Throughout the biblical text, God calls forth a mediator, someone who can stand and speak between God and his people. This intercessory role finds first expression in Abraham’s crying out to God on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah and reaches its zenith (perhaps) in Moses’ beseeching of God to show mercy on the apostate Israelites (Exod 32–34). God is always looking for a man or a woman to care enough about someone or a group of someones to intervene, even at great personal cost. Naturally, part of that prophetic role includes speaking, both the words of God to the people and the people’s words to God. This emphasis on the spoken word is reiterated in Scripture by the innumerable times the text records some version of the theme: ‘And the word of the LORD came. . .’ or ‘Speak thus to the children of Israel.’ We see this spoken-ness accentuated clearly in the Ezekiel episode.

Ezekiel begins verse fifteen of chapter 24 by recounting that ‘the word of the LORD came to me saying. . .’ And again, in verse twenty this spoken theme comes in almost excess, ‘Then I said to [the Israelites in exile], “The word of the LORD came to me saying, “Speak to the house of Israel, “Thus says the LORD God. . .” ‘ We are left with no doubt that Ezekiel is speaking—orally communicating to the children of Israel but he is specifically speaking on behalf of the God of Israel.

Thus far, the spoken nature of Ezekiel’s oral ministry has been self-evident. But what arrested my attention from this passage recently was the embodied nature of Ezekiel’s message. For as we keep reading, the exiled Israelites ask Ezekiel for interpretation of his lack of mourning in light of his wife’s death. Ezekiel instructs the people that just as he has lost the desire of his eyes, so the people will lose the temple, ‘the desire of your eyes and the delight of your soul.’ And ‘you will not mourn and you will not weep but will rot away in your iniquities and will groan to one another (vs 21, 23).’ And then we get these words: ‘Thus Ezekiel will be a sign to you; according to all that he has done you will do; when it comes, then you will know that I am the LORD God.’ It is here that we begin to get a glimpse of the significance of embodiment for divine communication.

God is not just looking for prophets who will speak his words, however boldly or powerfully. What set Ezekiel apart was not just that he spoke God’s word to God’s people; but rather that he embodied God’s word to God’s people. He carried the message of God not only in his mouth but in his body; he was the message. Herein is the prophetic embodied imagination on full display. God goes to great lengths to communicate reality to his people. But he needs a way to get their attention because even in exile, they continue not listening to and disobeying him.

So often words alone are not enough to capture the hearts and minds of the people. So, God adapts communication strategies, appealing to the exiles’ imagination. Through Ezekiel God provides an embodied visual display of his judgment on Israel: just as Ezekiel lost his wife, so will the exiles lose their beloved temple. Just as Ezekiel will not be able to mourn appropriately, neither will the exiles be able to grieve properly. God is orally communicating, telling them but also showing them through the embodied enactment of the divine message as on display in Ezekiel’s family. And rather than this being the exception, we see it happening elsewhere in Ezekiel’s ministry as in chapter four where God instructs him to enact the siege of Jerusalem by lying on his side and eating bread baked over dung. Ezekiel speaks God’s message to the people; but even more, Ezekiel enacts God’s message in his body before the children of Israel.

The physical redemption of Israel out of Egypt becomes a visual, embodied declaration that God does not just talk about redemption in some metaphorical sense, but he enacts redemption in tangible, gritty ways—a ragtag group of slaves actually emerged from under the bondage of the greatest superpower of the day.

But what we see in miniature scale through Ezekiel is only a thumbnail sketch of a much grander pattern of communication. Yes, the word of God has come down through the prophets of Israel but the divine message was not merely in spoken words but also an embodied message. Israel was God’s embodied communiqué to the surrounding nations. The story of the Exodus includes Moses speaking on behalf of God to Pharaoh and all of Egypt, but God did not rely on the spoken word alone to communicate his power. He saved Israel and not merely in a spiritual sense; but he saved them spirit, soul, and body. The physical redemption of Israel out of Egypt becomes a visual, embodied declaration that God does not just talk about redemption in some metaphorical sense, but he enacts redemption in tangible, gritty ways—a ragtag group of slaves actually emerged from under the bondage of the greatest superpower of the day. Thus, God’s communication pattern of both speaking and embodying the divine message through his people—a pattern that we saw in Ezekiel’s ministry—can now be recognized as not limited to individuals but happening at the corporate level as well.

But this is not only a First Testament pattern of divine communication because, in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, we have history’s greatest demonstration of inseparable (and oral) nature of word and body: And the Word became flesh. The story of the gospels is the story of the embodied Jesus living among and speaking to his people. But as if that was not enough, God goes to great lengths to demonstrate just how serious he takes embodied communication. Herein is the mystery of the gospel, for this oral pattern of communication that incorporates both word and body, that engages both audible and visual senses is not just for individuals speaking on behalf of God or the children of Israel embodying God’s deliverance to the nations.

The divine communiqué crescendos with God himself speaking from the cross, his naked body nailed to a tree outside of Jerusalem. Herein is some comfort for those of us who are tempted to resent God’s treatment of Ezekiel in the death of his wife. For at the heart of reality, God himself never asks his beloved ones to do anything that he himself will not do, to communicate in any way that he will not also endure. As Ezekiel embodied grief on display before the exiles in Babylon, so Jesus embodied death on display before first-century Jerusalem, communicating to all the immeasurable love of God.

And then we have the resurrection of Jesus’ body. And the glory but also the validation of orality is revealed for the resurrection of the Word of God is the single greatest testimony to the power of orality, the unique incorporation of both the spoken and embodied Word that transcends all other forms of communication.

For what most miss is that the resurrected Jesus in actual physical form is a declarative speech-act. And it matters that just as God did not merely rescue Israel in some pseudo-spiritual sense only but actually brought Israel out of slavery, so the gospel story makes clear that Jesus was not raised to life in some pseudo-spiritual only sense, but his actual body came back to life. The resurrected, embodied Jesus ate a piece of broiled fish. The embodied action complimented the risen Savior’s words of reassurance to his friends, affirming post-resurrection that God continues to rely on both the spoken and the embodied word to communicate his good news to any that will give their attention. With more space we could elaborate but is this not the church today? Paul calls the church the body of Christ—wherein through the power of the Holy Spirit individuals and communities of faith embody the Word of God to a lost and dying world.

Implications 

This has implications for those of us involved in mission practice. The single greatest communication question for the church in a digital age is what they will do with the human body. Technology allows for embodiment—to a degree; we can see our grandkids on FaceTime and our colleagues on Zoom. There is no reason why we cannot harness this to the uttermost in our missional communication endeavors. And while wisdom, humility, and prudence may be very appropriate, we do not necessarily need fear digital tools and platforms or even AI in all its emerging and immersing developments, for there is no area of the Web 3.0 that the resurrected Christ has not already declared ‘Mine’.

Nonetheless, these same platforms normalize disembodiment. Inadvertently, all my relationships tend towards a two-dimensional plane as seen on my scrolling feed. Thus, our digital lives tend to afford a disembodied orientation in our perspective on reality, a bend that many of us do not even recognize has already happened. Our devices specialize in making disembodied communication possible—normal even, allowing us to communicate across time and space. Text has allowed that same miracle to happen for generations, yet digital media such as WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram amplify this transboundary crossing in unprecedented ways. Leveraging such tools for the kingdom while remembering that the biblical pattern of divine communication so often incorporates the spoken and embodied word remains and will remain an ongoing tension.

In the face of our excited efforts to capitalize on AI technologies and social media strategies, the church today cannot lose sight of how you and I are called to speak and embody the good news of Jesus Christ amidst a mediascape that increasingly fosters disembodied communication. This means our bodies still matter in our communication practices today. Furthermore, perhaps, now more than ever, the world needs the church to be a sanctuary—a safe space to remind us that our bodies matter.

This leads to a significant follow-up inquiry. What is the limit of what digital media and AI can communicate? In spite of all the advantages and boundary-crossing that digital communication allows, we have to ask, ‘Where is the limit to digital media?’ Is it enough for the Church to merely send posts and YouTube videos to those who do not know Christ or is something more needed, required if we are going to follow God’s biblical pattern of communicating?

As our colleague Ricki Gidoomal explains, up to a point, God himself used the prophets and relied on textual transmission to make possible the passing on of the story of salvation from one generation to the next. But there came a point—a limit to what substitutes could convey and God said, ‘It’s not enough for them to read about salvation or even hear and see it on display through my people; I need to go myself,’ and the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ is the supreme example of a messenger crossing cultural divides to communicate the love of God. In a similar way, the church has to keep asking, ‘What cannot be communicated—replicated through mediated digital form no matter how sophisticated?’ This inquiry is not to underappreciate the sincere gifts of digital technologies, but rather, is it a matter of stewardship. The church has a responsibility to be the body of Christ; this includes inhabiting digital spaces in Jesus’ name, but it cannot be at the exclusion of incarnating the love of God in actual physical places.

The church has a responsibility to be the body of Christ; this includes inhabiting digital spaces in Jesus’ name, but it cannot be at the exclusion of incarnating the love of God in actual physical places.

In a world strategizing how to leverage digital technologies for social, political and economic gain, orality reminds us that God’s pattern of communicating continues to involve the spoken and embodied word. Does God use digital means to reach those in the digital spheres? Yes, of course, he does. However, people being on the ground, speaking but also embodying the love of God, displaying grace and forgiveness in the daily practices of life and allowing themselves, their marriages, and their families to be a witness to a watching community remains the most persuasive mode of communication in missions today. Why? Because God designed interpersonal communication to be holistic, engaging the whole person.² Rather than this being an old-fashioned practice of a bygone era, such embodied, incarnational communication is a speech-act that the world still desperately needs so that they can hear and see the life of God lived out.

people being on the ground, speaking but also embodying the love of God, displaying grace and forgiveness in the daily practices of life and allowing themselves, their marriages, and their families to be a witness to a watching community remains the most persuasive mode of communication in missions today.

Digital tools are incredible—ask any of the virtual participants of Lausanne 4. Nonetheless, so many (perhaps all?) of those same virtual participants wished they could have been at the Congress in-person. Why? Because bodies and embodiment still matter in missions today. A fuller understanding of orality reminds us that God continues to look for men and women who will speak and embody his good news within their communities throughout the world. It bears asking—how is that going? In what ways are we embodying the message of the gospel today—yes, in our online presence but also among those with whom we physically live and work?

But then the question emerges, what do we do with all these digital devices and what is orality’s relationship to them? Is consideration of orality merely some nostalgic call for returning to oral or even text-based only forms of communication? Surely, that seems like a naïve option for the Church. So, we find ourselves at a crossroads. We cannot set aside the pattern God has modeled for us in speaking and embodying his message but we have to acknowledge our communication practices happen within our contemporary contextual environments that are increasingly digital-reliant.

How do we bring our still developing theology of communication to bear on the critical questions of digital presence and AI of today and tomorrow?The second part of this article picks up those questions, exploring in more detail how orality and the role of the body are more central to the digital conversation than perhaps many of us have recognized.