Pre-printing press christianity

How did the printing press and wide-spread literacy change christianity?

I've been wondering about this very question a lot recently.

I grew up in a Church culture that valued Bible reading. The "quite time" was a core habit that every christian should do. The Bible was held in high regard and we needed to learn to read and understand it properly.

This would be what Brad East called a "biblicist" view and, as he points out, it elevated personal interpretation.

The Biblicist view is only possible with wide spread literacy

When only the clergy, and some upper class, could read, the Bible was heard, not read.

So knowledge of the scriptures would come from repeating liturgy and catechism. This put knowledge, interpretation, and authority far more based in the Church Hierarchy and clergy than the congregation and individual.

It's no surprise that the growth of literacy and mass publishing of the Bible coincided with different forms of church polity.

Do we focus to much on the wrong kind of understanding the scriptures?

I am grateful for the Bible and want to understand and share it better.

But, I wonder if evangelicalism has placed too much focus on intellectual- understanding and too little on experiential-understanding of Biblical truth.

What do I mean? Intellectual-understanding is being able to know and produce correct definitions of doctrine, the gospel and how we should live in light of the good news.

Experiential-understanding is the kind of knowledge that only comes from doing. It's the difference between knowing we should forgive someone, even thought it is difficult and having struggled to forgive someone because it was difficult but it also brought freedom.

Or the different between knowing in your head that God answers prayer and being able to point to when he has.

Beyond mere gnosticism

The risk of this focus on intellectual-knowledge is that we fall into a form of Gnosticism.

This belief that there is a hidden knowledge which we need to access to reach an enlightened state where are souls overcome the physical world.

There's nothing wrong with intellectual understanding, but if we stop there, we aren't following the gospel, we're falling into gnosticism.

Hearing and reciting liturgy aren't a cure, nor does this mean we should stop valuing the Bible or seeking to understand it. But we need to keep a focus on experiencing life with God and living the gospel; not out of legalism to be saved, but out of a desire to know Jesus and make him known.