I have described McCluhan’s ideas with a view to providing an interesting vantage point from which to view the progress of biblical revelation.
Jews, Christians, and Muslims share a high regard for God’s revelation to Moses at Sinai. The giver of the Torah (the Law) identified himself by relation and action: by relation as the God of Abraham, and by action as the one who rescued his people from bondage in Egypt, according to his promise.
The Torah then was the “claim of grace, upon the people of grace”. It was the heart of that covenant, by which God would call out Israel as his own people, chosen from among all the families of the earth. The Ten Commandments are a summary of God’s covenant claim, written on tablets of stone by the very finger of God. But what really happened while the people waited day after day for Moses as he received the words of God? The writer of Exodus recounts how they profaned themselves in idol-worshipping revelry. And as Moses descended from Sinai, he caught them in the act. -an act that has been compared to committing adultery on one’s wedding night. In his outrage smashed the tablets, signifying the faithlessness of the covenant people in breaking the law. In doing so, they were not just breaking God’s laws, but breaking his heart, something that the prophets charged them with doing, over and over again.
Toward the end of their time in the promised land, Jeremiah prophesies:
“The days are coming,” declares the Lord,
“when I will make a new covenant
with the people of Israel
and with the people of Judah.
32It will not be like the covenant
I made with their ancestors
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband tod them,e ”
declares the Lord.
33“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel
after that time,” declares the Lord.
“I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
34No longer will they teach their neighbor,
or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,”
declares the Lord.
“For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.”
Now let us consider this from McCluhan’s viewpoint. The medium on which the law was written was tablets of stone. But what was the real message? The holiness of God, brought into intimate binding relationship with a chosen people elicited the opposite response of what was intended. The Way of God(Torah) is ever praised by Israel’s psalmists as just and righteous, reasonable, gracious, illuminating, ‘sweeter than honey, more precious than gold’. What could be more tragic than the fact that people stray compulsively from that glorious standard? Wasn’t the message clear? Human hearts turn toward rebellion, idolatry, and wickedness; having a law doesn’t change people, it just exposes the fact of how desperately people are in need of change.
When something is said to be written in stone, it suggests an unchangable and enduring standard. But in the scripture, ‘written in stone’ means brittle and breakable in the face of human weakness. (Rom 8:2) A stony heart means unyielding, unfeeling resistance to God. But the prophet is announcing a change in the medium. Jeremiah is saying that a new, or renewed covenant will succeed the one that Israel broke, and the initiative will once again be God’s. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts”. Only a new medium for the Torah can be the bearer of a new covenant that will not be broken.
The features of this new covenant are universal knowledge and responsiveness to God’s ways and the forgiveness of their sins. Elsewhere Ezekiel says,
And I will give you ia new heart, and ia new spirit I will put within you. iAnd I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 36:26 God would promise to put his own Spirit within his people- he himself would implant in them a new set of new desires to please him with the result that they would walk in his ways. He would do this to vindicate his own honour and reputation.
How was the law inscribed in the human heart? The subduing of sin by the perfect obedience of the man Jesus Christ was done within sin-prone human flesh! By doing this, the righteous requirement of the law (written upon stone) was fulfilled for all human flesh that lives in covenant relationship with the ‘Representative Man’ (Rom 8:3,4)
Barth says that the Spirit of God writes the with living fire upon the tablets of the human heart. in the renewed covenant, the very will and personal effectual presence of the Son of God now resides inside the human heart. As a result, new longings grow from within the renewed man or woman.
It means that under temptation to violate God’s desires, one would now feel inner compunction rather than social pressure to conform to accepted social standards. The law written on human hearts means that new desires for faithfulness, goodness, and righteousness take root and opportunities to enrich others are met with joy.
There is a delight in pleasing God. There is perseverance in doing good.
“Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. 6 The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. 7 The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.
McChluan says that every new medium that humankind adopts brings a change and that change is the real message. Further, every extension in capability comes at the cost of amputation of something it displaces. What gets displaced in the writing of the law on the heart? Morality based on social pressure to conform to societal expectations and social approval and the self-gratification that moral accomplishment may bring are must be shed. As such, the message of God’s law re-engraved on the human heart cannot be message that sits in a book but a flame that purifies and our hearts and sets them on fire.