ABSTRACT
Around the beginning of the third century CE the Christian author Tertullian, writing in his treatise De praescriptione hereticorum, posed the question “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” Tertullian’s conclusion was that human philosophical constructions had little to offer to a Christian faith rooted in sacred revelation. While ultimately futile, Tertullian’s separation of these two things into two mutually exclusive categories is not uncommon, with similar “catch cries” calling for the separation of church and state, science and religion, and social action versus care of the soul running through Christian history. Perhaps too, we see a similar separation in the question asked in some quarters about what the Internet has to do with a faith founded on the life, death and resurrection of a first-century Palestinian Jew. For some, the Internet has no connection with a faith tradition rooted in identification with a physical community and a God who became flesh and blood and relocated to the physical world, but for others, the Internet represents a new location for theological reflection and exploration.
