Daring to Address God: Confronting the Negligent Deity in Graphic Literature

The following is a paper originally presented on November 2, 2012 at Dordt College for The Christian Evasion of Popular Culture Conference.

This is what I sometimes do.  For fun.

Wednesday Theology Condensed: Language and Characteristics of the Format

"Part of the problem stems from the fact that language is not static. Language changes, grows, fluctuates, and evolves. Elizabeth Johnson says that 'words about God are cultural creatures.' God may not change, but our ways of speaking of God surely do. Particularly, as Christianity spread through the world its language adapted from Greek to Latin and onward to other languages. Few people, when they proclaim the name of Jesus, take the time to reflect on how nobody used that particular pronunciation of his name to refer to Jesus during the New Testament period. 'As cultures shift, so too does the specificity of God-talk,' says Johnson."

What does all this mean? If we are going to use graphic literature to talk about God, we need to know how the language of graphic literature works.