Starting by drawing a distinction between “crackers” (who break into things) and “hackers” (who try to create new unexpected things) a Jesuit priest writing in a Vatican approved publication sees much in common between Christian thinking and the efforts of the hacking community.
Hacker philosophy is playful but committed, encourages creativity and sharing, and opposes models of control, competition and private property, Spadaro observed approvingly.
[…]”I as a Christian thought I could feel something of the satisfaction that God must have felt when He created the world,” Pittman wrote of his work. Christian hackers, Spadaro said, viewed their work as “a form of participation in the ‘work’ of God in creation.”
Hacker mentality implies a joyful application of intelligence to problem solving, rejecting the concept of work as repetitive, burdensome and stupid, Spadaro wrote. Hacker ethics rejected a capitalistic, profit-oriented approach to work, eschewing idleness but favoring a flexible, creative approach that was respectful of the human dimension and natural rhythms, he said.
“Under fire are control, competition, property. It’s a vision that is … of a clear theological origin,” Spadaro observed.
Spadaro emphasized hackers’ ingrained distrust of authority and preference for information sharing over horizontal social networks.
[…]For all the common ground between Christians and hackers over the concepts of sharing, creativity and idealism, Spadaro acknowledged there were problems of compatibility between the Catholic Church’s hierarchical organization and its focus on a “revealed truth” and the hackers’ rejection of authority and of any hierarchy of knowledge.
More here.
So, if hackers are participating in the divine act of creation, can we also argue that theologians are participating in the work of the hackers?
Looking for instance at the process theologians, who’ve hacked together Whitehead, quantum cosmology and biblical narratives, it’s hard to say “no”.