Does pen and paper matter for theology?

I've always been drawn to folks who write theology about theology. Reinhard Huetter, one of my professors at Duke, is a good example of a "theologian's theologian," at least with his book Suffering Divine Things. As I'm reading Barth's Church Dogmatics I'm realizing that at least volume one is really something like "how theology should work," a methodological preface to dogmatics, rather than a dogmatic exposition itself (dogmatics itself being partly the task of the
Preacher in the local church).

Yet even Barth and Huetter don't seem concrete enough in terms of giving a "theological" reading of the material and social location of the theologian. How does theology's primary location at major universities like Duke or Chicago affect the discipline? A professor of mine here at Dayton, Vincent Miller, says that theology isn't doing its job if it ignores how even little things like garage door openers change our lives and set out our context.

We can think in an even more basic, material way. What is proper for a theologian to write on? Pen and paper? A computer? Do these things make a difference? Shelby Foote wrote only with a Dip pen, rather than with a typewriter or with regular pens, because he wanted to craft his sentences slowly and have them fully formed in his head before he wrote them on the page. Should theologians, as stewards of the Word of God and as those filled with the Holy Spirit, write with similar concrete means of care?

I think a lot of "ressourcement" theology in the 20th century really came about to address material and methodological questions in theology like these. This includes both the Catholic ressourcement movement of theologians like Henri de Lubac and attempts by Protestants like Karl Barth to bring about a "ressourcement" of the Reformers and the Protestant scholastics in the face of liberal protestantism. Yet even here I'd be interested in going beyond these theological retrievals to look at the "material" aspects of some of sources of the Christian tradition, beyond just mining ancient and medieval Christianity for "ideas." (Re: the first question in my post on an early church course, I actually tend towards the historical option). This blog seems to have two emphases so far, both of which seem crucial and also neglected in ecumenism: one is looking for philosophical presuppositions in theology ("ecumenism and philosophy"), and the other is asking this material/concrete question. So far this has taken the form of looking at the history of genres and forms of theology.