Theology, Music and Time

Demonstrates the unique and important role that music plays in theology.

Jeremy S. Begbie (Author)

9780521444644, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 15 August 2000

332 pages, 6 b/w illus. 23 music examples
23.7 x 15.7 x 2.6 cm, 0.645 kg

'… a brilliant work of integration. A wide range of musical examples abound and the theological sources are extensive … if this subject is of any interest to you, I highly recommend it.' Geoff Colmer

Theology, Music and Time aims to show how music can enrich and advance theology, extending our wisdom about God and God's ways with the world. Instead of asking: what can theology do for music?, it asks: what can music do for theology? Jeremy Begbie argues that music's engagement with time gives the theologian invaluable resources for understanding how it is that God enables us to live 'peaceably' with time as a dimension of the created world. Without assuming any specialist knowledge of music, he explores a wide range of musical phenomena - rhythm, metre, resolution, repetition, improvisation - and through them opens up some of the central themes of the Christian faith - creation, salvation, eschatology, time and eternity, Eucharist, election and ecclesiology. He shows that music can not only refresh theology with new models, but also release it from damaging habits of thought which have hampered its work in the past.

Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Practising music
2. Music's time
Part I. In God's Good Time: 3. In God's good time
4. Resolution and salvation
5. Music, time and eternity
6. Repetition and Eucharist
Part II. Time to Improvise: 7. Boulez, Cage and freedom
8. Liberating constraint
9. Giving and giving back
10. Conclusion
Bibliography
Index of names
Index of subjects.

Subject Areas: Christian theology [HRCM]