Theology, Music and Time

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

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.

Theology, Music and Time shows ways in which music can deepen our understanding of the Christian God and his involvement with the world. Without assuming any specialist knowledge of music, the author explores several musical concepts, and through them opens up some of the central themes of the Christian faith.