The Future Now

Tonight I attended a lecture by Jeremy Begbie, one of my favorite authors. Not someone most people would get excited about, but he speaks of music, how the church got where it is musically speaking, what the ramifications of that are. I have yet to completely digest what he expounds, for it is comprehensive, complex, and multifaceted.



I first discovered his book Theology, Music, and Time about three years ago. Finally I was reading things I had suspected for a long time but had never heard justification for. Recently, I began reading his ReSounding Truth: Christian Wisdom in the World of Music. While the waters are still muddy, I am bumping into new chunks of thought worth pursuing.



Dr. Begbie is the Thomas A Langford Research Professor of Theology at Duke Divinity School, and has taught in Scotland (his native country) and England at the prestigious institutions there. His topic tonight, as the featured speaker of the Houghton College Woolsey Lectures in Theology and Culture, was "Music and Emotion in Worship: Anything to Fear?"



While somehow the title gave the impression that he would add conversation to the debate surrounding contemporary and traditional worship (and to some extent, he did address the difference between kitsch and culture), he spoke about setting a higher standard for Christianity in regard to creation of art and composition of musics.



It is his contention that Christians should bring the future God promises aka Revelation 21 into our world now. He outlined 5 ways in which that can be accomplished and provided many Scriptural examples of each: through the enrichment of diversity, through insane inversion of cultural norms, through piercing exposure of the worst, through depiction of divine excess, and through the use of non-order, the interplay between the regular and the irregular.

He contends that the New Creation will be far superior to the Garden of Eden - on beyond paradise. We can begin with that amazing future, and with the Holy Spirit's assistance recreate glimpses of such in our world and in us, following Jesus as our prototype. He gave numerous examples of compositions that portray these characteristics. All in all, an intriguing evening, seeing as he is a personable, witty and engaging speaker as well as a thought provoking writer.

I will spend some time over the next few weeks exploring the works he referenced in his talk, checking out his theories, seeing how that applies to my own work. Interesting.