God in Sound and Silence

Music as Theology

Lynch

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781532641510
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Music, by its indeterminate levels of meaning, poses a necessary challenge to a theology bound up in words. Its distinctive nature as temporal and embodied allows a unique point of access to theological understanding. Yet music does not exist in a cultural vacuum, conveying universal truths, but is a part of the complex nature of human lives. This understanding of music as theology stems from a conviction that music is a theological means of knowing: knowing something indeterminate, yet meaningful. This is an exploration of the means by which music might say something otherwise unsayable, and in doing so, allow for an encounter with the mystery of God.

1

Approaches to Music in Modern Theology

Theologians have explored different ways of encountering music. Many of these approaches are intertwined with a theology of culture, which attempts to take seriously cultural artefacts and the meaning they have in people’s lives. Music requires separate treatment from the other arts as it is unique and can bring something new to theology. Music is one way of “doing” theology, one which undoubtedly rests more in mystery than in language, but is perhaps all the more valuable for that reason.1 Therefore, the approach taken here is one of music as theology, where the music does the work usually expected of the words.

This chapter surveys approaches that have been made to music in modern theology before drafting the groundwork of an understanding of music as theology. These approaches range from the experiential—focusing on the experience of music for the individual or a collective group—to the text-based—looking at the written form of music, including any text associated with it.

This chapter identifies two ways of reading music theologically: firstly, music as a theologically significant or revelatory experience, and secondly, music as expounding given theological truths. The first approach allows music to say something new and to challenge existing thought; and the second approach considers music to be saying something that has already been said elsewhere, in theology, in scripture, or perhaps in other art forms. This is not a comprehensive account of the many approaches of theologies of music, but offers a comparison of two broadly different perspectives that are not mutually exclusive.

Approaches to music through contemporary theologies of popular culture is then explored in this chapter. These accounts offer the tools for a variety of different approaches to popular culture, of which popular music is an important part. Although the focus in these theological accounts of music is on popular music, they open new avenues for discussing music in all its forms. Most importantly, theologies of popular culture add new dimensions to discussions of music, in their stress on the social and embodied nature of musical experience, and thus go beyond the two approaches I just outlined. From this, I will construct a framework out of which I will work in later discussions of the theological significance of the music.

Music as Theologically Significant or Revelatory Experience

An account of music beginning with embodied human experience suggests that music, as a part of human experience of the world and of the greater reality we call God, has theological significance. This approach focuses on individual and collective human experience in theological knowledge: experience is an important part of understanding theological concepts, and in particular in understanding God; humans know God through embodied experience. Therefore, music is important to theology, in particular in the way that it might reveal something previously unknown or hidden.

Protestant theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher’s thought is the starting point, as a key source of modern theological engagement with culture. The work of Rudolf Otto and Paul Tillich, who developed themes of Schleiermacher’s engagement with the cultural world, will then be explored, before turning to the work of contemporary theologians concerned with music as experience, David Brown and Férdia Stone-Davis.

Central to this approach of a theological reading of the experience of music is an understanding of the embodied nature of human experience, and the relationship between objective knowledge and subjective experience, and this relationship will be drawn out in the discussion of this approach. The repercussions of this understanding of the relationship between subject and object in musical experience for an account of revelation will be discussed further in chapter 2.

Friedrich Schleiermacher

The discussion of theology’s engagement with culture begins here with Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), as his theology marks a key turning point in the engagement of theology with culture:2 he engages seriously with the culture of his time, and proposes that it has a place in Christian thought.3 In his early work On Religion: Speeches to its Cultural Despisers, Schleiermacher argued that religion must take the whole of human experience into account. Religion is, for Schleiermacher, “the sensibility and taste for the infinite.”4 Religion is in human feeling, not traditions, doctrines and artefacts, and such feeling is not confined to the realm of organized religion.5

For Schleiermacher, religion is thus a lived experience, not an abstract concept. As Gerrish notes, Schleiermacher “concerned himself with facts and phenomena—with real, live religion, not simply with ‘God’ as a philosophical construct.”6 In other words, Schleiermacher was concerned with what could be known about God through experience. However, this experience also requires an objective basis. David E. Klemm writes that Schleiermacher’s understanding of Christianity acknowledges that the “absolute is necessary to the system, that nothing is known or knowable without the absolute, yet that a knowing of the absolute is impossible.”7 Although all human experiences are important, religion has an objective basis in the absolute.

Religion in this view has two forms: positive religion, or historical revelation and religious traditions; and natural religion, or finding truth of God everywhere in the world.8 Each form on its own is problematic: positive religion is found to be too particular (Schleiermacher believes that religion will always be pluralistic and will have many forms); natural religion is too universal, and has no unique character.9 Schleiermacher thus proposes a philosophical theology which takes both into account, and which admits a need for both.10 This requires a reflective and critical approach to religion, in both its forms. Schleiermacher writes: “Once there is religion, it must necessarily also be social. That not only lies in human nature but also is pre-eminently in the nature of religion.”11 In other words, religious experience must have a social, as well as an individual, aspect.

Alongside feelings, there is intuition, which is another aspect of religion. Schleiermacher writes, “religion’s essence is neither thinking nor acting but intuition and feeling.”12 Intuition and feeling are not the same thing, and neither does the German word that Schleiermacher uses for feeling, Gefühl, mean precisely the same as the English translation. Manfred Frank explains that there is a distinction between intuition and feeling: “Intuitions represent the world, while sensations are states in the subject. Feelings shape the qualitative or phenomenal character of sense impressions.”13 Intuition is oriented toward external objects, such as the infinite or the universe, while feeling or Gefühl is usually centered on the individual.

Robert Merrihew Adams notes that in the first edition of On Religion, Schleiermacher holds...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Approaches to Music in Modern Theology
• Chapter 2: Embodied Encounter with God
• Chapter 3: The Incarnate Form
• Chapter 4: The Transcendence of the Self
• Chapter 5: The Self-Reflective Self
• Chapter 6: Conclusion
• Afterword
• Bibliography