Theological Music Quotes

Our task as image-bearing, God-loving, Christ-shaped, Spirit-filled Christians, following Christ and shaping our world, is to announce redemption to a world that has discovered its fallenness, to announce healing to a world that has discovered its brokenness, to proclaim love and trust to a world that knows only exploitation, fear and suspicion...The gospel of Jesus points us and indeed urges us to be at the leading edge of the whole culture, articulating in story and music and art and philosophy and education and poetry and politics and theology and even--heaven help us--Biblical studies, a worldview that will mount the historically-rooted Christian challenge to both modernity and postmodernity, leading the way...with joy and humor and gentleness and good judgment and true wisdom. I believe if we face the question, "if not now, then when?" if we are grasped by this vision we may also hear the question, "if not us, then who?" And if the gospel of Jesus is not the key to this task, then what is?

Theology is-- or should be-- a species of poetry,which read quickly or encountered in a hubbub of noise makes no sense. You have to open yourself to a poem with a quiet, receptive mind, in the same way you might listen to a difficult piece of music... If you seize upon a poem and try to extort its meaning before you are ready, it remains opaque. If you bring your own personal agenda to bear upon it, the poem will close upon itself like a clam, because you have denied its unique and separate identity, its inviolate holiness.

the seven “liberal arts”: Grammar, the foundation of science; Logic, which differentiates the true from the false; Rhetoric, the source of law; Arithmetic, the foundation of order because “without numbers there is nothing”; Geometry, the science of measurement; Astronomy, the most noble of the sciences because it is connected with Divinity and Theology; and lastly Music.

You have a lot to learn, young man. Philosophy. Theology. Literature. Poetry. Drama. History. Archeology. Anthropology. Mythology. Music. These are your tools as much as brush and pigment. You cannot be an artist until you are civilized. You cannot be civilized until you learn. To be civilized is to know where you belong in the continuum of our art and your world. To surmount the past, you must know the past.

When I was a child, Mama had the best voice of all the members of the church. She had loved to sing. Her words had soared like an angel's over the swells of the organ. In fact, I now suspected, her entire theology had been taken from the hymnal.

I need wonder. I know that death is coming. I smell it in the wind, read it in the paper, watch it on television, and see it on the faces of the old. I need wonder to explain what is going to happen to me, what is going to happen to us when this thing is done, when our shift is over and our kids' kids are still on the earth listening to their crazy rap music. I need something mysterious to happen after I die. I need to be somewhere else after I die, somewhere with God, somewhere that wouldn't make any sense if it were explained to me right now. At the end of the day, when I am lying in bed and I know the chances of any of our theology being exactly right are a million to one, I need to know that God has things figured out, that if my math is wrong we are still going to be okay. And wonder is that feeling we get when we let go of our silly answers, our mapped out rules that we want God to follow. I don't think there is any better worship than wonder.

Next to theology I give music the highest place of honor.

More than the painting you see or the music you hear, the words you read become in the very act of reading them part of who you are, especially if they are the words of exceptionally promising writers. If there is poison in the words, you are poisoned; if there is nourishment, you are nourished; if there is beauty, you are made a little more beautiful. In Hebrew, the word dabar means both word and also deed. A word doesn’t merely say something, it does something. It brings something into being.

But ignorance of divine revelation affects all of thought and life, from one's view toward history and philosophy, to one's interpretation of music and literature, to one's understanding of mathematics and physics.

Time with God will open up His ways. Reading books won't do it. Reading theology won't do it. Studying the creation won't do it. Going to church won't do it. Listening to religious music won't do it. Listening to great preaching won't do it. Even worshiping through hymns and songs won't do it.

The study of Scripture I find to be quite like mastering an instrument. No one is so good that they cannot get any better; no one knows so much that they can know no more. A professional can spot an amateur or a lack of practice or experience a mile away. His technicality, his spiritual ear is razor-sharp. He is familiar with the common mistakes, the counter-arguments; and insofar as this, he can clearly distinguish the difference between honest critics of the Faith and mere fools who criticize that which they know nothing.

If there is anyone who owes everything to Bach, it is certainly God.

Holiness must have a philosophical and theological foundation, namely, Divine truth; otherwise it is sentimentality and emotionalism. Many would say later on, 'We want religion, but no creeds.' This is like saying we want healing, but no science of medicine; music, but no rules of music; history, but no documents. Religion is indeed a life, but it grows out of truth, not away from it. It has been said it makes no difference what you believe, it all depends on how you act. This is psychological nonsense, for a man acts out of his beliefs. Our Lord placed truth or belief in Him first; then came sanctification and good deeds. But here truth was not a vague ideal, but a Person. Truth was now lovable, because only a Person is lovable. Sanctity becomes the response the heart makes to Divine truth and its unlimited mercy to humanity.

I cannot now evaluate the events that, at the end of those thirty years, made me discover the necessity of religious belief. I was not reasoned into my disposition. Though I admire the structured thought of theology, it is to religion no more than counterpoint exercises are to music.

A stydy today of the products of the animated cartoon industry of the twenties, thirties and forties would yield the following theology: 1. People are animals. 2. The body is mortal and subject to incredible pain. 3. Life is antagonistic to the living. 4. The flesh can be sawed, crushed, frozen, stretched, burned, bombed, and plucked for music. 5. The dumb are abused by the smart and the smart are destroyed by their own cunning. 6. The small are tortured by the large and the large destroyed by their own momentum. 7. We are able to walk on air, but only as long as our illusion supports us.

There is a very important connection between the Church's worldview and the Church's hymns. If your heart and mouth are filled with songs of victory, you will tend to have an eschatology of dominion; if, instead, your songs are fearful, expressing a longing for escape-or if they are weak, childish ditties-your worldview and expectations will be escapist and childish. Historically, the basic hymnbook for the Church has been the Book of Psalms. The largest book of the Bible is the Book of Psalms, and God providentially placed it right in the middle of the Bible, so that we couldn't miss it! Yet how many churches use the Psalms in musical worship? It is noteworthy that the Church's abandonment of dominion eschatology coincided with the Church's abandonment of the Psalms.

Christians—who have no patience with Darwinistic materialism—often sound as progressive as the most ardent evolutionist. They look for “new” theologies, “new” ways of worship, and “new” music, being quite willing to toss out their entire “old-fashioned” Christian heritage.

I have no pleasure in any man who despises music. It is no invention of ours: it is a gift of God. I place it next to theology. Satan hates music: he knows how it drives the evil spirit out of us. Who has skill in the art of music is of good temperament and fitted for all things.

It is natural to speak of hymns as "poems," indiscriminately, for they have the same structure. But a hymn is not necessarily a poem, while a poem that can be sung as a hymn is something more than a poem. Imagination makes poems; devotion makes hymns. There can be poetry without emotion, but a hymn never. A poem may argue; a hymn must not. In short to be a hymn, what is written must express spiritual feelings and desires. The music of faith, hope and charity will be somewhere in its strain.

Life offers no theology. There is but music and dance.

In the multiplicity of writing, everything is to be disentangled, nothing deciphered; the structure can be followed, 'run' (like the thread of a stocking) at every point and at every level, but there is nothing beneath: the space of writing is to be ranged over, not pierced; writing ceaselessly posits meaning ceaselessly to evaporate it, carrying out a systematic exemption of meaning. In precisely this way literature (it would be better from now on to say writing), by refusing to assign a 'secret', an ultimate meaning, to the text (and to the world as text), liberates what may be called an anti-theological activity, an activity that is truly revolutionary since to refuse to fix meaning is, in the end, to refuse God and his hypostases--reason, science, law.

Music in the church ought to be much more than an emotional stimulant. In fact, this means music and preaching should have the same aim. Both properly pertain to the proclamation of God's Word. Preaching is properly seen as an aspect of or worship. And conversely, music is properly seen as an aspect of the ministry of the Word, just like preaching. Therefore the songwriter ought to be skilled in Scripture and as concerned for theological precision as the preacher. Even more so, because the songs he writes are likely to be sung again and again (unlike a sermon that is preached only once).

He could smoke through the water as though an aquamarine submarine, he could sever the festoonery of the poolside ebb and eddy into fiery fluttering swathes of hot-cut flax, he could treble beneath the meniscus of the pool, sharp as synthesiser music and with a trajectory of theological impermanence, a crucifixion affected underwater, a kingfisher with the velocity and capriciousness of a shooting star, a knife in the arm of a masochist, a cleft hatchet of rock through the porous orb of a sea urchin, a dick through butter, a tyrannical nutter, Shunt through water, watch Shunt corrupt your daughter. He could move in wet like a lion through wildebeest.

Ultimately, the roast turkey must be regarded as a monument to Boomer's love. Look at it now, plump and glossy, floating across Idaho as if it were a mammoth, mutated seed pod. Hear how it backfires as it passes the silver mines, perhaps in tribute to the origin of the knives and forks of splendid sterling that a roast turkey and a roast turkey alone possesses the charisma to draw forth into festivity from dark cupboards. See how it glides through the potato fields, familiarly at home among potatoes but with an air of expectation, as if waiting for the flood of gravy. The roast turkey carries with it, in its chubby hold, a sizable portion of our primitive and pagan luggage. Primitive and pagan? Us? We of the laser, we of the microchip, we of the Union Theological Seminary and Time magazine? Of course. At least twice a year, do not millions upon millions of us cybernetic Christians and fax machine Jews participate in a ritual, a highly stylized ceremony that takes place around a large dead bird? And is not this animal sacrificed, as in days of yore, to catch the attention of a divine spirit, to show gratitude for blessings bestowed, and to petition for blessings coveted? The turkey, slain, slowly cooked over our gas or electric fires, is the central figure at our holy feast. It is the totem animal that brings our tribe together. And because it is an awkward, intractable creature, the serving of it establishes and reinforces the tribal hierarchy. There are but two legs, two wings, a certain amount of white meat, a given quantity of dark. Who gets which piece; who, in fact, slices the bird and distributes its limbs and organs, underscores quite emphatically the rank of each member in the gathering. Consider that the legs of this bird are called 'drumsticks,' after the ritual objects employed to extract the music from the most aboriginal and sacred of instruments. Our ancestors, kept their drums in public, but the sticks, being more actively magical, usually were stored in places known only to the shaman, the medicine man, the high priest, of the Wise Old Woman. The wing of the fowl gives symbolic flight to the soul, but with the drumstick is evoked the best of the pulse of the heart of the universe. Few of us nowadays participate in the actual hunting and killing of the turkey, but almost all of us watch, frequently with deep emotion, the reenactment of those events. We watch it on TV sets immediately before the communal meal. For what are footballs if not metaphorical turkeys, flying up and down a meadow? And what is a touchdown if not a kill, achieved by one or the other of two opposing tribes? To our applause, great young hungers from Alabama or Notre Dame slay the bird. Then, the Wise Old Woman, in the guise of Grandma, calls us to the table, where we, pretending to be no longer primitive, systematically rip the bird asunder. Was Boomer Petaway aware of the totemic implications when, to impress his beloved, he fabricated an outsize Thanksgiving centerpiece? No, not consciously. If and when the last veil dropped, he might comprehend what he had wrought. For the present, however, he was as ignorant as Can o' Beans, Spoon, and Dirty Sock were, before Painted Stick and Conch Shell drew their attention to similar affairs. Nevertheless, it was Boomer who piloted the gobble-stilled butterball across Idaho, who negotiated it through the natural carving knives of the Sawtooth Mountains, who once or twice parked it in wilderness rest stops, causing adjacent flora to assume the appearance of parsley.

With theology as a code of dogmas which are to be believed, or at any rate repeated, under penalty of present or future punishment, or as a storehouse of anaesthetics for those who find the pains of life too hard to bear, I have nothing to do; and, so far as it may be possible, I shall avoid the expression of any opinion as to the objective truth or falsehood of the systems of theological speculation of which I may find occasion to speak. From my present point of view, theology is regarded as a natural product of the operations of the human mind, under the conditions of its existence, just as any other branch of science, or the arts of architecture, or music, or painting are such products. Like them, theology has a history. Like them also, it is to be met with in certain simple and rudimentary forms; and these can be connected by a multitude of gradations, which exist or have existed, among people of various ages and races, with the most highly developed theologies of past and present times.

We human beings are moved by music as no other animal is. Stranger still, it moves us rational animals apart from whether we can play it, read it, or even much understand it. Music reaches the passions without passing through the mind. Although some music calls forth enormous, in truth, life-long diligence from those who play it, those who have devoted no study whatever to listening to it are moved by it. As a consequence music is unique among human pursuits in being able to overcome the vast gulf between rare virtue and common aptitude. It is the most mathematical of the fine arts. It is science and fun together.19

We were fortunate his brief psychic vision distracted him from what his fingertips could have told him about my face. Of course we were aware that temporary clairvoyance was a lame and unlikely explanation. The ordering of this world, however is so abstruce, so deep and complex, most explanations that people to make sense of moments of strange experience are inadequate. Our very existence as thinking creatures is an astonishment that cant be solved. Every human cell, with its thousands of protein chains, is more complex than a 747 or the largest cruise ship, in fact more complex than the two combined. All life on earth, in its extravagant variety, offers itself for study, but though we probe to ever deeper layers of its structure, the meaning eludes us. There is no end of wonders and mysteries: fireflies and music boxes, the stars that outnumber all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the world.

But in the Petit Palais, which Daphne had not visited in thirty years, Roland had what she liked to call ‘a moment’. He retired early from the paintings and waited in the main hall. After she had joined him and they were walking away he let rip. He said that if he ever had to look at one more Madonna and Child, Crucifixion, Assumption, Annunciation and all the rest he would ‘throw up’. Historically, he announced, Christianity had been the cold dead hand on the European imagination. What a gift, that its tyranny had expired. What looked like piety was enforced conformity within a totalitarian mind-state. To question or defy it in the sixteenth century would have been to take your life in your hands. Like protesting against Socialist Realism in Stalin’s Soviet Union. It was not only science that Christianity had obstructed for fifty generations, it was nearly all of culture, nearly all of free expression and enquiry. It buried the open-minded philosophies of classical antiquity for an age, it sent thousands of brilliant minds down irrelevant rabbit holes of pettifogging theology. It had spread its so-called Word by horrific violence and it maintained itself by torture, persecution and death. Gentle Jesus, ha! Within the totality of human experience of the world there was an infinity of subject matter and yet all over Europe the big museums were stuffed with the same lurid trash. Worse than pop music. It was the Eurovision Song Contest in oils and gilt frames. Even as he spoke he was amazed by the strength of his feelings and the pleasure of release. He was talking – exploding – about something else. What a relief it was, he said as he began to cool down, to see a representation of a bourgeois interior, of a loaf of bread on a board beside a knife, of a couple skating on a frozen canal hand in hand, trying to seize a moment of fun ‘while the fucking priest wasn’t looking. Thank God for the Dutch!

...music has always seemed a magical union of theology and the fine sport of mathematics. Item: There is about it a great deal of the dogged pursuit and laboratory work of the alchemist and sorcerer of ages past, which likewise stood under the sign of theology, but at the same time under that of emancipation and apostasy--and it was apostasy, not from the faith, that was not possible, but rather in the faith. Apostasy is an act of faith, and everything is and happens in God--falling away from Him most especially.

universities and colleges and musical emporiums and schools for the teaching of theology and plumbing and signpainting are as thick in America as the motor traffic. Whenever you see a public building with Gothic fenestration on a sturdy backing of Indiana concrete, you may be certain that it is another university, with anywhere from two hundred to twenty thousand students equally ardent about avoiding the disadvantage of becoming learned and about gaining the social prestige contained in the possession of a B.A degree.

A man of rigid uprightness, sincerely religious; steeped in his art, earnest and grave, yet not lacking naive humour; ever hospitable and generous, and yet shrewd and cautious; pugnacious when his art was slighted or his rights were infringed; generous in the extreme to his wife and children, and eager to give the latter advantages which he had never known himself; a lover of sound theology, and of a piety as deep as it was unpretentious—such were the qualities of one who towers above all other masters of music in moral grandeur.

Of all the conceptions of the divine, of all the language Jesus could put on the lips of the God character in the story he tells, that’s what he has the Father say. “You are always with me, and everything I have is yours.” ... Millions of people in our world were told that God so loved the world, that God sent his son to save the world, and that if they accept and believe in Jesus, then they’ll be able to have a relationship with God... But there’s more. Millions have been taught that if they don’t believe, if they don’t accept in the right way, that is, the way the person telling them "the gospel" does, and they were hit by a car and died later that same day, God will have no choice but to punish them forever in conscious torment in hell... A loving heavenly father who will go to extraordinary lengths to have a relationship with them would, in the blink of an eye, become a cruel, mean, vicious tormentor who would ensure that they had no escape from an endless future of agony... if your God is loving one second and cruel the next, if your God will punish people for all eternity for sins committed in a few short years, no amount of clever marketing or compelling language or good music or great coffee will be able to disguise that one, true, glaring, untenable, acceptable, awful reality... sometimes the reason people have a problem accepting the gospel is that they sense that the God lurking behind Jesus isn’t safe, loving, or good. It doesn’t make sense, it can’t be reconciled, and so they say no... God creates, because the endless joy and peace and shared life at the heart of this God knows no other way. Jesus invites us into THAT relationship, the one at the center of the universe... so when the gospel is diminished to a question of whether or not a person will “get into heaven,” that reduces the good news to a ticket, a way to get past the bouncer and into the club. The good news is better than that. (excerpts all from chapter 7)

Few exchanges in the history of science have leaped so boldly into the future as this one, which occurred a thousand years ago in a region now often dismissed as a backwater and valued mainly for its natural resources, not its intellectual achievements. We know of it because copies survived in manuscript and were published almost a millennium later. Twenty-eight-year-old Abu Rayhan al-Biruni, or simply Biruni (973–1048), hailed from near the Aral Sea and went on to distinguish himself in geography, mathematics, trigonometry, comparative religion, astronomy, physics, geology, psychology, mineralogy, and pharmacology. His younger counterpart, Abu Ali al-Husayn ibn Sina, or just Ibn Sina (ca. 980–1037), grew up in the stately city of Bukhara, the great seat of learning in what is now Uzbekistan. He was to make his mark in medicine, philosophy, physics, chemistry, astronomy, theology, clinical pharmacology, physiology, ethics, and music theory. When eventually Ibn Sina’s magisterial Canon of Medicine was translated into Latin, it triggered the start of modern medicine in the West and became its Bible: a dozen editions were printed before 1500. Indians used Ibn Sina’s Canon to develop a whole school of medicine that continues today. Many regard Biruni and Ibn Sina together as the greatest scientific minds between antiquity and the Renaissance, if not the modern age.

When they have contemplated the world, human beings have always experienced a transcendence and mystery at the heart of existence. They have felt that it is deeply connected with themselves and with the natural world, but that it also goes beyond. However we choose to define it - it has been called God, Brahman, or Nirvana - this transcendence has been a fact of human life. We have all experienced something similar, whatever our theological opinions, when we listen to a great piece of music or hear a beautiful poem and feel touched within and lifted, momentarily, beyond ourselves. We tend to seek out this experience, and if we do not find it in one setting - in a church or synagogue, for example - we would look elsewhere.

Solomon never had a degree, but he mastered wisdom. David never had a degree, but he mastered warfare. Moses never had a degree, but he mastered leadership. Asaph never had a degree, but he mastered music. Ahitophel never had a degree, but he mastered common sense. Job never had a degree, but he mastered patience. Elijah never had a degree, but he mastered preaching. Daniel never had a degree, but he mastered oracles. Paul never had a degree, but he mastered theology. Jesus never had a degree, but he mastered life. Imhotep never went to university, but he built pyramids. Amenhotep never went to university, but he built schools. Thutmose never went to university, but he built pyramids. Akhenaten never went to university, but he built states. Ramses never went to university, but he built empires.

There is however, one reason why the arts so rarely accept a mission that IS within the power of the Church to alter. In the past, the densest or richest location of baptised art has been the Liturgy. The sacred use of the arts in the liturgical setting has provided inspiration for artists engaged in producing artworks for contexts outside the Liturgy, for consumption beyond the limits of the visible Church. In the modern West, the Muses have largely fled the liturgical amphitheatre, which instead is given over to banal language, poor quality popular music, and, in new and re-designed churches, a nugatory or sometimes totally absent visual art. This deprives the wider Christian mission of the arts of essential nourishment. Where would the poetry of Paul Claudel be without the Latin Liturgy? Or John Tavener's music without the Orthodox Liturgy? Where would be the entire tradition of representational art in the West without the liturgical art of which until the seventeenth century at least remained at its heart? We need today to summon back the Muses to the sacred foyer of the Church, to be at home again at that hearth.

Now, Theology is like the map. Merely learning and thinking about the Christian doctrines, if you stop there, is less real and less exciting than the sort of thing my friend got in the desert. Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experience of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God—experiences compared with which any thrills or pious feelings you and I are likely to get on our own are very elementary and very confused. And secondly, if you want to get any further, you must use the map. You see, what happened to that man in the desert may have been real, and was certainly exciting, but nothing comes of it. It leads nowhere. There is nothing to do about it. In fact, that is just why a vague religion—all about feeling God in nature, and so on—is so attractive. It is all thrills and no work: like watching the waves from the beach. But you will not get to Newfoundland by studying the Atlantic that way, and you will not get eternal life by simply feeling the presence of God in flowers or music. Neither will you get anywhere by looking at maps without going to sea. Nor will you be very safe if you go to sea without a map.

The round, unformed script on the fly-leaf said, Francis Crawford of Lymond. She stared at it; then put it down and picked up another. The writing in this one was older; the neat level hand she had seen once before, in Stamboul. This time it said only, The Master of Culter. That dated it after the death of his father, when until the birth of Richard’s son Kevin, the heir’s rank and title were Lymond’s. And all the books were his, too. She scanned them: some works in English; others in Latin and Greek, French, Italian and Spanish.… Prose and verse. The classics, pressed together with folios on the sciences, theology, history; bawdy epistles and dramas; books on war and philosophy; the great legends. Sheets and volumes and manuscripts of unprinted music. Erasmus and St Augustine, Cicero, Terence and Ptolemy, Froissart and Barbour and Dunbar; Machiavelli and Rabelais, Bude and Bellenden, Aristotle and Copernicus, Duns Scotus and Seneca. Gathered over the years; added to on infrequent visits; the evidence of one man’s eclectic taste. And if one studied it, the private labyrinth, book upon book, from which the child Francis Crawford had emerged, contained, formidable, decorative as his deliberate writing, as the Master of Culter.

Schools, gymnasiums, arithmetic, geometry, history, rhetoric, physics, biology, anatomy, hygiene, therapy, cosmetics, poetry, music, tragedy, comedy, philosophy, theology, agnosticism, skepticism, stoicism, epicureanism, ethics, politics, idealism, philanthropy, cynicism, tyranny, plutocracy, democracy: these are all Greek words for cultural forms seldom originated, but in many cases first matured for good or evil by the abounding energy of the Greeks. All the problems that disturb us today—the cutting down of forests and the erosion of the soil; the emancipation of woman and the limitation of the family; the conservatism of the established, and the experimentalism of the unplaced, in morals, music, and government; the corruptions of politics and the perversions of conduct; the conflict of religion and science, and the weakening of the supernatural supports of morality; the war of the classes, the nations, and the continents; the revolutions of the poor against the economically powerful rich, and of the rich against the politically powerful poor; the struggle between democracy and dictatorship, between individualism and communism, between the East and the West—all these agitated, as if for our instruction, the brilliant and turbulent life of ancient Hellas. There is nothing in Greek civilization that does not illuminate our own. We shall try to see the life of Greece both in the mutual interplay of its cultural elements, and in the immense five-act drama of its rise and fall. We shall begin with Crete and its lately resurrected civilization, because apparently from Crete, as well as from Asia, came that prehistoric culture of Mycenae

Take care, ye philosophers and friends of knowledge, and beware of martyrdom! Of suffering "for the truth's sake"! even in your own defense! It spoils all the innocence and fine neutrality of your conscience; it makes you headstrong against objections and red rags; it stupefies, animalizes, and brutalizes, when in the struggle with danger, slander, suspicion, expulsion, and even worse consequences of enmity, ye have at last to play your last card as protectors of truth upon earth—as though "the Truth" were such an innocent and incompetent creature as to require protectors! and you of all people, ye knights of the sorrowful countenance, Messrs Loafers and Cobweb-spinners of the spirit! Finally, ye know sufficiently well that it cannot be of any consequence if YE just carry your point; ye know that hitherto no philosopher has carried his point, and that there might be a more laudable truthfulness in every little interrogative mark which you place after your special words and favourite doctrines (and occasionally after yourselves) than in all the solemn pantomime and trumping games before accusers and law-courts! Rather go out of the way! Flee into concealment! And have your masks and your ruses, that ye may be mistaken for what you are, or somewhat feared! And pray, don't forget the garden, the garden with golden trellis-work! And have people around you who are as a garden—or as music on the waters at eventide, when already the day becomes a memory. Choose the GOOD solitude, the free, wanton, lightsome solitude, which also gives you the right still to remain good in any sense whatsoever! How poisonous, how crafty, how bad, does every long war make one, which cannot be waged openly by means of force! How PERSONAL does a long fear make one, a long watching of enemies, of possible enemies! These pariahs of society, these long-pursued, badly-persecuted ones—also the compulsory recluses, the Spinozas or Giordano Brunos—always become in the end, even under the most intellectual masquerade, and perhaps without being themselves aware of it, refined vengeance-seekers and poison-Brewers (just lay bare the foundation of Spinoza's ethics and theology!), not to speak of the stupidity of moral indignation, which is the unfailing sign in a philosopher that the sense of philosophical humour has left him. The martyrdom of the philosopher, his "sacrifice for the sake of truth," forces into the light whatever of the agitator and actor lurks in him; and if one has hitherto contemplated him only with artistic curiosity, with regard to many a philosopher it is easy to understand the dangerous desire to see him also in his deterioration (deteriorated into a "martyr," into a stage-and-tribune-bawler). Only, that it is necessary with such a desire to be clear WHAT spectacle one will see in any case—merely a satyric play, merely an epilogue farce, merely the continued proof that the long, real tragedy IS AT AN END, supposing that every philosophy has been a long tragedy in its origin.

Third, the church’s music and songs constitute what Richard Mouw describes as a “compacted theology.

I devoured books, drank words, studied everything I could get my hands onto. I bounced between music, logic, theology, history, literature, and art.

Luke describes Stephen, Barnabas, and the disciples as “full of the Spirit” (Acts 6:5; 7:55; 11:24; 13:52) and notes that the deacons were expected to be the same (6:3).33 This pipe is made not for a wind that comes in explosive power resulting in extraordinary deeds, like the mighty rushing on the day of Pentecost (2:2). Rather, this pipe is designed for the continual presence of the Spirit which transforms people downcast by persecution into those who experience the unexpected emotions of joy (13:52), contentment (7:59), and forgiveness for their persecutors (7:60). This is not the music of ecstatic utterance but of characteristic constancy.

saying with a great voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive the power, and riches, and wisdom, and might, and honor, and glory, and blessing.' No sooner had he uttered the word 'blessing' than he started back, turned his face from the mass of the audience before him, fixed his glaring eyes upon the gallery at his right hand, and gave all the signs of a man who was frightened by a sudden interruption of the Divine worship. With a stentorian voice he cried out: 'What is that I see? What means that rabble-rout of men coming up here? Hark! Hear them shout! Hear their words: "Thanks to hell-fire! We have served out our time. Thanks! Thanks! We have served out our time. Thanks to hellfire!" Then the preacher turned his face from the side gallery, looked again upon the mass of the audience, and, after a lengthened pause, during which a fearful stillness pervaded the house, he said in gentle tones: 'Is this the spirit of the saints? Is this the music of the upper world? "And every created thing which is in heaven and on the earth, and under the earth, and on the sea, and all things that are in them, heard I saying, Unto him that sitteth on the throne and unto the Lamb be the blessing, and the dominion, and the honor, and the glory, for ever and ever, And the four living creatures said, Amen.'" "During this dramatic scene, five or six men were sitting on a board which had been extemporaneously brought into the aisle and extended from one chair to another. I was sitting with them. The board actually shook beneath us. Every one of the men was trembling with excitement.

Listeners: listen theologically to the music of the Divine Service, recognizing that it is present as part of a tightly integrated whole, where word and music, speech and song are united in one purpose—to point us to Christ and His redemptive work, to the One who has come that we “may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10).

After all the Lord’s struggle with his beloved Israel, he finally found a place in Israel that unbelief would not destroy like the Temple, or silence like the prophets, or simply lose, like the Book of the Law before Josiah. This place is a person. To ask Mary to pray for us is to meet him there.

A theologian who does not love art, poetry, music and nature can be dangerous. Blindness and deafness toward the beautiful are not incidental: they necessarily are reflected in his theology.

What we find, then, is that Dante’s musical program embodies theological realities. Infernal sinners remain willfully rebellious. In life they broke away from the human community to pursue some good in vicious competition with the rest of the human race. Now, as a community, they fail to achieve concord. Like musical notes that remain independent, their retained individuality is ugly and broken. Repentant sinners in purgatory, on the other hand, now willfully submit their individuality to the community. They learn now what it is like to live as members of a body. And thus they erase their tendencies to erratic individualism, forcing their voices into the unison of the simple plainchant. But with the polyphonic hymns of Paradiso, we have not only concord but also a simultaneous expression of individuality: Dante gives us a vision of heaven as a million-part motet.

I was recently providing music at a conference where one of the speakers, a noted professor of theology, remarked that we are in the “Experiential Age” of the Christian faith, an age that is defined by a professed personal relationship with Christ. Then she threw up her hands and said: “What does that mean?

There remains a problem with race in America because of the church's failure to understand the issues from a biblical perspective." "Rather than being called into a different community by Scripture, we see our broken communities as justified by Scripture." "Rather than challenge the worldly status quo, religious groups perpetuate stereotypes, sectarianism, and schisms when accepting ethnic denominational identities- inverting Pentecost by reading in multiple languages unrecognized by listeners and offering separate worship services according to musical preference." "Ultimately, our aim is to draw attention to the biblical narrative from which comes to the strength for the long road of reconciliation.

In the whole history of theological exegesis and interpretation I know of nothing so utterly faulty, illogical and wholly unscriptural as that exegesis which teaches the angel song at Bethlehem to be the announcement of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ as the Prince of Peace and that as such He should establish it among the nations after His ascension to heaven and during His absence from the world. The angels sang glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace to “men of good will.” The angel who spoke to the shepherds keeping the temple sheep for the morning and the evening sacrifice was testifying to them that there was no longer need to keep the sheep for such a purpose. The day of animal sacrifices had passed, the living God had provided the true sacrifice, He who was born beneath the chaplet of heaven’s music, the Lamb of God ordained before the foundation of the world. He had been born into the world that He might make peace by the blood of His cross, not between man and man, not between nation and nation, but between man and God. He had been born to die and by His death reconcile a rebel world to God; on the basis of this sacrifice yet to be and when He should have risen from the dead as witness of the efficacy of His death He would bring peace to every soul that should be of good will—every soul that should surrender to the will of God by believing on Him, offering Him by faith as a sacrifice and claiming Him as a substitute. Every such soul should be at peace with, and have the peace of, God. This was the meaning of that natal hour at Bethlehem. The angels were not singing over Him as the Prince of Peace who had come to abolish war among the nations, but as the ordained sacrifice who should bring peace between the individual man and his God. And yet—He is to be the Prince of Peace and reign and rule as such over the earth, putting an end to war and establishing perfect peace among the nations. The promise of His reign and rule as the Prince of Peace is clearly set forth in Scripture; as it is written in the book of the prophet Isaiah: “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his peace and government there shall be no end.” But when? Where? Listen: “Upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom to order it.” And hear what Gabriel says to Mary when he comes to announce to her that she has been chosen of Almighty God to give birth to the Messiah of Israel. The angel says: “Thou shalt call his name Jesus . . . He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: And he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.” He is to be the Prince of Peace when He sits upon the throne of united Israel in their own land and not before.

That’s the sacramental worldview. It’s a worldview where heaven comes to earth, grace penetrates matter, and every individual’s story is part of the cosmic story of salvation history. It’s a worldview where everything has a meaning, everyone has a purpose, and every moment is accounted for in a Divine Plan. It is, ultimately, a worldview that says Sartre was wrong and Flannery O’Connor was right. Hell isn’t other people. Other people are Christs.1 Without the sacramental worldview, there would be no plays by Shakespeare or concertos by Bach, no stories by Chesterton or mythologies by Tolkien. There would be no St. Peter’s, no Notre Dame, no Sistine Chapel, no David, no university system, no scientific method. The sacramental worldview made all that and more possible as gifted men and women strove to convey in words, music, marble, and methods the divine splendor of the world in which they lived. Then, that stopped. The Modernist Prism

Agood hymnbook is also clever—or maybe I should say a good hymnbook in the hands of a clever worship leader is a remarkably flexible tool. Through the use of metrical and tune indices, new matchings of tunes and texts can be found that allow for variety and freshness. For instance, in a church with a limited music budget, a modest but eager choir, and minimum arranging skills on the part of the leader, new combinations of tune and text can be turned into fresh, singable, and accessible anthems, and not a penny has been spent on music.

Reflecting back on those memories, I realized I learned not only my love of music in church, but also my theology through those hymns. It was through the lyrics we sang that I learned who God was and the attributes of his character.

whatever we do, let us not default to one form of music as the apex of quality and religious acceptability. God is far too creative and God’s world far too diverse to be limited to a single cultural expression.

broken praise job Lyrics from Music Inspired by The Story If one more person takes my hand And tries to say they understand, Tells me there's a bigger plan that I'm not meant to see. If one more person dares suggest That I held something unconfessed, Tries to make the dots connect from righteousness to easy street… Well I, I won't deny that I've relied on some assumptions. A man's honest life entitles him to something, But who am I to make demands of the God of Abraham? And who are you that you would choose to answer me with mercy new? How many more will wander past To find me here among the ashes? Will you hold me? Will you stay So I can raise this broken praise to you? Who else will see my suffering As one more opportunity To educate; to help me see all my flawed theology? If one more well-intentioned friend tries to tie up my loose ends Hoping to, with rug and broom, sweep awkward moments from the room… But I, I can't forget that I have begged just like a madman For my chance to die and never have to face the morning. But you were the One who filled my cup And you were the One who let it spill. So blessed be your holy name if you never fill it up again. If this is where my story ends, just give me one more breath to say hallelujah.

ignorance of divine revelation affects all of thought and life, from one's view toward history and philosophy, to one's interpretation of music and literature, to one's understanding of mathematics and physics.

Once you understand the logic behind modern schooling, its tricks and traps are fairly easy to avoid. School trains children to be employees and consumers; teach yours to be leaders and adventurers. School trains children to obey reflexively; teach yours to think critically and independently. Well-schooled kids have a low threshold for boredom; help your own to develop an inner life so that they'll never be bored. Urge them to take on the serious material, the grown-up material, in history, literature, philosophy, music, art, economics, theology — all the stuff schoolteachers know well enough to avoid. Challenge your kids with plenty of solitude so that they can learn to enjoy their own company, to conduct inner dialogues. Well-schooled people are conditioned to dread being alone; they seek constant companionship through the TV, the computer, the cell phone, and through shallow friendships quickly acquired, quickly abandoned. Your children should have a more important life, and they can. Don't let your own children have their childhoods extended, not even for a day. If David Farragut could take command of a captured British warship as a preteen, if Ben Franklin could apprentice himself to a printer at the same age, . . . there's no telling what your own kids could do. (p. xxii) — John Taylor Gatto, Weapons of Mass Instruction

Dad and Mom were tough on intellectual ideas they disagreed with, but not on people. Ideas interested Dad, not theology per se. If he was lecturing on art, music, cultural trends, he stuck to the subject. He hated circular arguments that depended on the Bible when used against secular people who didn’t acknowledge biblical authority. He believed that you should argue on a level playing field, where both people stay on common ground. “What’s the point of quoting the Bible to people who don’t believe it’s true?” Dad would say. In

we might not be fully appreciating Bach’s output if we take him simply or essentially to be a supplier of pitches, rhythms, and tone colors, however marvelous or magnificent these rich aspects of his works may indeed be. Likewise, we might not fully appreciate the range of plausible meanings projected by Bach’s works if we simply analyze the verbal content of his librettos. Accepting the idea that Bach’s musical settings can theologically expand upon and interpret his librettos need not involve downplaying the aesthetic splendor of his works. I would like to suggest, moreover, that insisting on exclusively aesthetic contemplation of Bach’s music potentially diminishes its meanings and actually reduces its stature.

Do we realize how almost exactly the Baal culture of Canaan is reproduced in American church culture? Baal religion is about what makes you feel good. Baal worship is a total immersion in what I can get out of it. And of course, it was incredibly successful. The Baal priests could gather crowds that outnumbered followers of Yahweh 20 to 1. There was sex, there was excitement, there was music, there was ecstasy, there was dance. "We got girls over here, friends. We got statues, girls, and festivals." This was great stuff. And what did the Hebrews have to offer in response? The Word. What's the Word? Well, Hebrews had festivals, at least! ...

By engaging in dialectical conversation with this music, theology places black vernacular culture at the heart of its mediation of the Christian message.

Good theology helps us keep music in its proper place. We learn that music isn't an end in itself but rather a means of expressing the worship already present in our hearts through the new life we've received in Jesus Christ.

What J. S. Bach gained from his Lutheranism to inform his music, what Jonathan Edwards took from the Reformed tradition to orient his philosophy, what A. H. Francke learned from German Pietism to inspire the University of Halle’s research into Sanskrit and Asian literatures, what Jacob van Ruisdael gained from his seventeenth-century Dutch Calvinism to shape his painting, what Thomas Chalmers took from Scottish Presbyterianism to inspire his books on astronomy and political economy, what Abraham Kuyper gained from pietistic Dutch Calvinism to back his educational, political, and communications labors of the late nineteenth century, what T. S. Eliot took from high-church Anglicanism as a basis for his cultural criticism, what Evelyn Waugh found for his novels in twentieth-century Catholicism, what Luci Shaw, Shirley Nelson, Harold Fickett, and Evangeline Paterson found to encourage creative writing from other forms of Christianity after they left dispensationalism behind — precious few fundamentalists or their evangelical successors have ever found in the theological insights of twentieth-century dispensationalism, Holiness, or Pentecostalism. As

From historical theology we find the maxim: lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi, which means, “The rule of prayer is the rule of faith which is the rule of life. (Or to put it simply: “As you worship, so you will believe; and as you believe, so you will live.”)

On the basis of these definitions, hymns cannot do theology, even when the meaning of “reasoned enquiry” is broadened and qualified. 6 Their brevity and form are ill suited to systematic reasoning, and, though not lacking in rationality, a hymn invites us, not to step back from faith and examine it, but to step into faith and worship God.

Excepting machinery, there is hardly anything secular in our culture that does not come from Greece. Schools, gymnasiums, arithmetic, geometry, history, rhetoric, physics, biology, anatomy, hygiene, therapy, cosmetics, poetry, music, tragedy, comedy, philosophy, theology, agnosticism, skepticism, stoicism, epicureanism, ethics, politics, idealism, philanthropy, cynicism, tyranny, plutocracy, democracy: these are all Greek words

We do not deserve a better culture than the one we have; every culture is perfectly suited to the music it produces, the churches it builds, and the poems it writes. We cannot lament our inability to build a fitting sequel to St. Peter’s Basilica without simultaneously lamenting our complete lack of a theology that might compel us to do so.

Basil, "The Holy Spirit sees how much difficulty mankind has in loving virtue, and how we prefer the lure of pleasure to the straight and narrow path. What does he do? He adds the grace of music to the truth of doctrine. Charmed by what we hear, we pluck the fruit of the words without realizing it."39

They’re too Christian for me,” said Riley. “Especially their music.” “They’re Christians?” Curtis paged through his papers. “I’d probably like them.” “So give them more points,” Belinda said. “You only gave them one.” “Many UU ministers believe in an abstraction they call God, the divine, or the sacred,” I said. “That’s what makes it theology rather than philosophy or psychology.” “Yeah, but does that abstraction talk to thee?

They’re too Christian for me,” said Riley. “Especially their music.” “They’re Christians?” Curtis paged through his papers. “I’d probably like them.” “So give them more points,” Belinda said. “You only gave them one.” “Many UU ministers believe in an abstraction they call God, the divine, or the sacred,” I said. “That’s what makes it theology rather than philosophy or psychology.” “Yeah, but does that abstraction talk to thee?” said Riley. “I’m a scientist. When someone’s God talks to them, I draw a line.” “I’m with you,” said Charlotte. Was something wrong with me? I had no such objections.

Theology is all about knowing how to sing the song of redemption: to know when to shout, when to mourn, when to be silent and when to hope. But in order to enjoy the song and sing it well, we must learn the words and the music.

Shakespeare’s knowledge of classics and philosophy has always puzzled his biographers,” admitted the scholar E. K. Chambers. “A few years at the Stratford Grammar School do not explain it.” Others have tried to resolve the puzzle by downplaying Shakespeare’s erudition. The plays merely “looked learned,” especially “to the less literate public,” insisted Harvard’s Alfred Harbage. But the plays have sent scholars writing whole books on the law in Shakespeare, medicine in Shakespeare, theology in Shakespeare. Shakespeare and astronomy. Shakespeare and music. Shakespeare and the classics. Shakespeare and the Italian novella. Shakespeare and the French language.

Any so-called proclamation of the gospel that does not actually effect freedom for others is in fact only “law.

When we are asked how to identify the true God, the story gives us an answer: God is whoever delivered Israel from Egypt and raised Jesus from the dead.

As God of prophecy, of music and of purification, Apollo is the deity preeminently responsible in the Hellenic theology for the psychical operations that are the dominant concern of the Veda. Zeus, on the other hand, while his sphere of activity overlaps somewhat with that of Indra, is largely concerned with establishing a sovereign order among the Olympians and imparting structure to the cosmos through his strategic delegations of power,

Her heart began to beat like fingers tapping on a daf, the Iranian equivalent of a large tambourine.

Whether it is labeled as sacred versus profane, gospel versus blues, God’s work versus the devil’s music, the classic (and still pervasive) African-American paradigm that holds church matters and popular culture in diametric opposition, that separates true spirituality from such music as jazz, held no sway in Coltrane’s self-erected system. How could it, when he had found salvation through a saxophone? With the clarity of youth, he divined a common source—and common goal—to both pursuits.

Although he eventually chose theology over music, music remained a deep passion throughout his life. It became a vital part of his expression of faith, and he taught his students to appreciate it and make it a central aspect of their expressions of faith.

According to Calvin the human voice exceeds all soulless instruments by far. While acknowledging that music is indeed apt to touch the human heart, his fear of contaminating the praise of God overrules this concession.[122] He fears that, by using musical instruments, the correct balance would be disturbed between the joy caused by music and the joy due to the praise of God.[123] It should quickly be added though that Calvin has no objections about playing on musical instruments at home.

Within the emerging African American literary tradition, the exploration of blues forms and themes was begun by Langston Hughes, Sterling Brown, Zora Neal Hurston, and other writers in the Harlem Renaissance and the New Negro movement. Blues as criticism arose during and after the Great Depression from authors such as Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and Albert Murray, and during the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s important contributions were made by Amiri Baraka, Larry Neal and others. In the present period, many African American scholars working in the disciplines and fields of music, history, folklore, drama, poetry, art, literary criticism, cultural studies, theology, anthropology, etcetera have acknowledged the blues as a hearth of African American consciousness. As stated earlier, the social sciences remain a barrier not breached.

Another disproportionately fascinating symbol is the Singing Commercial. Singing Commercials are a recent invention; but the Singing Theological and the Singing Devotional -- the hymn and the psalm -- are as old as religion itself. Singing Militaries, or marching songs, are coeval with war, and Singing Patriotics, the precursors of our national anthems, were doubtless used to promote group solidarity, to emphasize the dis­tinction between "us" and "them," by the wandering bands of paleolithic hunters and food gatherers. To most people music is intrinsically attractive. Moreover, melodies tend to ingrain themselves in the listener's mind. A tune will haunt the memory during the whole of a lifetime. Here, for example, is a quite uninterest­ing statement or value judgment. As it stands nobody will pay attention to it. But now set the words to a catchy and easily remembered tune. Immediately they become words of power. Moreover, the words will tend automatically to repeat themselves every time the mel­ody is heard or spontaneously remembered. Orpheus has entered into an alliance with Pavlov -- the power of sound with the conditioned reflex. For the commercial propagandist, as for his colleagues in the fields of poli­tics and religion, music possesses yet another advan­tage. Nonsense which it would be shameful for a rea­sonable being to write, speak or hear spoken can be sung or listened to by that same rational being with pleasure and even with a kind of intellectual convic­tion. Can we learn to separate the pleasure of singing or of listening to song from the all too human tend­ency to believe in the propaganda which the song is putting over? That again is the question.

Language ​A mangle and an earthly remnant that the poet leans on more heavily than all others, is language.  At times he can rightly hate, accuse, and curse it—or rather himself, that he is born to work with this wretched tool.  With envy he thinks of the painter, whose language—the colors—speaks just as understandably to all mankind, from the North Pole down to Africa, or the musician, whose tones speak every human language as well, and which from the single-voiced melody to the polyphonic orchestra, from the horn to the clarinet, from the fiddle to the harp, must obey like many new, singular, fine, and differing languages.  ​But for one thing especially he envies the musician deeply and daily: that the musician has his language for himself alone, only for making music!  But for his activity the poet must use the same language in which you hold school and do business, in which you telegraph and hold court.  How poor he is, that for his art he owns no private organ, no personal abode, no private garden, no personal window to look out onto the moon—all and all he must partake in everyday life!  He says “heart” and means the pulsing core of life in man, his innermost capability and weakness; but then the word at the same time signifies a muscle.  He says “power”, then he must fight for the sense of his word with engineers and electricians; he says “bliss”, then something from theology gazes onto his imagination’s expression.  He can use no private word that doesn’t leer at once to another side, that doesn’t with a breath recall foreign, disturbed, hostile imaginations, that isn’t deceive by scruples and shortenings, and broken by narrow walls, from which a voice turns back unsounded and smothered. ​If a knave is someone who gives more than he has, then a poet can never be a knave.  There is not a tenth, not a hundredth of what he would like to give; he is satisfied if the hearer understands him from totally above him, then entirely from far, then completely incidentally, most importantly at least not grossly misunderstands.  He seldom reaches more.  And overall, where a poet reaps praise or criticism, where he makes effects or gets mocked, where someone loves him or rejects him, one speaks not from his thoughts and dreams alone, but only a hundredth that could squeeze through the narrow canal of language and through the no wider comprehension of reading.

radually, that which had become the basic thought form of modern people became the almost totally accepted viewpoint, an almost monolithic consensus. And as it came to the majority of people through art, music, drama, theology, and the mass media, values died. As the more Christian-dominated consensus weakened, the majority of people adopted two impoverished values: personal peace and affluence.

Frequently the tensions revolve around music and whether it should follow traditional or contemporary tastes. Increasingly we see congregations respond to these tensions in one of three ways: (1) they split into two or more churches, so each is free to pursue its preferences; (2) they establish multiple worship services, each gratifying one of these musical tastes; or (3) they adopt the philosophy of the contemporary music and worship industry, simply marginalizing those with traditional hymnic preferences and forcing them to leave or retreat into passive, resigned modes. While these responses have made worship attractive for younger people, their effects on the church’s witness are disastrous. Instead of worship uniting God’s people, conflicts over worship have divided them.

Over and over again in our music, liturgies, displayed artwork, and language and word choices, we have reinforced the idea that white is holy and black equals sin. These passive suggestions have created an entire subconscious theology of race. For example, most pastors wear a white alb or surplice while they lead worship—using whiteness to represent baptism, purity, and closeness to the creator. We’ve never stopped to ask why we equate the color white to goodness. Every day we sit in church, we are being subtly fed this narrative about whiteness—a narrative that is at work in all of us consciously or subconsciously. The person who administers the sacraments: clothed in white. The colors of resurrection and ultimate victory: white. The candle you light at the anniversary of your child’s baptism: white. The message is clear, whether we realize it or not. White equals pure. And the inverse is also true: the absence of white—darkness or blackness—equals bad or evil.

Our hymnody needs attention, too. We need to sit down with our music ministers and go through each hymn each week, every song, everything that we sing as community and start to deconstruct them—examining each lyric with a fine-tooth comb. We need to demand that our hymnals stand with us in solidarity, and whenever whiteness is centered theologically, we need to demand that those words be changed. We can publish better work. It’s already being produced. We just need to gather a community of writers and musicians willing to share their gifts and work. We need to pay them for their work. The old classics can be revised and shifted to reflect a vision of the kingdom of God as it should be, not filtered through whiteness. To worship the creator through song is one of the great joys of gathering as church together. When we deconstruct and decolonize the symbols we use in worship, we can slowly but surely change the way that same God is imagined, experienced, and worshipped.

We believe music is a universal language just as long as everyone else lives in our universe. It’s impossible for intercultural worship to begin with a common musical style, so it must instead begin with a common biblical content. And when it does, music won’t get the blame for what only theology can fix.

It is through worship that God challenges us to change. We pursue God through worship. Worshipping the triune God changes us. We pursue other forms of Christian worship to humble ourselves unto God. God's creation is filled with the verities, vicissitudes, and reminders of God's grace and provision toward us.

The gospel of Jesus points us and indeed urges us to be at the leading edge of the whole culture, articulating in story and music and art and philosophy and education and poetry and politics and theology and even, heaven help us, biblical studies, a worldview that will mount the historically rooted Christian challenge to both modernity and postmodernity, leading the way into the postmodern world with joy and humor and gentleness and good judgment and true wisdom.