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5 - Music, time and eternity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Jeremy S. Begbie
Jeremy S. Begbie
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Summary

A God enthroned beyond time in timeless eternity would have to renounce music … Are we to suppose that we mortals, in possessing such a wonder as music, are more privileged than God? Rather, to save music for him, we shall hold, with the Greeks, that God cannot go behind time. Otherwise what would he be doing with all the choiring angels?

Victor Zuckerkandl

The whole purpose of sacred music must be to lead us to the threshold of prayer or to the threshold of a true encounter with the living God. An Ikon … is beyond art – a real presence that we venerate, looking tenderly at us, helping us to pray, and lifting our minds and hearts above this earth (where we are in exile for a short time) into Heaven, our true ‘Homeland’.

John Tavener

To gain some clarity about the relationship between God's eternity and created time is at once one of the most important and intractable tasks of theology. In fact, we have been touching upon the matter repeatedly in the previous pages. Here my purpose is fairly modest: to show that music has the capacity to play a valuable part in exposing and interpreting many of the most significant issues at stake, as well as advancing the contemporary discussion of them.

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Theology, Music and Time , pp. 128 - 154
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2000

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