Theology, Music and Time

1. Music's Temporality: Beyond Linear Time

To a great extent the problems posed by the old concept of time arise from the fact that it distinguished three mutually exclusive elements, whereas only the picture of a constant interaction and intertwining of these elements is adequate to the actual process.

Rethinking time. Music, as a profoundly temporal art, compels us to reconsider our understanding of time, moving beyond simplistic linear models. Instead of time being an empty container for events, music reveals it as an intrinsic function of how sounds interrelate, dynamically shaping and being shaped by the musical experience. This challenges the notion of time as a singular, homogeneous line.

Waves of dynamism. The temporality of tonal music is best understood as a multi-layered matrix of metrical waves, characterized by equilibrium, tension, and resolution. Rhythm "rides" these waves, creating a dynamic interplay where each beat possesses a unique "dynamic quality" based on its position within the hierarchy of accents. This intricate structure means that:

• Every beat is dynamically related to others.
• Resolution at one level can simultaneously increase tension at a higher level.
• The past, present, and future of musical events are interwoven, not mutually exclusive.

Critiquing linearity. This musical experience directly challenges linear, quantitative, and homogeneous conceptions of time prevalent in modernity. It subverts the "myth of passage," where the present is a fleeting, durationless point between a receding past and an unrealized future. Instead, music enacts a present charged with its past and future, demonstrating a temporality that is inherently dynamic, interconnected, and resistant to being reduced to a mere sequence of discrete moments.

2. Music as a Gift: Embracing Time's Goodness

If our world is a temporal world, if temporality is one of its bases . . . then music is anything but superterrestial; it is peculiarly terrestial, of this world.

Time as gift. Contrary to views that link temporality with unreality or fallenness, music demonstrates that time is an intrinsic and good dimension of God's creation. It challenges the notion that authentic meaning can only be found in the unbounded or timeless, instead revealing the richness and order possible within constant change and finitude.

Fruitful transience. Music, by its very nature, is ephemeral; tones give way to tones, constantly dying to allow new ones to emerge. Yet, this transience is not futile but glorious and enriching, as continuity arises from the internal relatedness of sounds through time. This embodies a theological truth:

• Change need not imply chaos, but ordered dynamism.
• "Taking time" can be good, fostering patience and deep engagement.
• Limited duration (finitude) is not a mark of deficiency but an expression of divine generosity, inviting trust in God's grace (as seen in Karl Barth's appreciation of Mozart).

Cultivating patience. Music demands our time and cannot be rushed, schooling us in a constructive patience that is neither empty nor resigned. This "graceful navigation" of tensions, as Kathleen Marie Higgins suggests, can stretch and deepen our emotional and spiritual lives, offering a respite from the "time-compression" and "malaise" of contemporary society.

3. Eschatology in Sound: Hope Through Tension and Resolution

Each fulfilment in the past becomes promise for the future.

Dynamic of hope. Music's multi-layered patterns of tension and resolution provide a powerful framework for understanding Christian eschatology, which speaks of future-directedness and the fulfilment of God's purposes. The dynamic of promise and fulfilment in the biblical narrative finds a compelling sonic correlate in music's ability to resolve tensions while simultaneously generating new, higher-level expectations.

Enriching delay. Just as music relies on deferred gratification, creating an "enriching meantime" through diversions and digressions, God's salvific plan often involves delay. This delay is not inertia but God's patient purpose, fostering a deeper, more potent hope. Music teaches us a patience that:

• Subverts the belief that delay is inherently void or harmful.
• Cultivates steadfastness and faith amidst provisional fulfilments.
• Reflects God's own forgiving patience, passionate for the world's salvation.

Prefiguring the end. Music can prefigure final resolutions, as seen in Mozart's "Jupiter" Symphony or Beethoven's String Quartet Op. 135, where an "ending" gesture appears early, only to be elaborated and finally resolved. This mirrors Christ's resurrection as the proleptic end, an instantiation of the new creation that intensifies longing for the ultimate eschaton. Music's multi-levelled temporality helps navigate the "delay of the parousia," showing how imminence and delay can coexist without contradiction, challenging simplistic linear interpretations.

4. Eucharist as Regenerative Repetition

Repetition . . . becomes regeneration rather than reiteration.

Beyond mere reiteration. Music's pervasive use of repetition, far from being monotonous, reveals a profound truth: each repeated musical unit, due to its unique position within the metrical wave hierarchy, possesses a different dynamic quality. This "non-identical repetition" is fundamental to music's intelligibility and interest, as it highlights the endlessly varied nature of the temporal matrix.

Stabilizing and destabilizing. This musical dynamic offers a rich lens for understanding Eucharistic repetition. Each celebration of the Eucharist:

• Stabilizes: It regularly recalls Christ's transforming work on the cross, rooting the community in foundational truths.
• Destabilizes: Simultaneously, it re-charges hope for the future, drawing the community into a larger, wider longing for the world's redemption, preventing complacency.

Healing fractured time. Eucharistic repetition is not an attempt to re-enact a past event or to pull it into a static present. Instead, it is a repeated opportunity for time-laden creatures to participate in Christ's redeemed temporality, where past, present, and future cohere. This challenges flawed assumptions in ecumenical debates about time and presence, showing how the Spirit opens our present to Christ's past and future, healing and reforming our fractured temporality.

5. Improvisation: Freedom Through Liberating Constraint

What delivers me from the anguish into which an unrestricted freedom plunges me is the fact that I am always able to turn immediately to the concrete things that are here in question . . . Whatever diminishes constraint, diminishes strength.

Freedom redefined. Improvisation offers a powerful enactment of human freedom, not as boundless autonomy or the absence of limits, but as a dynamic engagement with and through constraints. This challenges modernist pathologies, exemplified by composers like Boulez (total serialism, rigid control) and Cage (chance, passive acceptance), who struggled with the idea that constraints inherently threaten freedom.

Interplay of contingency and givenness. In improvisation, freedom flourishes through the interplay between the contingent (unpredictable choices) and the given constraints (musical structures, idiom, physical realities). These constraints are not oppressive but are actively embraced and negotiated, leading to mutual enhancement:

• Occasional constraints: The unique circumstances of a performance (acoustics, audience, other musicians) are incorporated, fostering dialogical interaction and personal particularity.
• Cultural constraints: Pre-established musical frameworks like metre, harmonic sequences, and melodic idioms provide the stable ground for creative exploration.

Temporal freedom. This freedom is deeply temporal, involving a flexible responsiveness to the world's temporality. Improvisation particularizes past musical "givens" for the present occasion, opening up new, unforeseen futures. It teaches us to "live peaceably with time," recognizing that genuine liberty arises from a fruitful interaction with the temporal conditions of our existence, rather than attempting to escape or defeat them.

6. Embodied Freedom: The Hand's Wisdom in Time

To define jazz . . . is to describe the body’s ways.

Body as resource. David Sudnow's "Ways of the Hand" vividly illustrates how freedom in jazz improvisation is profoundly embodied, arising from the pianist's intimate engagement with the instrument through the body. The body is not a prison or an obstacle but a field of dynamic processes, its particularities becoming channels of sensitivity, intelligence, and expression.

Temporal negotiation. Learning to improvise successfully involves allowing the hand and body to "know the time" – to sense metrical beats, find appropriate paces, and shape the music's temporality. This means:

• Respecting bodily limits: The hand's physical capabilities and temporal constraints are honored, not overridden.
• Integrating metre: Metrical beats are physically felt and highlighted by improvised rhythms, creating a relaxed, unhurried flow.
• Transforming error: Mistakes are not failures but opportunities, incorporated into the improvisation to generate new possibilities, fostering a "make the best of things" attitude.

Sonic attunement. This embodied freedom extends to a respectful interaction with the "sonic order" itself. Improvisation fosters a heightened aural attentiveness, an "investigation of sound" where the instrument's properties are explored and honored. This points to a theological understanding of human freedom in relation to the physical world, where creation's integrity is vindicated and renewed through our courteous, shaping engagement, rather than intellectual imposition or passive acceptance.

7. Gift-Exchange: The Relational Dynamic of Improvisation

To try to possess the other and his gifts, to receive them as exactly due rewards, or as things we do not need to go on receiving, would be simply to obliterate them.

Gift as dynamic. The concept of "gift" in improvisation is ambiguous yet instructive, moving beyond a "brute given" to a "beneficial gift" that involves dynamic exchange. Authentic gratuity in gift-exchange requires:

• Delay of return: The counter-gift is not immediate, avoiding the discharge of debt.
• Non-identical repetition: The return is equivalent but different, ensuring novelty and avoiding mere duplication.
• Passing on: Gifts are often passed to a wider social context, creating a potentially limitless chain of generosity.

Reciprocal creativity. Group improvisation exemplifies this "purified gift-exchange." Musicians receive musical "offers" (metre, harmony, melody) from others, improvise upon them, and "return" equivalent but different counter-gifts. This fosters:

• Dedication: Acute listening and attentiveness to others' contributions.
• Joyful "overacceptance": A willingness to treat every offer as fundamentally fruitful, even if unexpected, generating warmth and energy.
• Preserving otherness: The gift is never fully owned, acknowledging the irreducible freedom and particularity of the donor.

Theological resonance. This improvisational dynamic mirrors the trinitarian life of God, a ceaseless exchange of love into which humanity is invited. Sin is the refusal to improvise, to "block" the music of creation as gift. Salvation, in Christ and through the Spirit, is God's gift that includes a return, enabling our participation in this ongoing, non-identical, and endlessly expanding process of giving and receiving.

8. Election as Divine Improvisation: Romans 9-11 Reimagined

God has accepted the person the strong are tempted to despise.

God's improvising strategy. Paul's wrestling with Jewish rejection of the Messiah in Romans 9-11 can be understood as God's sustained improvisation on the fundamental theme of his covenant promises. This divine improvisation operates through gift-exchange, delay, and non-identical repetition, challenging individualistic, deterministic, and arbitrary notions of election.

Inter-community exchange. God's strategy involves a dynamic of giving and receiving between Jew and Gentile:

• Jew to Gentile: Israel's refusal of the Messiah, though tragic, becomes the means by which the Gospel is extended to the Gentiles.
• Gentile to Jew: The Gentiles' improvisation on the covenant theme is intended to provoke "envy and jealousy" among the Jews, drawing them back into God's family.

Gratuity and coherence. This process is grounded in God's absolute gratuity ("God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy"), yet it is coherent and just, aiming for mercy on all (Jew and Gentile). The delay in Jewish conversion is part of God's patient strategy. Improvisation, with its coherent yet contingent patterns of give-and-take, helps us grasp this "metaphysics of grace," where God's consistency is not rigid necessity but faithful, open-ended love.

9. Music's Contribution to Theology: Beyond Mere Illustration

Music shows no sign of dying out. Chants will be sung, strings bowed, synthesisers programmed probably more than ever before. Music saturates our culture, holding out to the theologian sizeable opportunities which are at present woefully underdeveloped.

Conceptual tools and performative insights. This study demonstrates that music offers theology far more than mere illustration; it provides conceptual tools, models, and metaphors for exploring, clarifying, and re-conceiving doctrinal dynamics. By engaging with music as a performative activity, theology gains insights into:

• Temporal dynamics: Music's unique time-involvement enriches our understanding of creation, salvation, and eternity.
• Human freedom: Improvisation illuminates freedom as a dynamic interplay with constraints, not their absence.
• Relationality: Gift-exchange in music models the reciprocal nature of divine and human relationships.

Forming the theologian. Music also plays a crucial, often unconscious, role in shaping Christian identity and virtues like patience, faithfulness, and vigilance. It can "inform" theology by "forming" the theologian, influencing the very "shape" of Christian living and, consequently, theological thought. This highlights why music has historically held such a prominent place in Christian worship and mission.

Challenging theological habits. By integrating a "performative" mode, music challenges theology's intellectualism and its reliance on traditional, often linear, thought patterns. It offers a way to engage with contemporary culture's complexities, providing a "refreshing" and "re-vitalizing" approach to theological inquiry that is both intellectually rigorous and deeply responsive to God's distinctive ways with the world.