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Integrative Studies Lecture - March 21, 2000 (8PM Recital Hall)

 Mark Hijleh’s composition tonight is a refreshing model of the way Christians can discern and discuss beauty and truth.  Unlike typical academic theology, we very rarely get to see the community of scholars at work on the project of reflective thinking.  Quite often someone crafts a logical discourse--a fugue--and it is brought before an audience and deposited like a Ford Taurus at the end of an assembly line.  We never get to see the workmanship, we never participate in the process of research and design, so we very rarely appreciate the finished product to its fullest.  Tonight we have not only been read the manual, but we put in our two cents, participated in the production, and then sat in the seats and went for a ride.  This has been a true community project, and we have benefited from the gift of our brother and teacher.
Two things stand out in my own response to Mark’s presentation.  First, the aesthetic motif in interpreting the work of God is an imaginative approach, and one that is often under used in Western Christianity.  Quite often when we think of creation, we think in quite mechanical, even technological terms, and the powerful imagery of God-as-artist is lost.  This has terrible implications for the way we think of God, but particularly how we embrace the diversity of theological opinion.  The universal character of beauty is something that often transcends formal rationality.  In the area of ecumenism, the unifying role of music in the world community has always been evident.  Metaphors break down in many language systems, but music and art are appreciated across the seas of humanity.
This new language for theology is quite post-modern in its approach and has many hermeneutical implications.  As he has mentioned in the paper, this image of God is a very “modern” image, if not a more biblical one than those posited by most in the history of Western theology.  The emphasis upon the role of the imagination in theology is a post-modern development as well.  In the area of theological hermeneutics this approach has allowed for more diverse participation in the Christian discourse.
 Again, I would affirm the intent of this presentation to argue that the imaginative side of human experience--what Hijleh called the “non-ordered”--can be used in the methodical pursuits of understanding God.  One remembers John Wesley’s apocryphal text—“If you can’t sing it, don’t preach it!”  Even when the propositional features of creeds and hymns are placed on the lips of the believer, one realizes that music lifts the Word to a higher level of experience.  In fact, many post-modern theologians today would remind us that doxology has always preceded theology. [1]  The point that I think he has made quite clearly is that being a Christian is a lot like being a composer of music, and being an interpreter of the Word is very much like interpreting art.  This is the very point that Gadamer has made in his hermeneutics.  Which places him in very good company—at least as far as I am concerned.

 Second, I appreciated the elevation of the incarnation in this discussion.  This emphasis addresses how the Christian participates with the on-going work of Christ in creation.  Evangelicals, in particular, need corrected from looking at the cross as the sum total of the Christ event. Understanding Jesus as composer helps us to see how the imitation of the life of Christ has redemptive implications beyond the personal to the public, even to the cosmic.  To understand the work of Christ as a model for the work of Christians is to make all of our vocations truly a call to discipleship.
But music as a vehicle of God’s rhema can also become a human fixation.  The possibility of a reductionism is evident in the critique of those Western traditions that threw music out of their churches, piano, song-leader, and, whatever ancient equivalent to the overhead that they had.  Some pastors silence the organ at the time of their prayers, because they are deeply aware of how the music can not only create a liturgical atmosphere, but can also be manipulative and based in a mass psychology.  Once, before stepping on to the platform of a youth convention to preach, I was approached by the worship team as to whether I wanted an “upper” or a “downer” to precede my sermon.  Obviously these young singers knew the power of music.  I’m not so sure they understood the power of God, the Holy Spirit.
 This leads to some suggestions that I hope would fill out the presentation tonight.  The Enlightenment’s separation of the sacred and the profane began also a separation of adjectival usages like Christian music and secular music.  Still, the religious roots of music are unmistakable.  Many anthropologists and theologians have concurred on this fact.  But is music a religiously based phenomenon?  Or is musicality a part of the human condition?  The question of music itself is in the backdrop of our reflection.
Though he argues to the contrary, Dr. Hijleh seems to have been concerned tonight with the question of “Church” music.  Though a Christocentric approach would, at first glance, appear to bridge the Enlightenment division of music between the sacred and profane, in the end, he captures all of music under the rubric of “Christ.”  He obviously believes that the Church should take the lead in all matters, and for the sake of this paper, all matters music.  The cosmic question of music seems to be relegated to the pejorative idea that those who discover good music outside of the Church have done so without the explicit awareness of the true Author.   One wonders why this condescension is necessary.  Is he really arguing for a theocentric model?  I.e., what explicit Christian witness is there to defining such music?  Besides the two contours he has mentioned from the historical Jesus, the ability to make the complex simple, and the packaging of truth in ambiguous forms, I am not sure what specifically good music would look like.  Isn’t the analysis of these criteria a bit speculative and subjective in themselves?  Who will be the one to discern who has been able to create such superb music?  Even the most obvious question arises when we ask if Bach truly did improve upon Luther’s congregational songs.  Are the tools of interpretation themselves to be suspect?  I would again argue that what makes Christian music Christian is the Word, the meaning, and the interpretive discourse that the music would seek to carry.
I suppose I have asked a lot of questions that come from the catalyst of this experience tonight.  I have been helped to see that God is at work in the craft of the musician.  But if all music were truly God’s music would not pneumatology make a proper focus?  In theology, we speak of “Christocentrism” to speak of the mission of the second person of the Trinity.  I am not sure I completely understand how it has been used in this context.  Generally, if there are analogies to be made along these lines, music is the creative realm of the Spirit and the Word composes the lyrics and gives meaning to those expressions.  One is fond of noting Irenaeus’ reference to the Word and the Spirit as the two hands of God (Against Heresies 4.20.1). This implies the Father’s “double sending,” an interlocking mission of the second and third person of the Trinity.  This relationship is mutually developed. [2]  Just as the Son is sent in the power of the Holy Spirit, so does the Spirit continue the mission of the Risen Lord.  Dr. Hijleh has asked for the right hand to guide his playing, I am encouraging him to look at God’s left hand for a more artistic flourish outside the boundaries of the codified Church.  In emphasizing a Christocentrism, in the over-emphasis, there is always the danger of Christomonism.  Inherent in this kind of Christomonism is a triumphalism that moves from understanding that Christ is at work in the Church to that of relegating all of Christ’s work to the Church.  Regarding this word, I would quote from the creative evangelical theologian Clark Pinnock, “It is not right to be Christocentric if being Christocentric means subordinating the Spirit to the Son.  The two are partners…” [3]
I suppose that in this discussion of the role of music in theological creativity, I was surprised by the underdeveloped theme of pneumatology.  In light of the Charismatic influence on Church music today, a developed doctrine of the Holy Spirit would have rounded out the presentation with a more Trinitarian approach.  The Charismatic movement has offered this non-ordered return to expressive renewal, but without the Christocentrism that Hijleh has called for.  Certainly we can understand the excesses of this movement, and how a turn to Christocentrism would help.  But a rounded out doctrine of the Spirit would check the inherent christomonism I have mentioned, and at the same time offer the composer the opportunity to participate in the continual redemption of creation awaiting its final fulfillment in the eschaton.  Christology is rooted in the history of the Church; pneumatology is the guarantee of the world to come.
 

Because Dr. Hijleh used Bach as an example of a sophisticated Christian art music composer, I would conclude by mentioning the ideas of the great Lutheran theologian, Karl Barth.  In 1956, Barth published a monograph on the life of Mozart to define his theological paradigm.  By way of summary, he said: “It may be that when the angels go about their task of praising God, they play only Bach. I am sure, however, that when they are together en famille, they play Mozart--and that then too our dear Lord listens with special pleasure.” [4]  Because Barth was concerned his entire life with the reduction of God to the human, the connecting of his theology with that of Mozart is an obvious one.  There is always the danger of elevating Bach as a great musician because of his craft and his position; but with Mozart we are only in awe of God who works through such debased human instruments.  An emphasis upon the incarnation leads to an appreciation of the hidden character of divine creativity.  It certainly is true that we hold this treasure in earthen vessels.  It may be that the best example of Jesus composing music is to be found in the hidden genius of the worldly and the frail, the streets sounds of the poor and the spirituals of the slave. The expert church musician may fill us with the heavenly refrains of grandeur and exaltation, but it may be possible that Jesus of Nazareth still likes Clapton.
This discussion of Barth v. Mozart, or the devils in Beethoven and Wagner, continues today.  I appreciated the distinctions between preference and performance tonight.  When Jimi Hendrix put the sounds of the American “Star Spangled Banner” to the screaming wails of an electric guitar, patriotism would never be the same again.  Such deconstruction and development is always necessary to tune the ears of the culture.  I have appreciated Dr. Hijleh’s gift and his desire to be like Jesus in that gift’s stewardship.  I would encourage him to keep composing and playing “with both hands.”  And we will be the better for it.

END NOTES

1.  See particularly the style of systematic theology posited by Geoffrey Wainwright, Doxology: The Praise of God in Worship, Doctrine, and Life (London: Oxford, 1980) or S.E. Saliers, Worship as Theology: A Foretaste of Glory (Nashville: Abingdon, 1994).

2.  Yves Congar expressed this relationship as “no Christology without pneumatology and no pneumatology without Christology” in The Word and the Spirit (New York: Harper and Row, 1984), p. 1, and Clark H. Pinnock called the relationship “dialectical,” Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1996), p. 82.

3.  Ibid., p. 82.

4.  Karl Barth. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, translated by Clarence K. Pott and forward by John Updike (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdman's, 1956, 1986), 23.