God’s Song and Music’s Meanings

The Revd Dr James Hawkey has been a Minor Canon of Westminster Abbey since 2010, and Precentor since 2013, responsible for the daily worshipping life of the Abbey and for designing and planning many of the special services which characterise its unique life. In 2015 he moves to be Dean of Clare College, Cambridge. He read theology at Cambridge, graduating with first class honours and various prizes before becoming a Gosden Scholar of Selwyn College for his MPhil and PhD (in ecclesiology, under the supervision of the late Professor Daniel W. Hardy). Having taught RE and Philosophy at Bedford School, he trained for the priesthood at Westcott House, spent a semester at the Angelicum University in Rome, and served his curacy in inner-city Portsmouth. He was a rapporteur (theological and reporting secretary) to the bishops of the 2008 Lambeth Conference, an invited theologian to the WCC Faith and Order Plenary in Crete, and currently serves as a member of the International Anglican-Reformed Dialogue, the CofE-URC Dialogue, and the Malines Conversations Group. He has published in The Ecumenical Review, One in Christ, and Theology, and writes and speaks regularly on ecumenism and ecclesiology. Professor Ben Quash was Chaplain and Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, and a lecturer in the Cambridge Theological Federation from 1996-1999, then Dean and Fellow of Peterhouse until he came to King’s College London as its first Professor of Christianity and the Arts in 2007. He works principally in the area of Christian theology, with a longstanding interest in the 19th-century background to modern theology, 20th-century systematics, philosophical theology, and Christian ethics. One of his key research interests is in how the arts can play a part in renewing and refreshing theological engagement with the Bible. He is the author of two major academic monographs - Theology and the Drama of History (CUP, 2005) and Found Theology: History, Imagination and the Holy Spirit (T&T

Foreword

Ben Quash

Introduction: What Does ‘Musical Meaning’ Mean?

Jeremy Begbie

SECTION 1: THE MEANINGS OF MUSIC IN WESTERN HISTORY

1. Providence and Prayer: the Theology of Music in the Patristic Church

Carol Harrison

2. Music in the Great Chain of Being: Medieval Christianity

Emma Dillon

3. Hearing Revelation: Music and Theology in the Reformation

Jonathan Arnold

4. Music, Atheism and Modernity

Gareth Wilson

SECTION 2: MUSIC’S MEANING IN WORSHIP

4. The Worship of God and the Quest of the Spirit: ‘Contemporary’ versus ‘Traditional’ Church Music

Gordon Graham

5. The Rise of the Individual, and the Fall of Communal Participation

Anthony Ruff

SECTION 3: MUSICAL MEANING IN CHURCH AND WORLD

6. Musical Promiscuity: the Gods Music Serves

Lucy Winkett

7. What’s Sacred About ‘Sacred Music’?

John Butt

SECTION 4: GOD, THE COSMOS, AND THE MEANING OF MUSIC

8. Christ the Song of God: Is Music Absolute?

Daniel Chua

9. Sacred Music and the Holy Trinity

David Bentley Hart

CONCLUSION

Response to the Essays

Rowan Williams