Jeremy S. Begbie

The Gospel Coalition 2023 Award of Distinction (Arts & Culture) Southwestern Journal of Theology 2023 Book Award (Honorable Mention, Church Music/Worship/Christianity and the Arts) Late-modern culture has been marred by reductionism, which shrinks and flattens our vision of ourselves and the world. Renowned theologian Jeremy Begbie believes that the arts by their nature push against reductionism, helping us understand and experience more deeply the infinite richness of God's love and of the world God has made. In Abundantly More, Begbie analyzes and critiques reductionism and its effects. He shows how the arts can resist reductive impulses by opening us up to an unlimited abundance of meaning. And he demonstrates how engaging the arts in light of a trinitarian imagination (which itself cuts against reductionism) generates a unique way of witnessing to and sharing in the life and purposes of God. Theologians, artists, and any who are interested in how these fields intersect will find rich resources here and discover the crucial role the arts can play in keeping our culture open to the possibility of God.

The Gospel Coalition 2023 Award of Distinction (Arts & Culture)Southwestern Journal of Theology 2023 Book Award (Honorable Mention, Church Music/Worship/Christianity and the Arts)Late-modern culture has been marred by reductionism, which shrinks and flattens our vision of ourselves and the world. Renowned theologian Jeremy Begbie believes that the arts by their nature push against reductionism, helping us understand and experience more deeply the infinite richness of God's love and of the world God has made.In Abundantly More, Begbie analyzes and critiques reductionism and its effects. He shows how the arts can resist reductive impulses by opening us up to an unlimited abundance of meaning. And he demonstrates how engaging the arts in light of a trinitarian imagination (which itself cuts against reductionism) generates a unique way of witnessing to and sharing in the life and purposes of God.Theologians, artists, and any who are interested in how these fields intersect will find rich resources here and discover the crucial role the arts can play in keeping our culture open to the possibility of God.

World-renowned theologian Jeremy Begbie has been at the forefront of teaching and writing on theology and the arts for more than twenty years. Amid current debates and discussions on the topic, Begbie emphasizes the role of a biblically grounded creedal orthodoxy as he shows how Christian theology and the arts can enrich each other. Throughout the book, Begbie demonstrates the power of classic trinitarian faith to bring illumination, surprise, and delight whenever it engages with the arts.

Music can answer questions that often confound more discursive modes of thought. Music takes concepts that are all too familiar, reframes these concepts, and returns them to us with incisive clarity and renewed vision. Unity is one of these ""all too familiar concepts,"" thrown around by politicians, journalists, and pastors as if we all know what it means. By turning to music, especially musical space, the relational structure of unity becomes less abstract and more tangible within our philosophy. Arnold Schoenberg, as an inherently musical thinker, is our guide in this study of unity. His reworking of musical structure, dissonance, and metaphysics transformed the tonal language and aesthetic landscape of twentieth-century music. His philosophy of compositional unity helps us to deconstruct and reconceive how unity can be understood and worked with both aesthetically and theologically. This project also critiques Schoenberg's often monadic musical metaphysic by turning to Colin Gunton's conviction that the particularity and unity at the heart of God's triune being should guide all of our theological endeavors. Throughout, music accompanies our thinking, demonstrating not only how theology can benefit the philosophy of music but also how the philosophy of music can enrich and augment theological discourse. ""Stearns's Handling Dissonance boldly and deftly enacts an intellectual exchange between a contemporary trinitarian theologian and one of the most profound composer-theorists of all time. Renovating the concept of unity as inherently bound up with multiplicity, the study enriches theological thinking through musical models and fertilizes musical thinking through theological principles."" --Matthew Arndt, University of Iowa School of Music ""In Handling Dissonance, Chelle L. Stearns gives us new language and a new way of thinking about a Trinitarian conception of unity and its relation to such ideas as materiality, substance, particularity, and freedom . . . This is an engaging and important book for theologians and music scholars alike."" --Mark A. Peters, President, Society for Christian Scholarship in Music ""Compellingly argued and incisively theorized, Handling Dissonance is a sustained attack on faults in the underlying principles of Schoenberg's aesthetic theology, and a foil for redemptive meditation on Colin Gunton's Trinitarian theology--a true landmark in interdisciplinary thought."" --Bennett Zon, Durham University ""Chelle L. Stearns's Handling Dissonance is a fascinating study of Schoenberg's 'aesthetic theology' . . . Schoenberg's understanding of unity--one that dissolves particularity in itself--is placed up against Gunton's and Begbie's concepts of unity that celebrate the particular and allow it to thrive. The book will be of value to students of music theory and philosophy as well as theology."" --Jack Boss, University of Oregon Chelle L. Stearns is Associate Professor of Theology at The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology in Seattle. She received her PhD from the University of St. Andrews as part of the Institute for Theology, Imagination, and the Arts.

Christianity Today 2008 Book Award (Theology/Ethics)Even fallen humans compose beautiful symphonies, music that touches emotions as nothing else can. Resounding Truth shows Christians how to uncover the Gospel message found in the many melodies that surround us. Theologian and musician Jeremy Begbie believes our divinely-inspired imagination reveals opportunity for sincere, heartfelt praise. With practical examples, lucid explanations, and an accessible bibliography, this book will help music lovers discover how God's diversity shines through sound. Begbie helps readers see the Master of Song and experience the harmony of heavenly hope.

Theology, Music and Time aims to show how music can enrich and advance theology, extending our wisdom about God and God's ways with the world. Instead of asking: what can theology do for music?, it asks: what can music do for theology? Jeremy Begbie argues that music's engagement with time gives the theologian invaluable resources for understanding how it is that God enables us to live 'peaceably' with time as a dimension of the created world. Without assuming any specialist knowledge of music, he explores a wide range of musical phenomena - rhythm, metre, resolution, repetition, improvisation - and through them opens up some of the central themes of the Christian faith - creation, salvation, eschatology, time and eternity, Eucharist, election and ecclesiology. He shows that music can not only refresh theology with new models, but also release it from damaging habits of thought which have hampered its work in the past.

Theology, Music and Time aims to show how music can enrich and advance theology, extending our wisdom about God and God’s ways with the world. Instead of asking: what can theology do for music?, it asks: what can music do for theology? Jeremy Begbie argues that music’s engagement with time gives the theologian invaluable resources for understanding how it is that God enables us to live ‘peaceably’ with time as a dimension of the created world. Without assuming any specialist knowledge of music, he explores a wide range of musical phenomena - rhythm, metre, resolution, repetition, improvisation - and through them opens up some of the central themes of the Christian faith - creation, salvation, eschatology, time and eternity, Eucharist, election and ecclesiology. He shows that music can not only refresh theology with new models, but also release it from damaging habits of thought which have hampered its work in the past.