Are 'music' and 'sound' synonymous? Not quite. Rather they are two different aspects of a single phenomenon. 'Sound' describes waves of motion. 'Music' describes a particular role those waves play in the created order, especially that of forming connections. Sound is what music is made of. Music is what sound is made for.
Read MoreAccording to Jesus' teaching, this is the world we now live in: one in which the doors of heaven are flung open upon the earth, where the transcendent and the natural may intermingle. The inner life of the Trinity is disclosed to us in Christ by the Spirit, and we are invited to participate in that life with Him. For them that choose participation the way is open for music to find its definition and fulfillment in divine love.
Read MoreWhat will a self-emptying, world-filling love produce in a definition of music? On the one hand, emptying ourselves of individual tastes and prejudices will cause us to embrace a definition that is broad, allowing for as much freedom and potential as possible. On the other hand, a desire to fill the world will steer us toward a definition that is personal and specific, infinitely ordered and meaningful.
Read MoreIn the first place, worship is oriented vertically to God. But as closely as Jesus identifies love of God with love of neighbor, so close is the horizontal to the vertical in our worship. God is glorified not only as we are knit to Him but also as we are knit to one another by worshipping Him.
Read MoreWe are right to avoid dead religious observance: slavish church attendance, slavish bible reading, slavish almsgiving. But what makes these observances dead is not that they are religious; it is that we, observing them apart from Christ, are dead.
Read MoreBefore his ordination, the prophet Ezekiel sees a vision of the heavenly sanctuary. Nearly everything he describes he calls an "appearance" or "likeness" of something on earth. We are given the impression that these heavenly objects and beings are at the same time recognizable and impossible to describe. They apparently resemble earthly objects but remain wholly Other to us. This strange and beautiful correspondence between the heavenly and earthly creations is implicit throughout Scripture and is made more or less explicit in the epistle to the Hebrews and in the book of Revelation.
Read MoreAs we await Jesus' coming in this season of advent and set before our eyes His incarnation, we ought also to look forward to the day when we will see Him again in glory. At His first coming, Christ made manifest the fullness of God in flesh. The apostles beheld Him and extend His manifestation to us through the proclamation of the Word. If we receive the Word and confess Him, we receive eternal life and show forth the glory of His coming. We become incarnate words: images of God rescued from death.
Read MoreThere is palpable sense of anticipation in contemporary culture—a feeling that something entirely new is coming soon. The remnants of the modern age left over from the World Wars are still with us, though fading. As they fade, we assume that some new light will rush in to replace them. We live in the valley between two epochs. Only it is a valley of mists. Our feet tell us we are at an incline, but we cannot see the summit. This has led to numerous flawed predictions as to what our future will be. Though we created the atom bomb, the world has yet to succumb to all-out nuclear warfare. The further we drive computing technology, the further off we are from any kind of singularity. Though space colonization seems to be within our reach, the idea that it will be achieved within the next fifty years is less plausible than it was fifty years ago.
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