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The Row Boat"Had we but world enough, and time..." * Reliquary Theology2/21/2005 12:28:32I wonder if, in a world where either God is dead or God has no interest in His cathedrals of thought, theology can be revived as a wholly aesthetic art in the pattern of classical liturgical music, which is still performed and practiced today. For many of the great theologians, their work was surely more akin to these arts as an aesthetic discovery far in preference to its pious function. This would consist in perhaps the nature of God, the reason to the universe, reaching most of all to the great why which the noble natural sciences have no particular purview in answering. As far as the sciences are concerned, perhaps it can be demonstrated, why is a thoroughly unnecessary and irrelevant question, and one which could be gladly turned over to the idle speculation of the theologians. Theology, detatched from piety, is the crafting of the ideal. All arts deal in realities: painting in a flat surface and paints, music with the logistics of performance, &c. Theology deals with metaphysical and now scientific realities. In the same way as the other arts, it also seeks constantly to evade them. It bears no claim for being right, as there are no particular truth values of music. The responsibility of theology is to the language it unrolls and the society that will begin to speak it. What service, then, would a secular theology perform? The discussion, perhaps, of what we want, which constantly is hammering at the doors of the affluent. Now you have it, so what are you going to do? Building cathedrals and feeding the poor seems as good an idea as any, and they come directly from theology. But the effects overwhelmingly should not be practical. They should be wholistic, the way music influences us. It forms the whole sense of sound, disciplining our interpretations. Theology similarly is a contribution to language. It provides a manner by which to talk about reasons, by which to express and supress our desires. More than all of this it must be clever, engaging, and diversionary. Fun, I might begin to say, except at risk of threatening the traditional aesthetic of solemnity, which probably many theologians of the future will enjoy greatly. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
re: Reliquary Theology - 4/11/2005 20:58:29
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