JEREMY BEGBIE

Professor of Theology, Duke University

Affiliated Lecturer in Music, University of Cambridge

Thursday, January 30, 2025 @ 4 PM   

C. S. Lewis and Unfulfilled Longing: An Exploration through Music

Join the January GFCF Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86248592392?pwd=BaQyxBjUBWo3WWoQYqlFPPkEYbyr2Y.1

Abstract  

C. S. Lewis famously spoke of fleeting experiences of joy he had early in life, a longing for something this world cannot satisfy. Dr. Begbie will creatively explore this through music, comparing this pre-Christian unfulfilled desire with Christian hope. 

Biography 

Jeremy Begbie is the Thomas A. Langford Distinguished Research Professor of Theology at Duke Divinity School, and McDonald Agape Director of Duke Initiatives in Theology and the Arts. He teaches systematic theology, and specializes in the interface between theology and the arts. He is Senior Member at Wolfson College, Cambridge, and an Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of Music at the University of Cambridge. His books include Theology, Music and Time (Cambridge University Press); Resounding Truth: Christian Wisdom in the World of Music (Baker/SPCK); and Music, Modernity, and God (Oxford University Press); and Abundantly More (Baker). Jeremy is a very engaging speaker who has taught widely in the UK and North America, and delivered multimedia performance-lectures in many parts of the world.
https://imagejournal.org/article/a-conversation-with-jeremy-begbie/

See also David Brooks article on Faith as Longing: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/19/opinion/faith-god-christianity.html?unlocked_article_code=1.i04.WWSE.f9inRzMrdqBI&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Concerning Abundantly More: The Theological promise of the Arts in a Reductionist World,

Late-modern culture has been marred by reductionism, which shrinks and flattens our vision of ourselves and the world. 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 the world God has made. Begbie in this work analyses 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. This trajectory keeps our culture open to the possibility of God.

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Below are some mind-expanding thoughts from Begbie’s book. May you discover more of the unfathomable depths of Christ and richness of your faith: Christ in you, between you, your family, and your friends. This is the kind of theology that makes a big difference. Chapter 9 is very helpful on the Arts and the local church. Could this God be the source of our primordial human longing?

• God is Uncontainable or Unlimited by time and space. “There is always more to God than we could ever think or say, always more than could be thought or said.” (J. Begbie, 2023, 129). “God is other than the world, and in this sense transcendent, but transcendent in a manner  that transcends all creaturely types of transcendence. As transcendent, God is present to, upholds, and carries forward the entire contingent order with all its levels.” (J. Begbie, 2023, 127) “God cannot be circumscribed by the finitude of this world…. God cannot be encompassed or confined by any object or event in the world of space and time, nor by the space-time continuum as a whole…. God exceeds all human systems of representation, and that of course includes human thought and language—exceeding our cognitive grasp or the limitations of human speech.”

• God is Infinity—in relation to time, God’s eternity; in relation to space, God’s immensity. God cannot be confined by the time-space continuum. God is incomparable as articulated in the encounter and calling of Moses: “I Am that I Am.”  God is not a member of a quantitative series, like a first cause within creation. He is the very ground of being. God is incomparable re: power as both quality and quantity. “The created order does not contain its own explanation, its deepest secret lies beyond itself. Because of its dependence on and openness to the agency of the infinite God, it is possessed of an inexhaustible depth. There is always more that  can be discovered, thought, and spoken.” (J. Begbie, 2023, 155) “All zero-sum views of divine and human freedom—views that assume the two are inherently competitive—will also be put in question; divine freedom will be reimagined as freedom for the love and freedom of the other.” (2023,156) 

• God is Uncontainable re: glory, goodness, excellence, truth, beauty, personal warmth and sacrificial love (agape). He is the greatest good imaginable, the most splendid beauty, the Logos of all truth.

• He is, in balance, a Covenant-Keeping God: He is with you, for you, among you (past, present and future). This love is an active pressure within the godhead, dedicated to our human good. It is a resilient, steadfast love and faithfulness—articulates often as the God of Abraham, Isaac, & Jacob … (a multi-generational, promise-keeping God). This involves a grand narrative scope and trajectory of God’s involvement with our world. Begbie speaks of the “Unbounded pressure of covenantal goodness, other-directed faithfulness.” It is infinite, eternal, immense. John Webster speaks of: “God’s boundless capacity for nearness.” The results for us are an incomprehensible, ineffable expression of the Lord’s steadfast love: “He is resolved not to let God’s gracious purposes for creation come to nothing.” He is God-for-God’s-people & God-for-God’s world. (J. Begbie, 2023, 136)

• God is the eternal and the supreme architect and possessor of life and the source of all life: i.e., God’s energizing and life-giving power, sustaining created existence in relation to its Creator. (Deut 5:26; Jer 10:2-16; Matt 16:16; Heb 3:12). Patristic Theology states that: The world is possessed of a pattern of divine rationality by virtue of which all finite forms of this world are related to their ultimate origin. All creatures find their primordial coherence and ground in the logos. (J. Begbie, 2023,168)