a triune chord

it's been a litte while since an abstract thought really got me going, but last week my sister had me read an article about a guy who had spoken at one of her chapels at college. it was about how music can inform our understanding of theology.

a couple of years ago i read dorothy sayers' the mind of the maker. sayers was saying that God has left his image on creation... and so a lot of things that we take as theological mysteries are actually displayed in our daily lives. for example, the trinity. how do we wrap our heads around three persons in one godhead? but a book is both the creative idea that conceives it, the tangible manifestation of that idea in book form, and the effect that the book has on those who read it. the Father--the creative conceiver; the Son--the tangible incarnation; and the Spirit--the continual effector.

jeremy begbie, the guy the article was about, draws out the idea of trinity in a musical chord. in a chord, each note remains unique and individual, but the three notes blend together in harmony to create a whole chord. while objects can't occupy the same space (and our minds tend to work in terms of objects, thereby making the trinity a difficult concept), sound can. here's a link to an interview with begbie and one to the abstract of an interview he did with mars hill. he's also got a book out called beholding the glory. i'm too cheap to buy it, but if anyone else does, i'd love to hear about it.

i don't have much to say about all of this other than that i love to discover new ways that God has revealed himself in creation and in art. a while ago, pat wallin posted on the role of art in the church. something that we've lost in the modern evangelical tradition (which is making a comeback in the emergent church) is a respect for God's revelation in the arts. we have been created in the image of our creator God to be creative. it's not a frivolous thing. it's vital--it's intrinsic to our understanding of who our Father is.