Redeeming Transcendence in the Arts

by Jeremy S. Begbie

Publisher:

Eerdmans

, 2018

Overview

It is widely believed that there is something transcendent about the arts, that they can awaken a profound sense of awe, wonder, and mystery, of something “beyond” this world. Many argue that this opens up fruitful opportunities for conversation with those who may have no use for conventional forms of Christianity.

Jeremy Begbie—a leading voice on theology and the arts—in this book employs a biblical, trinitarian imagination to show how Christian involvement in the arts can (and should) be shaped by a vision of God’s transcendence revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. After critiquing some current writing on the subject, he goes on to offer rich resources to help readers engage constructively with the contemporary cultural moment even as they bear witness to the otherness and uncontainability of the triune God of love.

Key Features

• Demonstates how can the arts witness to the transcendence of the Christian God
• Gives a creative and thoughtful account of theology and the arts
• Focuses on art and creativity in the context of the Triune God

Contents

• Stirrings of Transcendence?
• Sublime Transcendence
• Disturbing Transcendence
• Redeeming Transcendence

Praise for the Print Edition

Jeremy Begbie has been a central and seminal figure in the recent revolution in theology and the arts. Begbie’s argument here, both learned and lucid, is that only when we allow for a more explicitly biblical and Trinitarian vision of God will the vague claims for transcendence in the arts begin to make sense. This book will challenge and illuminate the whole field.

— N. T. Wright, University of St. Andrews

A fruitful ambiguity resides in the title of Jeremy Begbie’s splendid new book, Redeeming Transcendence in the Arts. Who is the agent of the ‘redeeming’ promised on the cover? On the one hand, it is Begbie himself, whose incisive analysis redeems the category of ‘transcendence’ from the wispy, dualistic, conceptual fog where it has, in late modernity, been stranded. But on the other hand— and more profoundly—the implied agent of the redeeming is the Creator God, whose otherness and uncontainability are disclosed precisely in and through the specific acts of overflowing, self-giving love narrated in Scripture. Begbie contends that God’s transcendence is not a matter of distance from the world; instead, it is precisely a ‘redeeming transcendence’ that acts to restore the creation. Human works of art participate in that redeeming work through ‘sympathetic resonance,’ being taken up into the triune God’s action to bring ‘the integrity of creation to its fulfillment.’ This is brilliant theological writing that illumines our cultural setting and challenges readers to receive the arts with newly opened eyes and ears.

—Richard B. Hays, Duke Divinity School

Product Details

• Title: Redeeming Transcendence in the Arts: Bearing Witness to the Triune God
• Author: Jeremy S. Begbie
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Print Publication Date: 2018
• Logos Release Date: 2019
• Pages: 212
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
• Subjects: Christianity and the arts; Transcendence of God; Trinity
• ISBNs: 9780802874948, 0802874940
• Resource ID: LLS:RDMNGTRNSCNDRTS
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T02:36:08Z

About Jeremy S. Begbie

Jeremy Begbie is the Thomas A. Langford Research Professor at Duke Divinity School, and specializes in the interface between theology and the arts. Previously, he served as the associate principal of Ridley Hall, Cambridge, and has also been honorary professor at the University of St. Andrews, where he directed the research project, Theology Through the Arts at the Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts.

Begbie studied music and philosophy at Edinburgh University, and theology at Aberdeen and Cambridge. A professionally trained musician, he has performed extensively as a pianist, oboist and conductor. He is an ordained minister of the Church of England, having served for a number of years as assistant pastor of a Church in West London. He is author of a number of books, including Voicing Creation’s Praise: Towards a Theology of the Arts, Theology, Music and Time, and most recently, Resounding Truth: Christian Wisdom in the World of Music, which won the Christianity Today 2008 Book Award in the theology/ethics category.