Episode 24 - The Heavenly Harmonies: Music as a Divine Gift in Christian Theology

Do you feel the heartbeat of the cosmos? 
Have you experienced the symphony of sounds that emanates from every corner of the universe? 

We invite you to journey with us as we explore the symphony of the cosmos, where every note, every sound, every rhythm, is bathed in the divine light of Christ Jesus. 

We'll help you distinguish between the cacophony of noise and the harmonious serenade of music, revealing the divine significance music holds. 

Let's begin to examine the Bible's numerous musical references and the significance of the eight-note musical scale. Let's unravel the threads of this cosmic melody and discover how it echoes the glory of God in our hearts and minds.

Ready to witness the divine dance of darkness and music? As we venture deeper into this celestial symphony, we'll uncover the profound ways music can inspire and uplift our spirits, as a divine gift from God. 

Drawing upon the wisdom of Victor Hugo, we'll explore how music allows us to express the inexpressible, painting emotions and experiences beyond the confines of language. 

From the songs of angels and archangels to the hymns sung on earthly grounds, join us in this musical worship of the Lord. Tune in, dear listeners, and allow this episode to be a symphony for your soul.

The theme music is "Wager with Angels" by Nathan Moore

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:30

Welcome to the Christ-Centered Cosmic Civilization Podcast and we're gonna move on to a new theme for the next few episodes, thinking really about music. We've thought quite a lot about angels and maths, and then we thought about the Fae creatures or the mythological creatures, and, in a way, something that unites all those last three themes is music. The angels, as we'll see, are very musical, and music and maths go very much together. There's something very musical about maths and some would say music is very mathematical. And then, of course, with the Fae creatures, we saw how the satyrs are singing creatures and the musical repertoire of the Fae world, particularly the monarchical Fae societies, is well known. But we're gonna.

Speaker 1: 1:44

Let's begin by just asking the question what is the difference between noise and music? Now, we have to ask that question because sometimes what is offered as music can sound more like noise. Now there's a sense in which, when people are older, they listen to music and say that's just noise, it's not like the proper music I used to listen to and then, and that that's a kind of relative judgement that's made. But noise is not just random sounds, so there's mere sounds. Then there's something that we might call noise, which is a conglomeration of sound and then music is when sounds are united together and placed in a proper order and with purpose. So, like noise might give us a headache and music might take it away, music is not at all really random or chaotic, even though there have been in the modern period attempts to redefine or deconstruct the notion of music to make it something that is random or even chaotic. But even the kinds of music that might sound quite chaotic and some of the experimental jazz music that I quite enjoy, sometimes people say, oh, that's just chaotic noise, but it isn't, once you listen carefully. And even music that may set maybe even more apparently chaotic than that still has something more to it. There is deep order and harmony in music and let's forget now about these fringe cases where that sound more like noise than music. Let's just think about music as we generally understand that. That's the vastly overwhelming experience of music. There is deep order and harmony and it is that order and structure and harmony, the pattern and purpose. It's that that makes music so powerful. And music has this a basic rhythm, structure, beat, and even the most complicated music can be written down as simple notes on a page and that notational system and we might even spend a whole episode just thinking about the notational systems of music. Those notes mean that we can study, analyze the music and then other musicians can play the same music over and over again.

Speaker 1: 5:44

The word symphony, which we might use about a piece of music. It can be described as a symphony and that just means united sounds, and that really, perhaps, is what music is in the end. It is a uni, it sounds being joined together with a particular kind of order and structure and purpose. Sounds become music when they're properly united together, with this purpose really, and the structure, the order obeying rules and those rules of music is something we will want to look at Now. When we study this order and structure of music, the rules, the patterns, the harmony, the why some things work and some things not so much, when we study all of that actually, we find deep patterns that teach us about Jesus and the truths of the Bible In the Bible. Well, the Bible is just full of references to music, and heaven is full of music and hope, and so one of the things we might flag up and perhaps get into more later is the notion that the basic musical scale has eight notes, and eight is the number of new creation and resurrection, as we've seen, jesus raised from the dead on the eighth day. And so the fact that music has this eight structure to it and we might argue it doesn't necessarily have to be organized around eight, aren't there other mathematical patterns that can govern music? Well, kind of it's been done, it's been attempted. Has it been attempted successfully? Meh, that's more questionable. We'll maybe think about that in a future episode.

Speaker 1: 7:55

But where we want to start is this that the Lord, god, made our ears and the whole cosmos in such a way that sounds can be harmoniously woven together To make music. And studying music should open. Well, not just studying it, just merely listening to it, playing it, listening to it, participating in it, and then perhaps studying it. All of that should open our minds and hearts and ears to the glory of God. Well, all that is by way just of introduction. I think I'd like to remember when we were exploring this, maybe about 10 years ago, when we were in Swansea, working Swansea and Mount Pleasant Baptist Church there, and the first of the topics we examined when we were wanting to see how Jesus makes sense of everything, the first one we gave ourselves to formally study is this subject of music and we had a phrase that we used in a gospel service and it's this if you like music, you'll love Jesus. And we liked that because it was just trying to capture in one headline why the fact of this deep connection between Jesus and music.

Speaker 1: 9:41

The largest book of the Bible is the music book. The book of Psalms, the final Psalm, psalm 150, this is this mighty call for the whole creation to use every possible kind of instrument in order to make music to the glory of God. Or think of Psalm 148. Actually, let's just take a moment with Psalm 148. It's this sequence of right. At the end of the Psalms, there's this pattern. Psalm 150 is very musically driven because it literally lists all these instruments to be used trumpet, lute, harp, timbre, dancing, string instruments, flute, cymbals, clashing cymbals. So the percussion is very highly focused on there.

Speaker 1: 10:47

But Psalm 148, in this theme and in this musical expression of praise, praise the Lord, praise the Lord from the heavens this is Psalm 148, praise him in the heights. And so you'll see that the musical call begins in the highest heaven. Because from verse two, praise him all his angels, praise him all his hosts. So those are the hundreds of millions of angels, angels and archangels and all the company of heaven joining in. And then, as we come down from that third heaven, we come into the second heaven, and here it's from verse three praise him sun and moon, praise him all you stars of light. Praise him, you, heavens of heavens, you waters above the heavens. So that's the celestial ocean, all of that that is embodied in the second, or captured in the title of the second, heaven. All of them are to be involved in this singing and worship, this musical worship of the Lord.

Speaker 1: 12:04

And it's praising the Lord, all of this to show off the Lord. Let them praise the name of the Lord, for he commanded and they were created. He also established them forever and ever. He made it a creed which shall not pass away. So the theme of the praise there is him in his creation, creating, and not just creating them temporarily, but creating them so that they will always be. They will always be. So, yes, they were created in one form in the fallen creation. There's a way, and perhaps they exist in a different way. Even stars die and so on, and yet they are to be re-created for this resurrection, new creation, so that they will not, they shall not, pass away. All of these things have an everlasting future in some way, and so, for all these reasons, the third heaven and the second heaven are joined together in praise.

Speaker 1: 13:13

But now we come down to the first heaven and the earth from verse 7. Praise the Lord from the earth, you great sea creatures and all the depths. And then, in verse 8, were in the first heaven fire and hail, snow and clouds, stormy wind, fulfilling his word Mountains, hills, fruitful trees, cedars, beast cattle, creeping things and flying fowl, kings of the earth and all the peoples, princes and all judges of the earth. So you can see, in this concept of the Christ-centered cosmic civilization and we've always been aware that there is this cascading hierarchy from the heights down. And here we've gone. The first heaven now it was mountains, hills, trees, the beast's, flying creatures, then it's the kings, if you notice, of the earth, princes and judges. So it's the, in the cosmic hierarchy, it's those that are appointed to rule. And then verse 12, young men and maidens, old men and children. Old men, there are at the level of children in the hierarchy, which is quite an interesting point.

Speaker 1: 14:40

And then verse 30, let them praise the name of the Lord, for his name alone is exalted, his glory is above the earth and heaven. So now all of this, the three heavens, earth, the depths, everything are gathered together and relativized next to this living God Father, son and Spirit. Who is this living God? The three are above the heavens and the earth, so they transcend us in creation and yet call forth from us this musical expression. And then it ends in verse 14, by centering actually on church. He's exalted the strength of his people, the praise of all his saints, children of Israel, people near to him Praise the Lord.

Speaker 1: 15:32

And right at the core of the whole cosmic worship, musical worship, is church which, in its church that is able to give that, it will lead the whole creation and give this true and ultimate musical expression. Now, we've taken time to do that, because it is, if we take that literally and think of Psalm 148, 149, 15, so on, it's as if the whole creation, from top to bottom, is supposed to be filled with music and singing that is full of the glory of God, expressing the glory and meaning and wonder of the living God that we are to revel in our creation. And as church, we, as church, centred on this idea that we are near to him, we are allowed to be near to him, seated with him in heavenly places, and that our existence with him is guaranteed forever and ever. So this idea that music, then the engine of music, is this Christ-Centered cosmic civilization, that structure, that hierarchy, is the engine for all the music that should fill the universe. It doesn't mean Well, we'll come back to whether it's okay to sing about things other than like Christian worship songs but all music has this flavor and energy from the Christ-Centered cosmic civilization, as we'll see, because music is not just something that human beings invented. That's really important to know.

Speaker 1: 17:29

Music is cosmic. It exists on levels of reality that we on earth could never access. We could never access, listen into, pry into record what is going on in the highest heaven. But it turns out in the highest heaven music is being played without any input from us. It's the other way around. It's not that humans invent music and we project it up. It's the other way around. Music has existed, as we'll see, within God himself, for eternal ages before the universe existed. But it exists at the highest levels of reality and it's as if it cascades down and then we on earth are allowed in some measure to participate in this cosmic music. Music is far, far bigger than life on this earth and far, far bigger than our own personal musical tastes, and that is very, very important to remember, because we can take our own personal musical tastes far too seriously. Music, then, as we will see, involves the living God and the whole of creation, stretching away into an eternal future.

Speaker 1: 18:54

Now, many of the greatest musical composers of human history did in fact dedicate their compositions to the glory of God Precisely because they saw that the higher we lift our vision, the greater our musical reach and capacity. That's hugely important, that, to just grasp that for a minute that our music and songs become small and overly predictable and formulaic when we are preoccupied, like the creeping things, with just what is immediately around us, but when our hearts and minds are filled with the Christ-Centered cosmic civilization, all that we should be it's not just that our Christian worship music is better, but all music is better has much greater capacity. The canvas becomes so much bigger to paint on. Well, that mixing metaphors there that's how we'll get to visual art in a much later stage of this podcast series. But to produce more than passing musical novelty, we need to engage with great themes of love, truth, justice and, yes, the greatest of all, the living God who guarantees all the rest, that the possibility to tell really great stories with music and song rests on having this engine of great, never-ending story at the heart of it all.

Speaker 1: 20:53

Victor Hugo said music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent. I love that says. Music expresses more than we can say. But we have to make some sound about some subjects and some stories and some feelings and things. And yet we can't. Our words can't do it, but our music can.

Speaker 1: 21:26

Perhaps the very first book ever written in the Bible was the book of Job, an intense book about a man who gets taken down into the very depths of suffering and loss and the agony, the sense of being God forsaken in suffering all of that. He's taken down into that in order to see that nothing in life matters more than knowing the living God. When everything is stripped from us, when we are as naked as the day we were born, when all our strength and pride and understanding is shown up as foolishness, then what do we have? When we are alone or feel alone in the darkness? What can speak to us then?

Speaker 1: 22:32

Robert Schumann challenged composers with these words. He said that the job as musical composers is to send light into the darkness of men's hearts. Such is the duty of the artist to send light into the darkness. Can music do that? It's a great thought. But why is the light to shine into darkness? What makes him think such a task is possible? Why does he think it's possible to musically project light into the darkness? Well, it's the very first page of the Bible that declares that the darkness cannot resist the light, that the light can always shine and defeat the darkness. But it's not just. What is it about light? That means it can do that? Because there is the light of the world that is behind that, and without that light of the world, with capital L and capital W, perhaps, without that light of the world, there just isn't any hope when darkness seems to rain.

Speaker 1: 23:56

Now, perhaps we all know what it is to listen to music when we are in the darkness of the night. And in that music we feel something that touches us deep down, an echo that calls to us of a truth we can't express. Getting back to the quotation from Victor Hugo, it's something that we can't say, but we feel it and the music seems to say it. Now, this is why we refer to the book of Job. While Job is wrestling with all his pain and sorrow, he is reminded of songs of the night, and the Bible says this music is a gift from the living God himself.

Speaker 1: 24:56

Job 35, verses 9 to 10. People cry out under a load of oppression, they plead for relief from the arm of the powerful, but no one says what is God, my maker, who gives songs in the night? I want to end with that, as we're opening up the subject of music, that there is this divine musician and we're going to try to explore that more. But the divine musician has created us in such a way that we have ears that can respond in a particular way and that the ability of the ear to vibrate in particular patterns and for that to be experienced as sound, and not just sound, collections of sound woven together harmoniously to produce music that can speak to the very heights of reality and to the depths.