Notes from Jeremy Begbie’s Address at Asbury College, Nov 12th 2009
Keying off a piece of music written in the 1930’s, that was trying to capture the “music of the future enjoyed in the present.” Dr. Begbie explored the nature and central role of hope in our faith and how that informs our lives and artmaking.
We often hope from the present for a better future, but the New Testament employs what Dr. Begbie called a “Reverse Imagination” where our real future hope is to play out in our present, not hoping for the future but hoping from the future.
Looking at Revelation chapter 21 and the city of God, the New Jerusalem, he outlined five features of our subversive hope.
1. Enriching Difference
The diversity of the New Jerusalem that will be home to all nations, or peoples, demonstrates that differences and distinctions among people groups are ok, but we are not to make those distinctions into values or hierarchies of cultures.
Throughout his lecture he used music pieces as ways to demonstrate how these concepts can inform our art making. For diversity he used a piece demonstrating polyrhythm and the richness, musically, built upon it.
2. Insane Inversion
The first shall be last, the humble exalted and the Lamb on the Throne, all are clear examples of how God will reverse our cultural norms and expectations. It was a reminder of the great counter cultural nature of our faith.
Power is radically redefined based upon our hope from the future.
He noted how Nietzsche is the Church’s best critic, for he saw clearly the cross shaped offense and how “ridiculous” it was, we can learn from him because he often got the implications of our counter culture faith better than we as the church have.
3. Piercing Exposure
Our hope is not sentimental, but reveals the root and depth of evil. The Lamb who was slain will be central in the New Jerusalem, not covering up the ugliness of sin, but it’s cost to God ever before us.
Our condition is unveiled and God’s response is greater than we can imagine, canceling the sentimentality of our own day.
He noted how we can’t skip over the Cross as though the Resurrection is just a happy ending, the Cross is central to our faith, the reversal of the Resurrection doesn’t diminish the ugliness of the Cross and our sinfulness in a sentimental way.
4. Divine Excess
The fullness of our Future Hope, its full expression is excessive, “subverting our closed equilibrium.” There is an abundance demonstrated in the extreme fruitfulness of the Tree of Life, its fruits and even its leaves that are for the healing of the nations.
There is novelty, not trite, but over and above what it “necessary.”
“Art can say more than can be told.”
5. Nominal Order
Dr. Begbie called the “non-order,” the Jazz Factor, it is the unpredictable. The improvisation, playing between the space between order and non order, not order and chaos.
Untidiness is not a mark of chaos or disorder, just irregularities.
This is seen in the new creation, and can come forth in art making.
I was encouraged especially by the idea of piercing exposure as my own artmaking has recently focused on the unsentimental truth about our own mortality. I have been exploring ideas in the art of dying to try to place before myself the “unpretty” truth that death comes for us all and we may ignore it but we are better served by facing it and preparing it. I have wrestled theologically on focusing on the bad news when I know the rest of the story and our great hope, but I found comfort in the idea that our hope is open faced and wide eyed and takes full account of the bad news first before the good news can break through.
My notes are of course incomplete and don’t do Dr. Begbie’s lecture justice, please don’t consider them as a word for word transcript, they are just the topics discussed and the notes I made. I do certainly recommend hearing him speak if you are given the chance, he masterful blend of musicianship, theology and public speaking are insightful and encouraging beyond what I have reviewed here.
Looking forward to getting him speak at the Calvin Institute for Christian Worship’s Calvin Symposium on Worship, January 28-30, 2010 in Grand Rapids MI.
