A General Theological Symbolic Structure of Textless Music in Christian Worship

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-59
Author(s):  
Jennifer Wakeling
Keyword(s):  
Karl Rahner ◽  
Paul Tillich ◽  
Marie Chauvet ◽  
Human Subjectivity ◽  
Symbolic Structure ◽  
Christian Worship

When textless music is performed as a stand-alone act in Christian worship, it can function as a Christian symbol through which meaning can be generated at experiential, reflective, and transformative levels. This article proposes a four-dimensional theological symbolic structure for conceptualizing and heightening the effectiveness of textless music as a Christian symbol in worship. A piece of textless music can take on Christian symbolic capacity in worship by virtue of its specific musical properties and structures interpreted through the lens of human subjectivity formed within a Christian context (incorporating Christian worship), a locus of divine communication. Relevant aspects of the theology of Paul Tillich, Karl Rahner, and Louis-Marie Chauvet, particularly pertaining to symbols, are applied, fitted together, extended, and supplemented to construct and explicate this structure. Deriving from the structure, elements of praxis regarding the selection, contextualization, performance, and reception of pieces are presented for ongoing reflection and development.

Formation in Christian Worship

2019 ◽  
pp. 143-184
Author(s):  
Gifford A. Grobien
Keyword(s):  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Lord's Supper ◽  
Union With Christ ◽  
Marie Chauvet ◽  
Form Of Life ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Christian Worship ◽  
The Church

In conversation with Oswald Bayer, Bernd Wannenwetsch, and Louis-Marie Chauvet, this chapter explains comprehensively the power of Christian worship ethically to form Christians in union with Christ. Language and ritual theories explain the power of speech and ritual to institute forms or orders of life. Christians who have been united to Christ through God’s justifying word are inaugurated into the ecclesial form of life. In this communion, they are formed by the Holy Spirit to act in accordance with the speech of God and the institution of the Church. Furthermore, as grace-filled speech, preaching and the sacraments form Christians also by the supernatural “inscription” of the Holy Spirit. The particular power of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper to unite Christians to Christ and to each other, and to form Christians ethically, is explored in Luther’s and Philip Melancthon’s writings.

Loving Mac, Beth, and John: Grace in the Plays and Films of Horton Foote

2006 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 374-390 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald Wood
Keyword(s):  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Karl Rahner ◽  
Paul Tillich ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Reinhold Niebuhr ◽  
Christian Science ◽  
God's Will ◽  
Human Community ◽  
The Town

AbstractHorton Foote is neither a rhetorical nor a polemical writer. He is a story-teller who uses his home place, Wharton, Texas, as the basis of his plays and films. But Foote instinctively uses the point of view of his religious tradition, Christian Science, in the subtext of many of his works. In the film Tender Mercies, for example, God's will is expressed as the peace and order found in shared love, like that of Rosa Lee for Mac. The goal of such divinity is a human community based on passionate, selfless care for others, as imagined in the feelings of the town toward Beth in the play The Carpetbagger's Children. Even when such mutuality is unrealized, grace remains as the spiritual presence which comforts John at the end of the teleplay Alone. Such an interpretation of grace follows the view of Christian Science that God is never manipulative, punishing, or violent. It places Foote in a tradition which emphasizes sanctification rather than justification, as defined by Reinhold Niebuhr. Closest theologically to Paul Tillich, Teilhard de Chardin, and especially Karl Rahner, Foote imagines time as the means by which God expresses infinite love.

Paul Tillich on Socialism and Nationalism

1996 ◽  
Vol 2 (Part_1) ◽  
pp. 97-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory Baum
Keyword(s):  
Paul Tillich

cognitive-pragmatic account of the English imperative-conditional construction

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-269
Author(s):  
Keding Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Processing Unit ◽  
Pragmatic Approach ◽  
The Third ◽  
Pragmatic Enrichment ◽  
Symbolic Structure ◽  
Speaker Intentions ◽  
Interactive Relationship ◽  
Pragmatic Account ◽  
Everyday Communication

The imperative-conditional construction (ICC) in English is a type of construction which consists of an ordinary imperative clause and an ordinary declarative clause connected by the connective and or or. This article deals with the speaker intentions of ICCs and their motivations from a cognitive-pragmatic approach. Based on the concept of construction in cognitive linguistics, an ICC can be called a complex symbolic structure which, though composed of two components, should be regarded as a single pragmatic processing unit. It is demonstrated that, in everyday communication, the ICC can usually convey three kinds of speaker intentions: a prohibitive intention, an inducing/forcing intention, and an advisory intention. The first refers to the intention of the speaker to prohibit the hearer from carrying out the act described by the imperative. The second is the intention of the speaker to induce or force the hearer to bring about the act described by the imperative. The third refers to the intention of the speaker to advise the hearer to carry out the act described by the imperative. These speaker intentions are highly motivated. The motivations include the constructional context, the conditional relation between the imperative and the declarative, the directive force of the imperative, the pragmatic enrichment of the declarative, and the complementary and interactive relationship between the imperative and declarative clauses, among which the constructional context serves as an overall motivation, and the rest may be seen as specific motivations.

Limits and Possibilities of Sharing Christian Worship in an Interreligious Educational Setting

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 206-223
Author(s):  
Jennifer Peace
Keyword(s):  
Planning Process ◽  
Leadership Education ◽  
Thick Description ◽  
Unitarian Universalist ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Religious Ritual ◽  
Worship Service ◽  
Theological School ◽  
Christian Worship ◽  
Interreligious Education

This paper discusses a worship service I designed and led in November of 2014 at Andover Newton Theological School (ANTS). As a member of the faculty, a practicing Christian and a religious educator and interfaith organizer, I am invited to lead a service each year in the Chapel at ANTS. In particular, as the ANTS’ co-director of the Center for Interreligious and Communal Leadership Education (CIRCLE), a joint program between ANTS and Hebrew College, I was charged with making the service an “interfaith” gathering, open and inviting for Unitarian Universalist, Muslim, and Jewish guests, while still providing an authentic expression of Christian worship. This article offers a first-person narrative and thick description of the service, the planning process, the broader context of interreligious education at our schools, and reflections on both the possibilities and limits of sharing particular religious rituals across diverse religious traditions for educational purposes. Drawing on the work of interreligious educators I identify a set of goals for interreligious education and explore the potential for religious ritual to both contribute to and complicate these goals. I describe the worship service as a ritual event in the life of a Christian seminary as well as its meaning and role in the process of interreligious coformation that is part of CIRCLE’s work.

O Pensamento de Paul Tillich: Epilepsia e Arte

Correlatio ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 5 (9) ◽  
pp. 109-113
Author(s):  
L.C. Piccinin
Keyword(s):  
Paul Tillich
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