Music and Divine Revelation

Abstract Music has been perennially associated with divine revelation. This chapter asks why this might be the case, with special reference to the self-revelation of God in the Christian faith. It begins by outlining the theology of music offered by Augustine in his De musica, in which the numerical character of the cosmos, to which sounding music is attuned, is said to give access to God. This is set alongside Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), for whom music more than any other art shares in and awakens that dimension of human experience he regards as distinctively religious. Critical questions are asked of both theologians, in the light of which some four fundamental yet oft-neglected themes and trajectories of classical Christian theology are explored with respect to music’s revelatory potential: the priority of God’s revealing action, the social and embodied character of revelation, creation’s revelation of the divine, and revelation through language.