It is no surprise that music is consistently highly regarding among the various civilizations that have rose up and fallen throughout the course of the story of history, but Augustine really seems to take issue with a certain aspect of the worship experience in the Catholic Church during his day that I simply could not pass up the chance to touch on: the aspect of musical glorification. Augustine in his Confessions details his qualms with how he individually treats music in the worship services the Catholic Church performs, mainly addressing the fact that he believes that he is afraid of enjoying the instrumental or the melody or harmonizations more than the deeper message the hymn is trying to convey. I think where he gets a bit inside his own head (enneagram 1 anyone?) is when he says:
". . . I must allow it a position of some honor in my heart, and I find it difficult to assign it to its proper place. For sometimes I feel that I treat it with more on her than it deserves." (Augustine 238-33).
He is trying to discern where exactly he should put worship music in his view of what is good or evil, and it struggling to identify the nature of the music. We see this struggle further in the passage when Augustine relents that he can be harsh, and thereby misguided, in his judgements (238). Augustine read a bit of Philosophy that was still around during his time, so I think using Aristotle's philosophy here can clear some of the mental stalemate up. Recall Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics with his idea of the golden mean?
"Thus a master of any art avoids excess and defect, but seeks the intermediate and chooses this- the intermediate not in the object but relatively to us." (Aristotle, 16-17).
Augustine, instead of picking a category of good or evil to place music under, must take the approach of looking at the music as a way to glorify God, and choose simply not to focus more on how the music sounds versus the lyrical meaning. Music in of itself is neither inherently evil or good, because the piece is defined by the message it brings into fruition.
p.s. I commented on Jessef's and Leanne's posts.
Great job, Ian. Music is something that has been important throughout history (and rightfully so). The problem is when music becomes higher than God in our lives. Music should be a tool to worship God, not an idol. That is why I believe music is highly glorified because it causes us to not focus on the bad parts in our lives, but we should be depending on God in times of desperation.
ReplyDeleteThis is an interesting thought. I think it would be interesting to hear Augustine’s thought on how prominent secular music is and if we should still focus on music in the church. Because, like you said, for music to be good, in Augustine’s view, it needs to be focused on God. So, for him to see the influence secular music has on music as a whole, it would worry Augustine and make him contemplate if music should be allowed in modern worship.
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