{"id":1356,"date":"2008-01-15T20:05:04","date_gmt":"2008-01-16T01:05:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=1356"},"modified":"2008-01-15T20:05:04","modified_gmt":"2008-01-16T01:05:04","slug":"bach-on-a-cold-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=1356","title":{"rendered":"Bach on a cold day"},"content":{"rendered":"

Actually it\u2019s not all that cold.<\/strong> About 20\u00b0 F today. I\u2019ve seen it a whole lot worse than this.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s got the whole state (nay, the whole region) bloodhound-faced today is the knowledge that tomorrow will be colder, and the day after that colder still, and on and on through the end of the week. I haven\u2019t looked at the forecast past Sunday. I suspect the Monday one will say, \u201cSupercooled through the afternoon; heat death of the universe after sunset.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet we survive. We persevere. That\u2019s what makes us better than you.<\/i>
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Here\u2019s an article<\/a><\/strong> by Uwe Siemon-Netto, from Paul McCain\u2019s blog Cyberbrethren<\/i>, about the odd (though welcome) phenomenon of Asians converting to Christianity through the music of J. S. Bach.<\/p>\n

I would have never expected this. I\u2019ve always seen music as essentially non-propositional, unsuited to changing people\u2019s minds, except by means of the lyrics.<\/p>\n

But Bach\u2019s music has no lyrics. It\u2019s just very fine, intricate music on which the composer has written (at the end of every piece), \u201cSoli Deo Gloria\u201d<\/i> (To God alone be the glory). And the testimony of an artistic job so brilliantly done seems to have an evangelistic appeal.<\/p>\n

I suppose I shouldn\u2019t be as surprised as I am. It actually harmonizes well with some things I\u2019ve been thinking for a while. I\u2019m just always surprised to be right\u2026 or anything in the neighborhood of right.<\/p>\n

Back in the misty years of the 1970s, when I was touring with the Christian musical group for which I was lyricist, a guy came to talk to us after a concert. He said he was a follower of Francis Schaeffer, and I thought, \u201cGreat. We\u2019ll be friends.\u201d But he wasn\u2019t interested in being friends.<\/p>\n

His reading of Schaeffer had convinced him that the gospel was about reason\u2014reason and nothing else<\/i>. In evangelism, no appeal should be made to anything but the \u201claw of non-contradiction.\u201d Because our songs appealed to feelings as well as reason, he informed us that we were heretics and tools of the devil. I suppose he’d hoped for syllogisms in song.<\/p>\n

I hadn\u2019t thought the whole thing out at that point (still haven\u2019t, for that matter), but I think I argued that, although reason is important and much neglected, it\u2019s not the only<\/i> thing.<\/p>\n

As the years have passed, I\u2019ve grown more convinced I was correct. Schaeffer concentrated on reason in his books because that\u2019s the element that\u2019s being most neglected in theology and apologetics today. But if you read those books and pay attention to more than just creating bullet points, you\u2019ll see that he talks about the importance of love and relationships and beauty, too. His book The Mark of a Christian<\/i> was not about logic, but about love.<\/p>\n

This is entirely consistent with essential Christian theology. We believe in the Incarnation. \u201cThe Word became flesh.\u201d<\/i> (John 1:14) It\u2019s as heretical to neglect the soft, subjective side of our lives as to neglect the rigorous, rational side.<\/p>\n

Which is why the Lord can even call souls to Himself through music.<\/p>\n

Hey! Maybe He could use novels too!
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Actually it\u2019s not all that cold. About 20\u00b0 F today. I\u2019ve seen it a whole lot worse than this. What\u2019s got the whole state (nay, the whole region) bloodhound-faced today is the knowledge that tomorrow will be colder, and the day after that colder still, and on and on through the end of the week. … Continue reading Bach on a cold day<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1356\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}