Welcome to Wycliffe College

 

Jeremy Begbie
Theologian, concert pianist, writer, lecturer

The Sound of Freedom: The Music of Liberation

Performance Lecture
Wednesday March 20th, 2013
3:00pm - 4:30pm
TELUS Centre for Performance and Learning, Conservatory Theatre
273 Bloor Street West, Toronto

In this multimedia lecture, Jeremy Begbie will argue that pictures of freedom in modernity have been plagued by competitive, ‘zero-sum’ models—God’s freedom and the world’s are portrayed as mutually exclusive. This depends on basically visual ways of thinking about space. By contrast, two simultaneously sounding musical notes do not occupy bounded locations in our aural space, but interpenetrate, while remaining audibly distinct. Using performed and recorded music, Begbie will show that our sense of hearing can help us radically re-conceive and re-articulate a Christian theology of freedom.

Jeremy Begbie teaches systematic theology at Duke Divinity School, and specializes in the interface between theology and the arts. His particular research interests are in the interplay between music and theology. Previously Associate Principal of Ridley Hall, Cambridge, he has also been Honorary Professor at the University of St Andrews, where he directed the research project, Theology Through the Arts at the Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts. He is a Senior Member of Wolfson College and an Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of Music at the University of Cambridge. He studied philosophy and music at Edinburgh University, and theology at Aberdeen and Cambridge. A professionally trained musician, he has performed extensively as a pianist, oboist and conductor. He is an ordained minister of the Church of England, having served for a number of years as assistant pastor of a Church in West London. His book, Resounding Truth: Christian Wisdom in the World of Music, won the 2008 Christianity Today Book Award in the theology/ethics category.