Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 62:3 (Sep 2019)
Article: A Rational And Spiritual Worship: Comparing J. S. Bach And Jonathan Edwards
Author: Matthew Raley

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JETS 62:3 (September 2019) p. 583

A Rational And Spiritual Worship:
Comparing J. S. Bach And Jonathan Edwards

Matthew Raley*

* Matthew Raley is a faculty member at The Cornerstone Seminary, 710 Broadway St., Vallejo, CA 94590. He can be contacted at [email protected].

Abstract: Our world of connectivity seems to challenge spiritual formation, with technology pushing ever more distractions at us. Can spirituality survive this onslaught of information and entertainment? Concepts of the created order held by Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) and J. S. Bach (1685–1750) offer us a theology for this challenge. As a literature review documents, Bach’s music reflects God’s creation as a vast unity-in-diversity in which spirituality participates in the rational connectedness God has made. Edwards’s thought portrays God’s creation and redemption of the world as beautiful in its proportions and relationships, in which human rational participation is spiritual in nature. Their conceptions of the created order placed them in uneasy tension with Pietists in their respective traditions, who tended to value subjective spirituality against any formalism. By exploring these tensions, we may find the theological rationality of the eighteenth century serving a deeper spirituality in the twenty-first.

Key words: J. S. Bach, Jonathan Edwards, technology, rationality, spirituality, church history, beauty, philosophy

The world into which my teenage sons are emerging is one of connectivity. Apps that still amaze Gen-Xers like me are routine for them. That is, they expect as a matter of course that code, animation, design, sound, and hardware will be woven together into highly functional tools to connect them with other people. These apps collapse space and time, expose what is happening far away, promote points of view that have been ignored, and empower a gig economy that makes life more flexible. Applied rationality is a large part of their outlook.

Christian teenagers, however, have not necessarily inherited a theological account of how to worship God in this cosmos of connectivity. Adults fret about teens’ screen time, their obsession with image, and their distracted social behavior. Teen spirituality needs more introspection and less YouTube. Teens cannot engage in spiritual formation amid constant phone notifications. Adults may have bequeathed teens a theology in which the spirituality of glorifying God is divided from the objective world. The inward and the outward may be split. As often happens, cultural life has collided with Pietism.

There is an account of worship that speaks to our connected world, and that could help us integrate the priorities of applied rationality and of spiritual vitality. A comparison...

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