Suspended God: Music and a Theology of Doubt

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Description

Heaney traces the hidden history of music's presence in Christian thought, including its often unrecognized influence on key figures such as von Balthasar, Barth and Bonhoeffer. She uses Lonergan's theological framework to explore musical composition as a theological act, showing why, when and how music is a useful symbolic form. The book introduces eleven ground-breaking theologians, and each chapter offers an entry point into the thought of the theologian being presented through an original piece of music, which can be found on the companion website: https://bloomsbury.pub/suspended-god. Heaney argues that music is a universally important means of making sense of life with which theology needs to engage as a means of expression and of development. Musical composition is presented as an appropriate and even necessary form of doing theology in its quest to engage with the past, mediate truth to the present and tradition it into the future.

Reviews

In her latest book, Maeve Heaney turns to music as a surprisingly fruitful theological response to an age marked by religious doubt and uncertainty. Her brilliant work, a groundbreaking new entry in the promising field of Theopoetics, startles us with a fresh appreciation of musicking as itself a profoundly theological activity. -- Richard Gaillardetz, Boston College, USA
Maeve Heaneys is a capacious heart. She is a contemplative of the mysteries of faith and of the gift of music, a practitioner of gospel ministry and song, and a thinker about faith, doubt, and beauty. All of this comes together in a generous and vulnerable invitation to theologians and pastors, musicians and artists, doubters and seekers, to explore what it means to believe, today and tomorrow. -- Michael OConnor, University of Toronto, Canada
In this courageous book, Maeve Heaney gifts Christians with an invitation to think intelligently about faith by trusting music making as a resource for meaning making. She seeks to encourage the next generation of Christians to approach the edge of knowledge confidently, and with musicians as companions, in order to propel the tradition forward in the discovery of dimensions of God yet unknown, especially when addressing multiple intersecting injustices theologically. Professors and teachers of theology looking for a text to invite reflection and conversation in their classrooms will find themselves in the open, imaginative, and skillful hands of a wise mentor. Students and artists will find in this book acknowledgement of their doubts and encouragement to approach the Mysterious with mindful wonder and critical curiosity. -- Kimberly Vrudny, University of St. Thomas, USA
Suspended God speaks to the contemporary need for theological language that has room for experiences both joy and doubt that are hard to put into words. She tells the story of the pressing need to encourage theology more fully toward flourishing and the ways in which this orientation can be supported by engagement with music as a site of theological reflection. I am grateful for Heaney's work and I am certain it will become reading for my courses on theopoetics. -- Callid Keefe-Perry, Boston College School of Theology and Ministry, USA

Author Bio

Maeve Louise Heaney VDMF is a consecrated member of the Verbum Dei Community and Director of the Xavier Centre for Theological Formation at Australian Catholic University, Australia.