Augustine’s Ambivalence

[excerpt from my first draft of a first draft below. I have no puppy yet, so I'm posting]

 

How did cantus become separated from the whole community of saints, to emerge only from the vocal chords of a select few? Was it, as Phillips seems to suggest, merely an unintended consequence of the development of ornate four-part singing?

To uncover clues that may lead us to the answer to this question, we return to Guthrie. Guthrie notes that in contrast to the command to sing in Ephesians 5:19, some have offered reasons not to sing. A widely accepted reason among Evangelicals originates with a reading of Augustine of Hippo’s Confessions. “Augustine observes,” writes Wren, “that when sacred words are joined to pleasant music, ‘our souls [animos] are moved and are more religiously and with a warmer devotion kindled to piety than if they are not so sung.’”[1] Augustine notes the affective nature of music, its seeming power to move us emotionally. Augustine’s neo-platonic leanings are noted in his observations about this affective quality: “my physical delight [delectation carnis], which has to be checked from enervating the mind [mentem], often deceives me when the perception of the senses [sensus] is unaccompanied by reason [rationem], and is not patiently content to be in a subordinate place.”[2] He concludes, therefore, that there is a danger inherent in the pleasure of song:

I fluctuate between the danger of pleasure and the experience of the beneficent effect, and I am more led to put forward the opinion (not as an irrevocable view) that the custom of singing in Church is to be approved, so that through the delights of the ear the weaker mind may rise up towards the devotion of worship. Yet when it happens to me that the music moves me more than the subject of the song, I confess myself to commit a sin deserving punishment, and then I would prefer not to have heard the singer.[3]

The Greek philosophers considered music a powerful force. Augustine shares this view and the ambivalence about music that goes along with it. Music appeals to the senses; the Greeks believed we should be led by reason, not by bodily sense. While Augustine does not claim the body is bad, he does accept the Greeks’ notion that body must be under the control and direction of reason at all times. Music, then, presents a threat to this hierarchy. Music  “arouses both spirit and body, and so its benefits are always accompanied by hazards,”[4] writes Guthrie. “Yes, Christians do sing… but perhaps they should not. Or at least, they should sing very carefully indeed – attending to the words, not the music itself. This, it would seem, should particularly be the case where there is some tendency toward irrationality, foolishness, sensuality or sexual immorality.”[5]

Guthrie ask, it this is the case, why not just read the text, particularly if music is so “dangerously” tangled up with our sensual selves? “If words are really the important thing,” he writes, “why not just speak rather than sing them? Why risk distracting the community from that which is central?”[6] Indeed, perhaps this was Zwingli’s conclusion, and motivation for barring song and music from worship? Perhaps music had become too “emotional” ?

Wren affirms the opinion that music’s emotion-arousing qualities are what makes it powerful. Certain tunes are appealing because of the emotions they arouse, not because of the words, necessarily. He writes, “…the tunes people sing in worship mimic bodily movements and the ebb and flow of emotional states. They have the power-at least potentially – to give meaningful, flowing progression to life’s chaos; to beautify and elevate our purposeful but uncoordinated activities; and to mimic the flow of emotion.”[7]

Wren, too, quotes Augustine of Hippo’s ambivalent musings on the value of music. But Wren doubts there is much danger in being carried away by emotion, declaring  that “…sometimes our hearts surely ought to be carried away with the sound, as they are offered to God in song.”[8] Guthrie notes an important contrast, however, between. Paul of Tarsus and Augustine of Hippo: “to a Christian community surrounded by ignorance and immorality; to a people who were themselves prone to the blindness and indulgence of their former way of life; at the conclusion of a passage warning against irrationality and sins of the flesh – Paul urges singing and music”[9][referring to Ephesians 5:17-19].   Augustine says: ‘Irrationality is bad. Sensuality is bad. Therefore be careful about music.’ Paul on the other hand says, ‘Foolishness is bad. Sensuality is bad. Therefore, you had better sing.’”[10]

Christian tradition has tended to pit body against spirit, but Guthrie contends the Holy Spirit is not interested only in our minds or our souls, or some hierarchy thereof, but in our whole person. The Holy Spirit is the “incarnating Spirit – the One who creates, vivifies, and restores bodies….not delivering humanity from their bodies, but bringing dead, decaying bodies to full and vigorous life – putting living flesh on dry bones.”[11]

Guthrie contrasts the neo-platonic views of the Augustinian tradition with a biblical view of what it means to grow spiritually. The Augustinian tradition accepts the Greek’s hierarchical view of the components of a human being, therefore contending that “growth in the spiritual life means directing one’s attention away from the body upward toward the mind and the soul. The biblical tradition however, demonstrates the Holy Spirit works to bring the whole person, body and soul, to life and wholeness.”[12]

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[1] Guthrie, Singing, 633. quoting Augustine, Confessions, X, xxxiii (49) (trans. Henry Chadwick; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 207.

[2] Augustine, Confessions, X, xxxiii (50) tr. 208.

[3] Ibid., X, xxxiii (50) tr. 208.

[4] Guthrie, Singing, 637.

[5] Ibid., 637.

[6] Ibid., 636.

[7] Wren, Praying Twice, 68.

[8] Ibid., 70.

[9] Guthrie, Singing, 638.

[10] Ibid., 638.

[11] Ibid. 640.

[12] Guthrie, Singing, 641.