Music of the Spirit

Creation has a musical quality both in its origin and in its very nature. Genesis 1 sets out a melody: The act of creation is musical, a patterned, recurring sequence of speech acts.

As product of God’s creating activity, creation is also melodic, rhythmic, musical. Creation is not a fixed and static three-decker object. It is made in movement, and it moves. The way it’s made, the sevenfold melody of its making, is the recurring melody of its history.

Not only the setting, the fixed structures of the creation account in Genesis 1, but the sequence of actions and events, sets the pattern for the rest of Scripture. Creation establishes the rhythm of world history. The music of creation is the music of time.

Creation is to history as theme is to variations.

Creation’s heptamerous rhythm is the rhythm of history because it’s the rhythm of the Spirit who hovers over the waters.

We learn in Revelation that the Spirit Himself is seven Spirits of God (1:4; 3:1; 4:5; 5:6). Among other things, this means that the Spirit works in sevenfold patterns, pulses in sevenfold rhythm.

The Spirit provides the rhythm and melody of creation because the Spirit is the music of God. The Spirit clothes judges for war, but war is carried out by the weapons of musical instruments.

The Spirit comes on Saul when he meets prophets with instruments, and Saul begins to prophesy musically (1 Samuel 10:5-10). The Spirit falls on David, and in the next scene David is playing before Saul to drive away the evil Spirit (1 Samuel 16:13-23). Be filled with the Spirit, Paul says, and the Spirit’s first manifestation is singing of Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs (Ephesians 5:18-19).

As I was composing this, a friend passed on the closing lines of the late Robert Jenson’s Systematic Theology, which others have cited in the aftermath of his death.