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Bach and Today's Theologians
By Paul S. Minear

"One should distinguish between Bach's use of Scripture and proof-texting. The latter exploits the ancient story as a tool to sanctify present ideas and authorize present behavior, and is self-enhancing. Bach's music transports listeners back into that earlier time and views present behavior through the lens of the biblical story; it is inherently self-transcending."

AS we reflect on the celebration in 1985 of the three hundredth anniversary of the birth of Johann Sebastian Bach, we may well be impressed with signs of his continuing importance today. Although 1985 marks the anniversary of at least three other major composers (George Friedrich Handel, 1685, Domenico Scarlatti, 1685, and Heinrich Schütz, 1585), it is the anniversary of Bach that has prompted the most universal recognition and at the same time the most profound response among the most diverse audiences.

When we ask why this should be so, we can note that the response to this musician in many quarters has manifested a deeply religious dimension. Of course, in any such anniversary celebration many motives may be discerned. There is always a complex interplay of antiquarian and aesthetic impulses. Professional musicians exploit the opportunity to display their specialized knowledge and expertise. Present always are those who "build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous" (Matt. 23:29). But, in this case, we may detect beneath the surface of temporary enthusiasms a deeper surge of the human spirit, intent on showing its gratitude for gifts indefinable, but no less substantial.

I

Late in 1984, Professor Christoph Wolff of Harvard discovered among the manuscripts in the Music Library at Yale thirty-three chorale preludes which he identified as having been composed by the

Paul S. Minear is Professor of New Testament, Emeritus, Yale University Divinity School. A charter member of the Editorial Council of THEOLOGY TODAY, he has written articles on a variety of subjects that have appeared in our pages over the years, including one on the music of Brahms and one on "Matthew the Evangelist, and Johann, Composer." The present essay, originally given as a lecture at Duke University Divinity School and the Yale Institute for Sacred Music, marks the three hundredth anniversary of the birth of Johann Sebastian Bach.

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great Cappelmeister. On March 17, 1985, the first public performance of these preludes was presented in Battell Chapel at Yale, with John Ferris of Harvard and Charles Krigbaum of Yale at the Holtkamp organ. A trombone quartet introduced two groups of chorale preludes by playing the original hymn tune. Eight other preludes were introduced by the Yale Bach Choir, singing the hymn tune that Bach had developed into one of the newly discovered preludes. A thousand tickets were issued for the occasion, scheduled for 2 p.m. But that supply was quickly exhausted, so another concert was added at 7 p.m. The second thousand tickets were soon gone, with many applicants disappointed.

It is almost impossible to convey the mood of the audience at the afternoon session. Twenty minutes in advance every seat was filled. During the five minutes before the trombones played the opening chorale, there was a hush of intense expectancy. The organ and choral music was greeted with acute alertness, as if no person was willing to miss a single note. Simultaneously the music encouraged inward reflection and meditation. When the preludes were based on tunes with which the audience was familiar, one could notice quiet smiles of recognition.

Wir glauben all' an einen Gott
Christus, der ist mein Leben
Alle Menschen müssen sterben
Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan.

After three centuries, the musical wings given to the ancient hymns still exerted the power to change a heterogeneous audience into a worshiping congregation. The distance in space and time between New Haven and Leipzig evaporated under the spell of the chorales. And what happened at Yale is typical, I think, of what has happened in 1985 in all corners of the globe.

What should we make of this phenomenon? At the very least, it means that Bach's vocation continues among us. He was, in the words of Charles Widor, one of the greatest preachers, his music serving as his

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message. ¹ He was also one of the greatest liturgical theologians, still serving to fuse faith and music, and thus providing the dramatic setting for worship.

Let us explore the linkage between this musician and today's theologians. To do this, we turn first to a brief survey of Saint Sebastian's training. (I believe that Samuel Wesley was the first to canonize the composer.)

II

Bach's basic training in theology began in Eisenach when, as a boy no older than eight, he began to study the Bible in Latin and German, as well as the Lutheran catechism. In Ohrdruf, where he studied from age ten to age fifteen, the Lyceum treated religious instruction as the crown of all learning. During later years in Lüneberg, training became even more explicitly theological. Here, as William Mellers reminds us, "music was second in importance only to theology and was taught by the same master."² During these years we should also reckon with the indirect influences of singing year after year in boys' choirs.

Life as an organist must have continued the impulse to think theologically in response to sermon, Scripture, and hymns. At least it is recorded that when he was inducted into the Leipzig post at thirty-eight, he was required to pass an examination in theology. This is not surprising, for in the Thomasschule his assignment included instructing the boys in the catechism. It has been estimated that one-fifth of the boys' time was allotted to theology and one-fifth to music. In the Lutheran heartland of those days, theology was closer to music than to history or to sociology, or even to philosophy. In fact, Martin Luther wrote: "We must not ordain young men into the ministry unless they have become well-acquainted with music." ³

We have called the composer a theologian. To justify the use of that term more evidence is needed than is provided by boyhood training or adult occupation. We need to ask what it is that makes a person a theologian. The first mark of a theologian, surely, is a concern for, if not an obsession with, God. If such a concern were the sole test, many professors of theology might fail, but Saint Sebastian would surely pass. As many historians have noted, his manuscripts often carried the initials S.D.G., soli deo gloria. In this regard, his marginal comment in his Bible on II Chron. 5:13, 14 is typical: "In devotional music, God with his grace is always present."⁴ This text describes the musical resources of the temple: 120 trumpeters, the choirs of Levitical singers, accompanied

¹ C. Widor, in A. Schweitzer, J.S. Bach, trans. by E. Newman (London: A. and C. Black, 1911), 1, p. xii.
² W. Mellers, Bach and the Dance of God (London: Faber and Faber, 1980), p. 82. Cf. also G. Stiller, J.S. Bach und das Leipziger gottesdienstliche Leben seiner Zeit (Kassel and Basel: Bdrenreiter Verlag, 1970), pp. 159-162.
³ Cited in W. Mellers, p. 81.
⁴ Bach's Bible is now accessible at Concordia Theological Seminary in St. Louis, Mo.

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by cymbals, harps, and lyres, all joined in praise to the Lord, "for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever." No less than Luther did Bach believe that "the whole purpose of harmony is the glory of God; all other use is but the idle juggling of Satan."⁵ And, as Leonard Bernstein has said, "For Bach all music is religious; writing it was an act of worship. Every note was dedicated to God and to nothing else."⁶ In this respect, we may note a profound affinity between the German composer and the American theologian, Jonathan Edwards, for whom the glory of God was the end for which God created the world. Of this accent, Bach's Magnificat provides powerful evidence.

When we ask what it is that makes a theologian a Christian theologian, the answer is again all too obvious: a conviction that Jesus Christ is the revelation of God, not only "the joy of man's desiring" but also the joy of God's giving. This aspect of Bach's thought becomes clear in his two great Passions. Here the Scripture text is treated as the word from the risen Christ to the Thomaskirche congregation on Good Friday, while the chorales are used to express the response of the congregation. For example, in the St. John Passion, Jesus declares to Pilate that his kingdom is not of this world; then the chorus, singing for, if not with, the congregation replies:

O mighty king, eternal is thy glory,
How can I fitly tell thy wondrous glory?
No heart can find a worthy gift to proffer.
None dare I offer?
In vain on thy perfection's, Lord, I ponder.
Thy boundless mercy still transcends my wonder.⁷

By selecting this chorale as a response to this text, the composer illustrated the central thesis of Martin Buber's great book, I and Thou.⁸ The life of the Christian is visualized as a continuing conversation with this mighty king, who was enthroned as king by being lifted up on the cross. The music mediates a word from the living Christ to his people and elicits the vigorous response of the people to their king. My friend, June Park, has been the soprano soloist in the St. Matthew Passion. She tells me that for her the line in the oratorio that almost overwhelmed her was the confession of the centurion, "Truly this man was the Son of God." Just as, for the Psalmist, God is enthroned on the praises of Israel, so, for Bach, Christ is enthroned on the praises of the church.

This Christocentric theology was securely grounded in biblical exegesis. It has been observed that nothing else quite so obsessed Bach as the biblical text, and that in composing his music he viewed himself as a servant of that text. As one of his students wrote: "I was instructed by my teacher, Cappelmeister Bach, not to play the chorales merely off-hand, but according to the sense of the words."⁹

⁵ Cited in W. Mellers, p. 92.
⁶ L. Bernstein, The Joy of Music (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959), p. 264.
⁷ The Argo Recording of the St. John Passion. Trans. by Peter Pears.
⁸ M. Buber, I and Thou (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1937).
⁹ H.T. David and A. Mendel, The Bach Reader (New York: Norton, 1945), p. 237.

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The Parisian organist, Charles Wider, has acknowledged that the music of the chorale-preludes seemed obscure to him until Albert Schweitzer explained in detail the words in Scripture to which the music was a response or an expression.¹⁰ As an example of Bach's exegetical skill, we may take the moment in the St. Matthew Passion when the cock crowed and Peter went out and wept bitterly (Matt. 26:75). Bach saw this situation in its dramatic intensity; he felt the emotional weight of the conflicts within Peter's soul; he sensed what those conflicts were saying to worshipers on Good Friday afternoon. In a moving aria, he turned Peter's tears into a confession before God, "See, my heart and my eyes are weeping bitterly before you." Then he turned the tears into a prayer, "Have mercy on me, my God." Then, in a chorale, Bach induced the Leipzig worshiper to join Peter in his penitence, "I do not deny my guilt." And finally, for the congregation, he voiced an awareness of God's grace, "Your mercy is far greater than the sins I find in myself." Much of this interpretation, to be sure, cannot be found in the Gospel text, but it is surely faithful to the spirit of the text. Almost certainly the Evangelist anticipated from his original readers the same kind of imaginative identification with the chief apostle that Saint Sebastian anticipated from his hearers. In this respect, the composer easily qualifies as an exegetical theologian.

III

Bach's exegetical expertise also entities us to apply to his work a technical term that has become popular in recent years: narrative theology. He thought theologically by telling a story. For him and his music, "doctrinal verities and a human story are one."¹¹ With its diachronic succession of notes in time, Bach's music establishes a forward moving momentum that enables his hearers to accompany the Gospel story from step to step.

The kinship between narrative and music is closer than narrative and doctrine, or narrative and historical reconstruction. Through the music of the Passions, the biblical story is allowed to create its own ambience, within which the congregation in the Thomaskirche could find its own place. The music transported them back into that earlier time (the in illo tempore that is so important in Mircea Eliade's understanding of religion).¹² Consider, for instance, the scene in the St. Matthew Passion when Jesus announces that one of his disciples will betray him. The disciples react instantly with a frenetic, staccato series of questions, "Lord, is it I?" The following chorale gives the answer of the Leipzig congregation, "It is I, I who should be punished, and bound hand and foot in Hell."

One should distinguish between Bach's use of Scripture and proof-

¹⁰ A. Schweitzer, op. cit., 1, p. viii.
¹¹ W. Mellers, p. 87.
¹² M. Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return (New York: Pantheon, 1954).

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texting. The latter exploits the ancient story as a tool to sanctify present ideas and authorize present behavior, and is inherently self-enhancing. Bach's music transports listeners back into that earlier time and views present behavior through the lens of the biblical story; it is inherently self-transcending. By allowing the account of Gethsemane to set the stage for quiet reflection, the Passion music communicates the actualities of vicarious suffering, without succumbing to the slavery of verbal dogmas or the uncertainties of historical debate.

This means that, for Bach, narrative theology becomes very effective as liturgical theology (something that much recent narrative theology fails to do). In assessing his work as a liturgical theologian, we may speak in terms of his profession or of his vocation. In professional terms, the cantor was responsible, during his twenty-seven years in Leipzig, for directing the music in several large churches where there were two services every week-day and seven hours of services on Sundays. For each Sunday and Holy Day, he was expected to compose a cantata on the lectionary reading for that occasion, and to train the choirs and orchestras to produce it. He planned the musical program in conjunction with the other ministers, a process in which they often found him difficult to deal with. He also had major obligations to the Thomasschule, where he was pledged to "instruct the boys conscientiously"¹³ in both vocal and instrumental music and in the catechism.

For this musician, however, the vocational drive was stronger than the professional. He had a life-time calling from God to create forms of music appropriate to God's praise. His love for the Bible and the church was translated into a passion to fuse faith and music, theology and liturgy, perhaps we should say, to choreograph "the dance of God."¹⁴ He set to music the biblical story in such a way as to reveal God's presence to the congregation and to elicit an intimate, though often also disturbing, conversation with the Almighty. Because the New Testament and the church's calendar were both oriented around the stories of Jesus' death and resurrection, the Passions became a major focus of Bach's entire work. He believed that those archetypal events represent for the church both a psychological immediacy and a theological ultimacy.

The whole world is Calvary writ large,
The human soul is Calvary writ small.¹⁵

Herein ties a major contrast between the Passions of Bach and the Messiah of Handel. The latter work has from the first belonged in the concert hall, while the former belongs to the church as its initial and rightful home.

¹³ David and Mendel, op. cit., pp. 92f.
¹⁴ Cf. the title of W. Mellers' book.
¹⁵ R. Roberts, That Strange Man Upon His Cross (New York: Abingdon, 1934), p. 122.

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IV

Thinking now of the Passions, we may mention two ways in which they fulfill the basic objectives of liturgical theology. The first is to enlarge the space within which Worship takes place by pushing back the horizons of the worshipers to include events in heaven as well as those on earth. C.F. Cramer has characterized Saint Sebastian as "the Albrecht Dürer of German music."¹⁶ The kinship between the two artists might be illustrated by comparing Dürer's wood-cuts on the Apocalypse with the Passions. In his portrayal of Rev. 20, for example, Dürer shows the angel coming down from heaven, holding in one hand a great key and in the other a chain. He seizes the dragon, "that great serpent," and forces it through a trap-door into the abyss. Overhead the vultures circle, and the prophet observes all that is taking place. All this is sharply etched in the foreground. But there is also a background, near and yet strangely remote, One of the angels turns the gaze of the prophet to that background. It is a medieval German city, presumably Nürnberg, with

its wall, the gates, the houses, churches, and the priests in the doors of the churches. It is thus that the artist linked the invisible struggle with Satan to what was happening in the city. Apart from this connection between vision and reality, between heaven and earth, both biblical text and visual image would have lost their cogency. In a similar way, the musical artist enlarged the space within which the worship in the Thomaskirche proceeded.

¹⁶ David and Mendel, op. cit., p. 447.

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A second objective of liturgical theology is to expand the span of time in the consciousness of the worshipers. In the St. Matthew Passion, of course, that span includes the distance between Golgotha and Good Friday, 1729. But the preface to this Passion extends this span backward by its dialogue between the Daughter of Zion and the Faithful. The libretto begins with the words of the Daughter of Zion calling all her daughters to come and observe what is about to take place. The words bring into the zone of awareness the long sequence of prophetic promises in Isaiah and Zechariah. The Daughter represents the messianic community to which God has promised deliverance. Now, in this dramatic moment, she recognizes her bridegroom (Brautigam) coming in the form of a lamb (Lamm) and calls all her daughters to share her discovery. By sharing in this recognition of the royal bridegroom, coming in the humiliation of a slaughtered lamb, the congregation in Leipzig found itself linked through the story of Jesus to the whole saga of Israel.

There are also many subtler allusions to an even more remote past. Jesus' struggle in Gethsemane recalls Adam's struggle in the earlier garden. The violence of the soldiers recalls the fratricide of Cain. In the St. John Passion, the cool evening of the burial reminds worshipers of the cool evening when God came looking for the guilty Adam and Eve, as well as the evening when the dove brought back to Noah in the Ark the first sign of the receding flood. So the sufferings of Jesus are seen to embrace the entire span of time from first sin to final redemption. To help worshipers locate themselves within so long a calendar of time is liturgical theology of the first order. In this sense, Bach would have agreed with Walt Whitman:

I will not sing with reference to a day,
     but with reference to all days.
And I will not make a poem nor the least part of a poem,
     but has reference to the soul.¹⁷

V

We have completed our survey of the vocation of Saint Sebastian as a liturgical, narrative, exegetical, Christocentric theologian. Such a survey may impel a modern scholar to peg the composer somewhere along the chronological line that charts the history of exegesis or the history of theology. Once he is located on that line, it becomes imperative to determine how much space to give to him-a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter. And how do we describe his position in the sequence of systems? It would be easy to describe him as a pre-critical thinker, who lived in the pre-rationalist and pre-Enlightenment epoch. He clearly belongs among the pre-moderns, from whom we are separated by generations of intellectual history. But the present-day response to his music plays havoc with such treatment.

¹⁷ W. Whitman, Leaves of Grass, No. 18.

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We may do greater justice to that response by taking a theological study which appeared in 1984, and by seeing how the composer fits within the perspectives of that study. Here I have in mind George A. Lindbeck's The Nature of Doctrine, Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age.¹⁸ Lindbeck compares and contrasts three models for conceptualizing religion: cognitive-propositional; experiential-expressive; linguistic-cultural. Of these he finds the third most adequate. Religion "comprises a total pattern of speaking, thinking, feeling, and acting.... It is more like a natural language than a formally organized set of explicit statements."¹⁹ Such language exists prior to a person's experience of it; in fact, it evokes and shapes that experience. "Just as an individual becomes human by learning a language, so [the Christian] begins to become a new creature through hearing and interiorizing that language that speaks of Christ."²⁰ The canon of Scripture supplies the framework of interpretation within which Christians orient their lives.²¹ The Bible creates "a domain of meaning" that steadily becomes more real than any alternative world. The faithful increasingly discover that their own stories, however diverse and anarchic, are mysteriously embraced within the textures of the biblical stories, and especially the story of Christ, with its climax in the Cross.

To think in the context of this linguistic-cultural pattern enables Lindbeck to draw the line (perhaps too sharply) between liberal and postliberal theology. Thus the liberal is more at home in the modern world, the postliberal in the biblical world. This induces the liberal to translate the scriptural message into extra-biblical categories, while the postliberal imaginatively incorporates all experience within a Christcentered world.²² The liberal moves from the Bible into the modern world in such a way as to allow the world to absorb the text. The postliberal moves from the modern world to the text and allows the text to absorb the world. The two languages are quite different. The liberal assumes that the biblical language is foreign and must be translated into a language indigenous to the Koine of popular attitudes. The postliberal accepts the language of the Bible as a lens through which to look at the modern world, and at each of its urgent intellectual crusades.

Where, now, may we classify the eighteenth century composer? There can be little doubt of the answer. He could well have sat as model for Lindbeck the painter. He is a classic example of a postliberal theologian. Here, then, is an enigma. The same artist can be accurately classified as both a premodern and a postliberal; we have much to learn from him in both roles. Yet there is something wrong with all such attempts to confine artists within systems of thought. Paul Horgan reminds us of this error: "The most valuable writers are those in whom we find not

¹⁸ Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984.
¹⁹ Ibid., p. 64
²⁰ Ibid., p. 62.
²¹ Ibid., p. 117.
²² Ibid., p. 118.

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themselves, or ourselves, or the fugitive era of their life-times, but the common vision of all times."²³

The common vision of all times-that is what audiences everywhere are glimpsing as they listen again to Bach's music. And Christians in those audiences are sensing the Christian motivation of the music. So the vocation of Bach as a liturgical theologian did not cease with his death in 1750.²⁴

²³ Paul Horgan, Of America East and West (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1984), p. 152.
²⁴ One sign of this continuing vocation may be a report from Leipzig itself. it seems that Marxist authorities have tried to convert the boys of the Thomasschule into atheists, but have had very little success. Among other things, regular singing of the Bach chorales has served as antidote to such seduction. Perhaps one may detect in the West similar resistance to the appeal of capitalist secularism.