Description

What is music and what is it about music that stirs the human soul?

Is it just a series of sound waves producing neurological responses … or could music be - as so many ancients believed - a signal from God?

Join us for this episode as we take a look at the enduring love affair between music and the human heart. 

Special thanks to Zondervan Academic, our show sponsor, publishers of Evangelical Theology by Michael F Bird.

LINKS: 

• Find out more about our guest Professor Dr Jeremy Begbie here.
• Find out more about our guest Professor Dr Kirsty Beilharz here.
• Check out this interview Professor Begbie did with Christianity Today in 2018, about Christian artists and their need for a firm grounding in Scripture.
• Read more about the conundrum of consciousness here.
• Seek out Jeremy Begbie's book Theology, Music and Time. 
• Want to start listening to St Matthew Passion but don't know where to start? Check out this helpful guide from NPR (America's National Public Radio). 
• Get your hands on Kirsty Beilharz's book Music Remembers Me: Connection and Wellbeing in Dementia. 
• Kirsty spoke to Eternity News in 2016 about dementia care and music. Read the article here.
• Do Mark Hadley a favour and read The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien.
• Centre For Public Christianity fellow Barney Zwartz wrote this piece for the Sydney Morning Herald, titled 'The power of music is a path to God'. 
• Read the story of AN Wilson's conversion back to Christianity in The New Statesman, where he says "The existence of langauge is one of the many phenomena - of which love and music are the two strongest - which suggest that human beings are very much more than collections of meat. They convince me that we are spiritual beings, and that the religion of the incarnation, asserting that God made humanity in His image, and continually restores humanity in His image, is simply true." 
• From this episode's 5 Minute Jesus, read the Parable of the Prodigal Son. 

Want to send John Dickson a question? He loves them. Just click here to provide a query for our next Q and A show!

Undeceptions is part of the Eternity Podcast Network, an audio collection showcasing the seriously good news of faith today.