Theology as Performance

"Theology as Performance" breaks new ground in the ongoing conversation between modern theology and philosophical aesthetics by arguing that significant moments in the development of the modern concept of God have been deeply influenced by concepts and approaches borrowed from the discipline of musical aesthetics. The Western theological tradition can be shown to have already had a long-standing latent connection to musical reflection, in particular as represented in the figures of Friedrich Schleiermacher, Karl Barth, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Each thinker develops radically different ways of writing about God that can be shown to have been in significant respects derived from each one's reading and writing about music. Could it be that three significant developments in the modern theological project - Schleiermacher's so-called "subjective" turn, Barth's "objectivist" reaction, and Wittgenstein's "language-game pragmatism" - can only be understood fully from within the context of the musicological discourses that give rise to them?

In this intellectual history, Stoltzfus constructs two "trajectories" with which to trace briefly theological reflection upon music at several points throughout the pre-modern period: the traditions of Orpheus and Pythagoras. This relatively non-controversial discussion of textual evidence arranged in historical sequence then sets up the reader to be able to consider Schleiermacher's aesthetic approach as a modern representative of the "Orpheus" trajectory and Barth's approach as representative of the "Pythagoras" trajectory.

The chapter on Wittgenstein offers a critique of these two trajectories, as well as their modern theological proponents, and advocates for a third, "performative," theological-aesthetic method. "Theology as Performance" offers a provocative rethinking of the nature of theology.