Sounding the Depths

'Sounding the Depths shows clearly why it is essential for the Church to engage with the arts, and how the Theology Through the Arts project has helped to bring to birth some striking examples of Christian art.' Patrick Sherry, Professor of Philosophical Theology, Lancaster University Emerging out of an international arts festival held in Cambridge in September 2000, Sounding the Depths brings a number of prominent artists (including sculptors, musicians and filmmakers) together with theologians, and reflects the intensive conversations and collaboration between them that characterised the event itself. While the essays engage with the considerable variety of ways in which the arts can enrich the theological enterprise, they are informed throughout by the conviction that theology not only can benefit from the arts, but that it actually needs them. Indeed, while some have claimed that to allow.; the arts a substantial place in theology means that theology becomes less rigorous, this book holds out for the opposite position: that the arts can generate greater rigour and precision, and thus help theology to be more appropriate to its own subject-matter, which is the disciplined pursuit of wisdom in particular practical contexts. This is a book that will be mandatory reading for all students of theology and the arts, and will also have strong appeal to anybody with an interest in how theology engages appropriately both with other disciplines and with contemporary culture in general. Contributors: Jeremy Begbie, Lorraine Cavanagh, Jonathan Clarke, David F Ford. Nigel Forde, Vanessa Herrick, John Inge, James MacMillan, Alistair I McFadyen, Megan O'Connor, Michael O'Connor, Ben Quash, Paul Spicer, Michael Symmons Roberts, Jo Bailey Wells, Rowan Williams, Nicholas Woiterstorff. Tons Wright Jeremy Begbie is Reader in Theology and Associate Director of the Institute of Theology, Imagination and the Arts at the University of St Andrews. He is also Vice-Principal of Ridley Hall, Cambridge, and an affiliated lecturer in divinity in the University of Cambridge. His publications include Theology. Mush. and Time, Voicing Creation's Praise and Beholding the Glory.