Music and Monotheism: Dr Gareth Wilson, 11 November 2025, 7pm, St Luke’s Vestry.
What connects the phenomenon of music as an art with the belief in the one indivisible
God? What has music, a non-linguistic medium, to say about the personal, loving,
communicative God of Scripture and the Prophets, or the omniscient, omnipotent,
omnipresent, transcendent God of the philosophers and can it bring these ‘concepts of
God’ together? In this talk, Gareth Wilson speaks to us about his recent book for
Cambridge University Press that explores these themes, which suggests that
communication allowed by music, and aesthetic experience in general, is the very raison
d’être of Abrahamic monotheism and might thus allow an opportunity for dialogue
between the monotheistic faiths.