Embracing extravagance, abandoning limits

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn this essay I consider the methodological and theological significance of David Hopps’s creative intervention in The Extravagance of Music to ‘rehabilitate lightness’ in theological reflection on music in a way that includes taking seriously even the theological potential of musical ‘kitsch’ and ‘banal’ popular music lyrics. Yet though Hopps makes a persuasive case for widening the musical content that he deems worthy of theological engagement, I show that his own ‘light’ limits around the revelatory potential of music surface in a series of caveats and qualifications. I argue for a still more capacious approach to theological reflection that resists even these limits. I suggest that such reflection has the capacity to open our ears to the activity of God at work in and in spite of the quality of human musical creations and testifies to the extravagance of God more than to the extravagance of music.