Book excerpt

Tova Leigh-Choate on the earliest forms of musical celebration during Advent and Christmas

G. K. Chesterton on the convergence of omnipotence and impotence in Bethlehem

Tova Leigh-Choate on the roots of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio

Rowan Williams on the Logos and the diverse logoi that mirror it

Oliver O’Donovan on the necessity of tradition in sustaining communal identity

Musicologist Leopold Brauneiss compares Arvo Pärt’s compositional technique with Jungian archetypes

Composer Arvo Pärt describes how he came to appropriate the mysteries of polyphony

Orthodox theologian Peter Bouteneff on the unutterable source of all true utterances

Conductor Paul Hillier on the sources of Arvo Pärt’s distinctive musical expression

Richard Weaver on the attenuating of knowledge

Dallas Willard on the modern divorce between faith and knowledge

Mark Mitchell on Michael Polanyi’s recognition of the dangerous dead-end of materialistic reductionism