December 16, 2005

MINNEAPOLIS – In The Music of Creation, with CD Templeton Award winner Arthur Peacocke and Ann Pederson reveal how Christian understanding of creation can be brightly lit by contemporary scientific insights and approached analogously by examining musical creativity. Included are relevant selections on an accompanying CD. Composition, fugal arrangement, rhythm and tempo, jazz improvisation – they all shed light on Christian convictions about creation.

"A brilliant idea, brilliantly executed." –Keith Ward, Regius Professor of Divinity Emeritus, Oxford University.

"In this unique, delightful and artful book, Ann Pederson and Arthur Peacocke-both leading voices in the ‘theology and science' conversations-invite the reader to explore the intertwining paths between musical time, experienced through the unfolding dynamism of musical patterns, and creation time, revealed in the ceaseless movement of the immanent Creator God in the world of nature. I welcome this new genre of literature which compellingly brings together music, time and Christian theology, and I congratulate Ann and Arthur in producing such a marvelous harmony between these diverse voices." –Robert John Russell, Professor of Theology and Science in Residence, The Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, and Founder and Director, The Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences.

"An elegantly written exploration of the sonorous borderlands between theology and music. Not everyone will agree with all that is said theologically, but all who read it are bound to benefit. It should do much to encourage and advance the growing music-theology dialogue." –Jeremy Begbie, University of St Andrews.

Arthur Peacocke is Warden Emeritus of the society of Ordained Scientists, England. For more than twenty-five years, he held academic posts in physical biochemistry at the universities of Birmingham and Oxford and, as theologian-scientist, he was dean of Clare College, Cambridge, and subsequently Director of the Ian Ramsey Centre, Oxford. He was the recipient of the Templeton Prize in 2001.

Ann Pederson is Associate Professor of Religion at Augustana College, Sioux Falls, South Dakota. She is author of God, Creation, and All That Jazz (2001).

The Music of Creation, with CD, Fortress Press Theology and the Sciences series, ISBN: 0-8006-3756-9, Format: 8" x 8," paperback with CD, 128 pp, Price: $20.00.

To order The Music of Creation, with CD please call Fortress Press at 1-800-328-4648 or visit the web site at http://www.augsburgfortress.com/.

Fortress Press