A Hermeneutical Exploration of the Revelatory Text of John 4:1–42,in a Performative Key

Theopoetical Patterns in Theological Investigation

Various aspects of Lonergan’s approach ground this author’s understanding of the task facing theology today: first, the view that Western culture has moved through three broad stages of meaning (common sense, theory, and interiority) and that theology at this time needs to mediate its findings from theory into that third stage of “interiority.” Second, that a multiform awareness or conversion at work in the theologian is foundational to theological method and enabling that mediation. ⁶ Third, that human meaning-making and knowledge unfold in a variety of patterns (common sense/practical, biological, intellectual/theoretical, aesthetic, artistic, dramatic, mystical and religious, etc.), ⁷ which implies that knowledge cannot be limited to what emerges from the theoretical pattern most commonly used in theological discourse. Fourth, that art and music enrich concrete human experience, the first stage of human knowing, and as a result affect, broaden, or “thicken” ⁸ the whole process of human knowing—which Lonergan calls “intentionality analysis.” Therefore, the quality of our thought is not hindered or lessened by introducing other patterns of experience into theological investigation. On the contrary, in our quest for understanding, music could help us “hold” the experience longer ⁹ so as to slow-cook our taste for the “truth” being appropriated. This article explores one specific instance of this hypothesis.

These premises resonate with writings in the broad, emerging field of theopoetics, which while more focused on words than music, raises many of the questions underlying this author’s interest in music in theological method, as well as the academy’s ongoing questions around the shape of theology into the future. ¹⁰ Theopoetics is still shaping its own methodology, so a comprehensive description of this field in which a plurality of perspectives on truth or polyphilia (love of multiplicity) ¹¹ seems to be essential is not feasible, but some identifying characteristics are possible to name. From the combination of the Greek thea with poiein, meaning “to make or shape,” etymologically theopoetics is described as “a means of making God, of shaping experience of the divine, and the study of ways in which people come to know the Spirit.” ¹² First coined by Stanley Hopper as theopoisis in a 1971 talk on “The Literary Imagination and the Doing of Theology,” ¹³ its foundational authors and writers directly influenced by them ¹⁴ challenge theological discourse to a “depth of thought” that recognizes that we live more out of myth, dream, metaphor, or archetype than rational thought. ¹⁵ Theopoetics warns theology that words potentially cage our understanding of things even as they give us access to their meaning, and that at this moment in the history of religion and theological exploration, our questions and aims are as important as the answers found. Faith, from this perspective, is to be understood more as a “wager on God” based on life and trust than certainty of concepts, ¹⁶ which need to be radically engaged with the lived human experience of embodiment in all its dimensions. In Latin “‘knowledge’ and ‘taste’ come from the same root . . . to know something is to feel its taste,” ¹⁷ implying that kinesthetic, embodied knowing has a trustworthy role to play in making sense of the faith we believe. ¹⁸

The range of authors who refer to theopoetics or self-identify as part of the same movement and style of thinking include philosophers addressing postmodern theology and the “death of God,” process theologians, biblical scholars, and liberation theologians invested in naming power-plays and hearing the voices of those on the margin, to name a few. ¹⁹ Their variety and complexity belie the notion that its intent is theology in poetic form. ²⁰ Rather, it is an embodied attempt to say something, experienced and accessible, about the God we can host but not control, a conversation opener towards further truth, so that “whether theology is inscribed in the genre of poetry, in the form of narrative, or in a thicker, theoretical style of prose, it remains a poiesis: an inventive, imaginative act of composition performed by authors.” ²¹ The intent is to face what “the twilight of the church and the twilight of conventional theologies” ²² demand of us: “finding fresh words and forms of speaking about God that that honour the deep traditions of Christianity while managing to capture a sense of the experience of the divine.” ²³

These strong challenges to theology, a discipline shaped by an overarching philosophical approach to meaning and a shared, systematic organization of its results may need nuancing, but they hold some truth. And while music emerges little in the writings of this group of scholars, their expressed convictions resonate with what music brings to the theological table, and evoke dimensions already connected with music’s specific way of working. The embodied nature of the musical symbolic form, its emotional resonance and connection to human temporality, which differentiates it from conceptual abstraction, suggests it may be a fruitful tool for the poietic exploration of the human experience of the divine. Theopoetic writings invite us to shift from the quest to “see God” to that of “seeing as God sees”; ²⁴ to find a way of thinking God in the world and connected to it, without conflating the human divine; “to think of the difference of ‘God’ and ‘world’ with a radicality that actually deepens their interdependence.” ²⁵ Theological writings on how music as a symbolic form works identify its potential to do just this. ²⁶

Hence, the intent here is to focus on Scripture received and interpreted as an inspired text through a musical interpretation combining music with words. Rather than a case of “pure” music creating a space for the experience of divine presence, or an analogy of Christian meaning-making, therefore, the attempt is a musical-poetic interpretation of the truth claims of a piece of Scripture for the present time. The overriding question is if and how it serves the revelatory and transformative dimensions of the inspired Word in Christian biblical spirituality.

Why John 4:1–42 and Sandra Schneiders’s approach to its analysis? This text is a classic within a classic: ²⁷ the story of an encounter between Jesus and an unnamed woman from Samaria which we find in chapter 4 of the Fourth Gospel, itself expressive of the life and faith of the Johannine community. It is an identifiable, well-known text, albeit with contested interpretations, whose universal appeal has been the focus of exegetical analysis and “accommodated” ²⁸ pastoral interpretation throughout the history of the Christian tradition. Both the importance of the text and its broad resonance over time make it a useful place to explore the added dimension music brings to its interpretation and understanding. In terms of using Schneiders’s interpretation of the same as our framework, various reasons make it suitable. Questions determine method, and Schneiders is clear about the specific questions she brings to the text: the role of the woman in a text about mission. So her choice of method or lens to explore the text is feminist. ²⁹ These questions and the in-depth analysis of John 4 have stood the test of time as one valid interpretation of John 4. ³⁰ Also important is Schneiders’s awareness of the links between biblical theology (revelation, inspiration, and interpretation), imagination, and the aesthetic, which aligns with an intent to explore musical meaning in theological investigation. Aesthetic awareness runs right through Schneiders’s understanding of biblical spirituality, in all three hermeneutical perspectives: behind the text, it is the theological-spiritual imagination of the communities and authors of the text—which she calls paschal imagination—that is the agent of its revelatory capacity. The scriptural text itself is presented with three analogies drawn from the world of visual, auditory, and dramatic art forms. The text as iconic unveils the mystery and meaning of the life of Jesus; the text as a musical score is the normative possibility of an endless number of possible faithful interpretations of that meaning; and the text as a script opens a world in which the actors can lose themselves in this world, interpreted and performed, while being transformed in the process. ³¹ It is aesthetic surrender of the reader to the world before the text, followed by critical existential interpretation of the meaning of the truth claims of the text that lead to the transformative interpretation Scripture as revelatory text is capable of.

This aesthetic dimension has been implicit in her work for some time, ³² but interestingly, Schneiders too has turned recently to the field of theopoetics to further answer her questions on the aesthetic nature of biblical interpretation. Distinguishing between theology and theopoetics, Schneiders describes the former as the intellect working discursively, while in the latter the imagination works aesthetically and with the aim of experiencing the divine. ³³ As she understands it, theopoetics and theopoesis shape “religious experience by aesthetic engagement with the biblical text,” and are “primarily synthetic, aesthetic, and holistic, moving from experience to participation, that is, to a depth engagement or an engagement of the depths in which truth and beauty coincide.” ³⁴ This differentiation between theopoetics and theology is one I would want to define differently: this article questions the clear separation (if not distinction) between the artistic imagination and discursive writing, but as a way of framing music’s potential contribution to theological method, her understanding of theopoetics is promising: “The embodiment of experience which is communally assimilated and distinctively formulated as a theopoesis, an imaginative construction into which others can enter by way of aesthetic as well as intellectual participation so that they ‘know’ not just with their minds, discursively, but with their whole embodied selves.” ³⁵ Once again, embodied experience, one of the central aspects of the musical symbolic form, is at the fore. But what is Schneiders’s method of biblical interpretation, and how does she read the text of John 4?

Sandra Schneiders’s Biblical Spirituality and Hermeneutics

Schneiders’s approach to Scripture recognizes and grounds the link between artistic creativity and academic research. ³⁶ In her framework, biblical hermeneutics is the third moment of biblical interpretation, a three-stage process framed under the umbrella term of “biblical spirituality”: ³⁷ the spirituality which produced the text (the object of study of exegesis and criticism), the spirituality in the text (the object of study of biblical theology), and the spirituality the text produces in readers by their interaction with it (the object of study of hermeneutics). This emphasis on spirituality ³⁸ and the interpreter’s experience and conscious involvement therein at each stage is one of the most important elements in Schneiders’s approach to biblical interpretation. She explores faith as a “contributing partner in the academic enterprise,” ³⁹ necessary for the fullest knowledge of its meaning. “Many biblical scholars regard this kind of engagement with the text as non-scholarly devotionalism. In fact, experiencing the text is as integral to the work of biblical interpretation as hearing a Mozart symphony played in concert is integral to the work of the music critic or as seeing Hamlet in the theatre is to the work of the literary scholar.” ⁴⁰ She brings a rigorous use of the tools of scriptural criticism and analysis to the investigation of the text understood as an inspired “locus of encounter” ⁴¹ in order to defend it from the history of biased or mediocre interpretation, and the consequences of the same for the life of the church and those it serves.

Schneiders draws strongly on Gadamer and Ricoeur: from the former, a grasp of the ontological nature of human understanding in its historical consciousness, the centrality of aesthetic experience in human understanding and the truth claims of works of art and classics; ⁴² from the latter, his theory and steps of interpretation of the worlds behind, in, and before texts. ⁴³ Both take experience as foundational to human knowing: Gadamer traces the etymology and meaning of human “play” and its “true consummation” in art to name aesthetic experience as the essence of experience per se. ⁴⁴ He places the art work itself at the center of the whole aesthetic experience, “subject” rather than object of any encounter with art, with a claim to truth, “even if it does not know what it is and cannot say what it knows.” ⁴⁵ This “claim,” a key notion for Gadamer and one that Schneiders integrates and applies to the biblical text, is born of the present-moment quality of aesthetic experience and the role it plays in the fusion of horizons of past and present ⁴⁶ intrinsic to all transformational human understanding ⁴⁷ in the ongoing and developing event of truth. Paul Ricoeur’s experiential starting point is his focus on language, text, and discourse as the means of overcoming the solitary and non-transferable nature of human experience. ⁴⁸ Perhaps his most significant contribution to Schneiders’s approach is the world that texts produce and project on their readers resulting in the enlargement of human horizons, and the steps of understanding involved in reading texts that Schneiders assumes and integrates. ⁴⁹

Schneiders applies the insights of these thinkers to the field of biblical spirituality. Following Ricoeur’s threefold perspective, her interest in the world behind the text is not what we can discern and identify as “historically” true, ⁵⁰ but rather how this inspired text, which functions as a medium of revelation of the actual Christ, is related to the historical context out of which it emerges. The world of or in the text has a surplus of meaning—always meaning more and other than what it meant for the author and at the time of its creation—leading to a necessary plurality of interpretations, which are mediated through, not despite, the text that carries it. Therein lies the need for a diversity of methods ⁵¹ that can and should be employed to discover this ideal meaning, all of which is aimed towards the transformative interpretation of the readers’ world before the text: how the world New Testament revelation opens to its readers can be experienced and appropriated as such, with the transformation—she speaks of conversion—which this necessarily implies.

The notion of “world,” as noted above, is drawn directly from Ricoeur: discourse emerges from how we make sense of our being in the world. Language is referential and as such can point to or refer to the things it speaks of, but more fundamentally, the written text takes a situation and makes of it a world, into which we can enter, and by which we are transformed. The world it opens may refer to the external world but is also more than that “real” world, which it does not duplicate, but instead, changes. ⁵² Schneiders applies this understanding to biblical hermeneutics. Scripture is (also) a piece of literature, born of witness, expressed in language, consigned to writing, constituting what Gadamer would call an art object, a work of art, and a classic. As such, the biblical text opens up a world of meaning into which the reader is invited to enter and dialogue—a “fusion of horizons” that leaves neither text nor interpreter unchanged. That the world opened by Scripture is one experienced through the lens of faith does not imply the text no longer functions as written works of literature do. This world could be named as the reign of God, life in the Spirit, the body of Christ or the call to discipleship, but its understanding passes through the text as text and as classic. Hence the need to bring the appropriate tools of critical analysis at our disposal for its interpretation. So, what is the process of interpretation she proposes and where could music fit therein?

Interpretation as Aesthetic Surrender and Transformative Understanding

Interpretation, properly understood, takes place before the text, and presupposes the other two hermeneutical perspectives, behind and in the text. Schneiders integrates Gadamer’s notion of “application” as the moment of understanding (although questioning the appropriateness of the actual term to render well his thought) and develops Ricoeur’s notion of “appropriation” to define the ultimate goal of biblical interpretation as the transformation of the interpreter, or what she calls “transformative understanding.” ⁵³ This transformative understanding takes place through a postcritical dialogue with the biblical text in two moments: aesthetic surrender, described as suspension of disbelief and analysis to enter into and experience the world opened by the text, followed by critical interpretation of the existential meaning of the truth claims of the text. These two inseparable steps together change both the person interpreting and the world of the text, as the fusion of horizons between the reader and the world opened by the text take place in time and their meaning accumulates through time.

To arrive at this theory, Schneiders unfolds the notion of interpretation into two inseparable but distinguishable elements: the process or act of interpreting and its result, or product: meaning (which she understands as an “event that perdures”). Drawing on Ricoeur, she defines the first as “the dialectic between explanation and understanding, between the use of methods to clarify the sense-reference content of the text and the holistic assimilation of that content as expansion of one’s being, one’s subjectivity.” ⁵⁴ So interpretation happens when, having interrogated behind and into a text for its explanation using the appropriate methods, our mind rests in the experience of meaning. And what is the resulting “meaning” (produced) in biblical hermeneutics? Schneiders expands Ricoeur’s definition of meaning—“the dialectic between sense (what is said) and reference (what it is said about)” ⁵⁵ —in relation to Scripture to include two essential elements that form part of understanding Scripture: the ideal meaning of the text as language (accessed through exegesis and historical critical analysis) and the existential significance or “truth claim” of the text as a literary work (accessed through literary criticism appropriate to the genre of the text). Together, these give us access to what she calls the textual meaning of Scripture. ⁵⁶ Schneiders integrates contemporary awareness of the distortion that unconscious bias brings to biblical interpretation. Therefore, to access this meaning scholarly integrity demands an awareness and application of ideological criticism to suspect and uncover the potential biases of the text. She identifies two kinds of biases: prejudices embedded within the text itself, where certain groups are presented as marginal or inferior; and those within the interpreters of the text who use it, wittingly or not, to justify and perpetuate unjust or un-evangelical economic or political structures. ⁵⁷

Finally, Schneiders’s offers a series of criteria to ensure valid interpretations (as opposed to correct ones, since there will and should be more than one). ⁵⁸ Only after responsible scholarly interrogation of the text and verification of the validity of one’s understanding can one advance to the ultimate goal of biblical interpretation: aesthetic surrender to the text and critical existential interpretation of the same, with the guiding question, which could be framed in many ways, of: “What is the meaning of the text for the believing community, now?” Biblical hermeneutics is the passage from first naïveté intuition through criticism to second naïveté, transformative interpretation. What this process looks like in action can be seen in her integral approach to the text in question.

John 4:1–42: Schneiders’s Feminist Interpretation

The text of John 4 ⁵⁹ narrates the encounter between Jesus and an unnamed woman from Samaria at a well, its effect on her, on Jesus, on his disciples and the ensuing conversion of the people of that town. ⁶⁰ The narrative is a classic that has maintained its first naïveté attraction and transformative potential for centuries. It shares, however, in the distanciation (and potential alienation) of the rest of Scripture from us in time, space, and culture and is a textbook example of the trivialization of women in Scripture. ⁶¹ Its (mis)interpretation at various levels of the Christian churches’ teaching, preaching, and understanding of women has often participated in or legitimated ongoing oppressive practices towards women in society, culture, and pastoral care. Schneiders, grounded on her understanding of Scripture as inspired and seeking to rescue the text from its history of interpretation and misinterpretation so that it can continue to mediate transformative, divine revelation, chooses as her lens a “feminist critical analysis” of suspicion and retrieval. Can this biblical text function as revelatory text, as a locus of salvific encounter with God, for women and men once their feminist consciousness has been raised? ⁶²

What is the textual meaning of John 4:1–42? Drawing drawn from historical and literary analyses, Schneiders claims that various elements of the story point towards it being a symbolic type story rather than a historical narrative. ⁶³ Its position in the Gospel (at the center of the Cana pericope of John 2–4 starting with the coming to faith of Jews and ending with the coming to faith of a gentile household), and the fact that there is no proof of Jesus’s ministry to the Samaritans, suggest the text most probably aims to read back into the public ministry of Jesus the Johannine community’s post-resurrection experience of the Samaritan mission, with the aim of justifying the validity and standing of that community. ⁶⁴ From a theological perspective, therefore, it is a mission story, so the question that leads Schneiders through the analysis is: What is the role and identity of the woman in this missionary story?

The underlying symbolism of betrothal evoked by the scene’s setting at Jacob’s well suggests that this narrative is a symbolic “type story” of a recognizable biblical pattern: the meeting at a well of future spouses who play a role in the history of salvation (in this case Jesus, the “new bridegroom” and the people of Samaria). The woman’s place in the pericope and the fact that she is unnamed point to her being a “representative figure” in the text. Anonymity is a common feature of significant characters in Johannine literature that enables them to represent collectivities without losing their particularity. It is a highly religious and theological discussion, rich in Samaritan theology as it intersects with the Jewish understanding of their history, in which Jesus not only questions but is, in turn, questioned by the woman about his identity and the place of Samaria in the history of salvation. Furthermore, in this conversation we find, for the first time in the Gospel of John, Jesus’s self-revelation as the “I am/Ego Eimi,” to a woman, in the context of a dialogue of mutual discovery. The theological depth and intensity of this dialogue warn us against literalizing the sexual references that are at the center of the conversation (verses 16–18). It is unlikely that any woman could have been wed five times in that cultural context, making the naïve (or intentional) accentuation of this fact, and its demeaning effect on women’s presence and role in biblical revelation, questionable. These verses (16–18) evoke Samaria’s religious history with considerable symbolic accuracy, ⁶⁵ so it is much more probable that the text tells the story of the religious history of Samaria as a fivefold story of adultery in relation to the worship of their God. Therefore, this text is probably (for those who wrote it and their contemporaries) a recognizable story about the history of Samaria and the validity of the Christian community there. It could also be read as an implicit statement about the role of women in that community, one of whom appears as proclaiming and bringing others to Jesus as well as true interlocutor for him, by whom he is drawn into a profound statement of self-revelation.

Schneiders completes her critique by turning to its potential hermeneutic appropriation: What are the transforming effects of the world before the text opened in this interpretation? She enunciates two. First, the “astonishing, even shocking” inclusiveness of the kingdom as lived by the Johannine community, by placing an unnamed woman at very center of Jesus’s self-revelation and the Christian communities ongoing mission in the world. Second, the eschatological tension of that inclusivity, manifest in its very language, as she notes the problematic nature of the symbolism of faithfulness and adultery in prophetic literature and perpetuated in this text, in which the faithful male represents God and the adulterous woman the people of Israel. It is an overlapping of worlds within the text itself that sits alongside and reflects the current reality of ecclesial relationships and their need to be transformed into what we see unfold between Jesus and this woman.

Nameless: A Performative Interpretation of John 4:1–42

The final step of Schneiders’s integral method of interpretation is a second naïveté aesthetic surrender to the text and critical existential transformative interpretation of its truth claims, which this article does through a musical composition. While this approach is unusual, in one sense it is no different to any other theological interpretation of a text, except it is carried out through the lens of the symbolic form of music. It is a poietic access point, making/creating as a different form of discovery and knowledge than conceptual understanding, as old in the history of Western thought as Aristotle’s classification of forms of knowing: theoria (knowing by meditation), praxis (knowing by doing), and poetics (knowing by creating). None of these forms functions alone, of course, and our epistemological understanding of the various ways in which the mind comes to understanding has developed considerably since then, including our appreciation of the role of imagination. Therefore, I would now invite the reader to listen to the piece of music offered as a second naïveté, critical existential transformative interpretation of the truth claims of John 4 as presented by Schneiders. It will be followed by a brief semiotic analysis of the song and its reception in forums of theological investigation. Both will be more accessible to the reader if the song is listened to first. ⁶⁶ The link to the song, entitled Nameless, and its lyrics are below:

Nameless ⁶⁷

I am . . . You are . . . Nameless, claimless still . . .

You are . . . I am . . . Shameless, faceless if only you knew . . .

You interrupt her and she interrupts you right back; You were tired

It was the sixth hour:

The time and the place for eternity life to make sense

The right kind of a space for a scene!

What is she doing here? Rabbi, you’ve got to eat! How dare you speak to me?

How dare you cross the line that was drawn and still drawn;

Give me something to drink—I am tired! It is the sixth hour, ’cos

I am . . . You are . . . Nameless, claimless still . . . Believe me that

You are . . . I am . . . Shameless, faceless if only you knew . . .

You have no bucket, she cut through the small talk

And called you to honour an overdue covenant:

One of those conversations that mark a world;

One of those rare occasions where time stands still:

And the truth that was claimed as their two worlds collide and change shape:

[Is that] she’s more than a match for your mind:

she can find her way through all the clues

to your truth and your power, for now is the hour of

I am . . . You are . . . Nameless, claimless still . . . Believe me that

You are . . . I am . . . Shameless, faceless, if only you knew . . .

If only you knew . . . If only you knew . . . If . . . ἐγώ εἰμι,

I am . . . You are . . . Nameless, claimless still . . .

You are . . . I am . . .

Naming the Musical Meaning of Nameless

How do we make sense of a piece of music? How to understand if and how music contributes to the interpretation of the narrative of the Samaritan woman? And from the perspective of whom? The music we are looking at combines words and music, making it both more accessible for theological thinking and more complex for its musical analysis, ⁶⁸ but it is the combination of both that we are seeking to explore. While it may be hard to pin down what music means to a univocal understanding, it is possible to describe and analyze what music is doing, the musical facts, and in this way, paint a picture of what meaning it transmits and what it does not. It is also possible to explore, in discreet focused ways, how its musical meaning is received.

A hermeneutical analysis of music is somewhat more complex than that of written discourse. Musicologist Jean-Jacques Nattiez ⁶⁹ offers an approach that can be of use here: he expands Ricoeur’s three hermeneutical perspectives of literary analysis into six for any comprehensive analysis of a piece of music. First of all, musical analysis of what is “behind the text” focuses on the process of creation and has two possible perspectives: what the music tells us about the composer/interpreter’s intention (inductive poietics), and what our knowledge of the life, thought, and music of the composer/interpreter tells us of the music’s meaning (external poietics). ⁷⁰ A musical analysis of the annotated piece of music itself, called immanent analysis, corresponds to the in the text analysis of a piece of literature. ⁷¹ And a musical analysis situated “before the text” also has two possible perspectives: how the music could and perhaps even should be heard by its audience in the light of its analysis (inductive esthesics); ⁷² and how it is actually received (external esthesics). Not all analyses address all perspectives, but it is helpful—Nattiez proposes necessary—to be aware and situate our analyses in that framework to protect it from underlying biases, and work towards accumulative understanding and knowledge.

For the purposes of this article, two distinct analyses are briefly presented and compared, both developed in interdisciplinary collaboration: one is an “immanent analysis” of Nameless annotated and recorded, through the lens of musical semiotics; ⁷³ the other, a reflection on the results of a survey conducted in various academic forums of theological investigation where the song was performed and analyzed (external esthesics). ⁷⁴ As with any text, our conclusions are not “complete” since the experience and reception of the listener who enters the world opened by a text is unique. However, our quest is to explore the validity (to use Schneiders’s term) of the musical meanings developed in Nameless, so they can inform and form the basis of gaining further clarity about music’s contribution to faith’s understanding.

In the Text: Musical Semiotics of Nameless

Musical semiotics is a way of hearing what is given by music. From the first motive onwards, a piece of music creates a musical space, a musical time, tensive orientations, remembrances (which Eero Tarasti calls a repertoire), and expectations. This analysis explores the piece’s essential musical gestures and the narrative they open.

Overall, the melodic line of the song has only a six-tone range throughout, which is generally monotone and descending. Therefore, most of the musical narrative comes from its rhythm and harmonies. The syncopated movement of the verse contrasts with the even spaces of the chorus, and its melodic simplicity is stretched by the male and female harmonies, which underline and draw attention to the gendered characters of the text. These harmonies develop and thicken during the piece of music, opening what started as an individual encounter between two people to the story of a shared experience. A repeating G marks time as the music opens and prepares the movement by instantly setting a harmonic space and meter, with an expectation of a narrative to follow. This evenly marked time, present in the intro and the first chorus and picked up during parts of the verse, creates a ground, the tonic, “in G,” around which the music the other motifs circle and develop (see Figure 1).

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Figure 1.

Opening bars: Base [G] and [C B]question figure.

Image of a Question Mark and its Response

Against that backdrop, the song opens with the figure of a repeated question [C–B], where the space in-between is opened and held by that prominent, constant base or foundation of the repeatedly “beated” [G] tone on the tonic of the chord. As the piece develops, this [G] tone becomes more prominent, both in its underlying repetition by the second voice and the rhythm. This [G] becomes a human voice in the repetition of the refrain, without answering the question, sung by the tenor and echoed in the piano. In this way, it appears to be heard by another voice, either suggesting “I heard you!” or entering the conversation. In later choruses, other voices enter this musical space-time. The female voice moves from solo to unison female voices harmonized with a male tenor, evoking a growing community that carries the motives initiated in this first moment.

This question motive is developed into a musical “image of the question mark”: [C–B–A–G–A], a progression (descending fourth) which is picked up right through the song. In its development from two notes to five, we find ourselves with two mirroring figures of a descending and rising second [C–B] and [G–A], in and around the position of the [A], which is a second above the grounding tone of the music’s key [G]. Therefore, what the lyrics do by opposing and relating “I am” and “you are” is reflected in the music by opposing and relating [C–B] and [G–A], forming, in this way the musical question (see Figure 2).

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Figure 2.

Developed image of the question mark [C–B–A–G–A].

The question’s “response,” in each chorus, ends with the same hanging “if” on [A] followed by a space, which leaves the question open. However, this is somehow answered or even contradicted by the closing motif of each chorus: a descending third ending on the repeated tonic [B–A–G–G]. In fact, the silence after the “if” opens another possible interpretation of the words that follow it: “only you knew” framed in the figure of an answer [A–B–A–G–G] can be interpreted as “You knew me already, and only You (see Figure 3).”

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Figure 3.

The figure of an answer [A–B–A–G–G].

Syncopated Monologue in Two Motifs: Descending Third and Fourth

This descending third of the chorus becomes a key motive in the verses with an irregular syncopation: a repeated circling or lingering that develops the question figure, maintaining the [G] as its base. Where the chorus is marked by open spaces, the verse is breathless, spaceless, rushed, and syncopated; thus, the musical gesture is one of “much to say in too little time.” More than a dialogue, we are faced with a monologue: one side of an educated argument. The same spaceless style accompanies another motif drawn from question image of the chorus: a descending fourth, appearing in the verse first as a series of repeated notes, for the space of one bar, followed by a shortened, repeated, and emphasized fourth, always descending.

The syncopated nature of the melody is complemented by staid piano chords, thus opening the stage for the vocal monologue without distraction (see Figure 4).

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Figure 4.

Descending third and fourth: a syncopated monologue.

The Transitional Opening and “Ego Eimi”

Here the tempo clearly shifts into the softer, piano-based riff, where the open arpeggios of the piano serve to accentuate its 6/8 tempo even further. Higher harmonic voices help to soften the harshness of the syncopated verse; the melody hugs the foundational [G] in a very close and tensive contact at the position where the two elements of the question motive [C–B] and [G–A] in the beginning made contact [G–A–G; B–A–G–G–A–G]. And in the midst of this scenario the “ego eimi” appears as an ambiguous echo of the question motif in slower motion, evoking a shift, and perhaps even an answer, but one that is unclear and does not finish the song (see Figure 5).

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Figure 5.

The song’s central riff: ego eimi

The song ends without words, an apparent contradiction following the open question once again repeated [C–B] followed by a final and conclusive descending fourth without reopening (see Figure 6).

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Figure 6.

Final chords.

In summary, the musical analysis opens spaces for a tightly knit question–answer motif that is alternatively heard or left open during the music, as well as a contrast between monologued and syncopated motifs on a tight melodic span. These are stretched by progressively layered female and male voices and harmonies in and around the central tone and chord structure. How does this relate to an analysis of the reception of the music?

Development of Meaning

Sixty percent of participants explicitly described some change or development in their understanding of the text, in one instance both ways: “the words transformed the meaning of the music for me, and the song nuanced the meaning of the scriptural passage.” The most common insight was that of the relevance and importance of the woman in the scene. This was described as a “change in perspective”: “the song brought a new perspective, painting this nameless Samaritan woman,” who “seems more empowered,” “an agent,” “a ‘watch’ for Jesus, in the sense of an equal.” “It’s moving to imagine God becoming an ‘equal’ (in a way) with the woman.” “She’s more than a match . . .” This was often described as a change in “point of view, that ‘helps to understand the woman’s questions to Jesus’”; “I never saw it in that light. He is no longer the center of the story—she is now. Rather than her being a character in His story, this is now reversed.” “I have rarely read this passage from the woman’s perspective.” “I would never have turned the song that way . . . putting myself in the position of the woman (though I am a man).” And this led further to “the question of the incarnate meaning of ‘Ego Eimi’ in John, a womanist embodiment of Christological revelation.”

A few who expressed no change in understanding, still identified the music as a “space for understanding and appreciation” of the text, to be “drawn in more deeply” into its symbolism. One voice raised a concern about losing the historical significance of the text for women who feel marginalized and judged for their sexuality or behavior, which we note here to underline the accumulation of meaning over time that is never linear, but complex and in need of a plurality of applications and interpretations as well as the held tension between past, present, and future.

Finally, 75 percent referred to the value of this exercise and pattern in an academic forum, especially when facilitated by an aid to its understanding. Their comments can be grouped under certain headings, but in one sense they speak for themselves: this introduction of an aesthetic experience in a theological forum is “valid . . . an appropriate area of analysis, potentially fruitful.” “Favorable. A way of communicating otherwise unspoken meaning of text.” “Amazing! “Excellent.” “Brilliantly formed.” “Illuminating.” Wonderful.” “I welcome it. Thank you.” Still trying to get an intellectual hold on what’s occurred for me . . . profound.” “There is a first time for everything. I enjoyed the experience.” Two main reasons were given to support the exercise. The first was a strong emphasis on the affective: “music allows you to see”; the song probes into the affective dimension and invites to relationship”; “very powerful, moves into the heart to heart, the I/thou.” The second was the epistemological consistency in using music as a “good place to start ‘intentionality analysis’ of shifting interests and operations, moving from reception/participation in feelings and images to understanding and formulation in trying to answer the questions.”

Some of the limits or dangers of using the aesthetic in theological investigation were included. One was the issue of how “preferences or taste without prior exposure to material might make the exercise vulnerable to multiple interpretations” and the fact that the analysis can overpower or “smother” the experience. A word cloud of responses to this question presents as follows.

What conclusions can we draw from these analyses? Obviously, they do not close discussions around the validity of this music or its interpretation. As with every interpretation of Scripture, “when talking about the historical enterprise of constructing the Johannine community and the roles of the women within it, we must not lose sight of the hypothetical nature of our results.” ⁷⁹ However, the convergence around themes emerging across completely diverse and independent approaches to analyzing this piece of music, with and without lyrics, is exceptional: dialogue, questions and answers, truth, revelation, gender, agency, and a change of perspective to a greater appreciation of the woman and her role in the narrative, coalesce to make a case for the validity and richness of this performed interpretation. And, to draw from the word cloud in Figure 7 below reflecting opinions on the usefulness of the aesthetic in academic forums: these themes are experienced in a way that feeds into the combined heart(felt) and intellectual understanding of faith; a powerful way for experience to source theological method. All in all, the case for music’s potential to enrich biblical investigation is, at the very least, strengthened.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 7.

Word cloud on reception of Nameless as an interpretation of John 4.

Behind the Text Again and by Way of Conclusion

Every academic rule of literary criticism prohibits writing about one’s own “poetry,” so I shall not develop the process of music-making underlying Nameless but to note that the key words noted above resonate with those that this author felt emerging in its composition. This song is “an exercise in historical imagination,” in the realization that imagination could be our best chance at accessing the real and the historical. Understanding is never simply a repetition of past insights but carries forward and changes as it does so the history and historicity of that understanding into the particularity of the present moment. Focused precisely on music’s dual temporality as “historically situated” and “an arrangement of time” unfolded in real time, Anthony Godzieba makes a case for music as the most appropriate metaphor to grasp the development of Christianity, understood as the ongoing performance of the foundational realities of Christian faith through lived discipleship in a particular time and space. ⁸⁰ Nameless is not based on other musical versions of the text, which are surprisingly rare, ⁸¹ but does carry within it theological reflection on the scriptural text as narrated by the author of the Johannine Gospel, and the history of its interpretations as assimilated by this composer, mainly although not exclusively, through the lens of Schneiders’s interpretation.

Schneiders uses a metaphor to describe the role of theopoetic imagination for biblical scholarship (which could potentially be extended to other areas of theological disciplines). It may serve as a closing reflection: if the scriptural text is the score and interpretation is what brings it to life for transformative participation, then “[t]he distortion of much modern [biblical] scholarship is that the performance never starts. The instruments are endlessly tuned, the lights go on and off, announcements are made, and ushers point out seats and pass programs, but the audience departs in disappointment when it realizes that it will have to go elsewhere to hear the music.” ⁸² It is a metaphor, but it highlights the need to actualize the meaning contained in a text and make it accessible to others in a way that is not limited to the conceptual exploration of the same. The connecting point between music and theopoetics still holds many questions, but this article proposes that we cannot limit ourselves to conceptual explorations of the same.

And as we seek to do this, the hope is to open pathways in how theology goes about making sense of faith, and contribute to correcting the Enlightenment’s distortion of the nature of knowledge, a dual assumption of the separation of spirit and matter and the superiority of theory over embodied knowing, which affects still so many levels of the world we live in. In any case and on the journey, it is an important area to consider. “Mundane society always wants to believe that artists are dispensable while technicians are necessary, that the beautiful is decorative while the logical is substantial. It may well be the other way around.” ⁸³