Many superlatives have been lavished on Bach's mature vocal works, such as Georg Nägeli's acclamation of the B minor Mass as one of the ‘greatest musical works of art of all times and of all peoples’, or Mendelssohn's veneration of the Matthew Passion as ‘the greatest of Christian works’. But such evaluations have usually been based on the concept that these incomparable works of Bach are self-standing musical monuments. Following Mendelssohn's revival of the Matthew Passion in 1829, Bach's cantatas, oratorios, passions, Magnificat and the B minor Mass have generally been performed as autonomous works in a concert setting. But this later usage was not what the composer envisaged. What Robert Marshall writes with regard to the cantatas applies equally to most of Bach's other vocal works: ‘such compositions were not intended primarily for the “delectation” of a concert public, but rather for the “edification” of a church congregation … Bach's cantatas, in fact, were conceived and should be regarded not as concert pieces at all but as musical sermons; and they were incorporated as such in the regular Sunday church services.’ This chapter therefore discusses these works against the background of the liturgical imperatives that brought them into being.

Liturgy and music in Leipzig

The specific liturgical practices of Leipzig provide the immediate context for the creation of Bach's mature vocal works. Liturgical usage in Leipzig during the eighteenth century was somewhat conservative. Compared with other areas of Germany, where traditional Lutheran liturgical forms, based on Luther's two liturgies, were already beginning to be eroded, Leipzig retained a highly developed and rich liturgical and musical tradition.

Johann Sebastian Bach's earliest compositions have long occupied an ambiguous position within his oeuvre. On the one hand, many musicians and scholars have compared them unfavourably with the masterpieces of his later years. As early as 1802 Johann Nicolaus Forkel wrote that, despite ‘undeniable evidences of a distinguished genius’, at the same time Bach's early works contain ‘so much that is useless, so much that is one-sided, extravagant, and tasteless that they are not worth preserving (at least, for the public in general)'. Nearly 200 years later, Malcolm Boyd has stated his opinion that ‘few, if any, of the works [Bach] wrote before leaving Mühlhausen at the age of twenty-three would be remembered to-day if they had been composed by anyone else’. On the other hand, even if Bach's earliest efforts do sometimes disappoint, they nonetheless possess a certain inherent interest because of what he subsequently accomplished, and they have therefore spawned a large body of research. As Peter Williams has eloquently put it, ‘the stages by which the world's most gifted step beyond the confines of local art must always be of great interest and importance’.

The early works have not yielded their secrets willingly, however. On the contrary, although several discoveries have greatly increased what is known about them, many fundamental questions remain unresolved. For this reason, the present chapter must be regarded as a report of an on-going discussion. There has not even been general agreement about what constitutes Bach's ‘early’ period. Although Alfred Dürr included the Weimar works (1714-16) in his monograph on Bach's 'early' cantatas, Christoph Wolff subsequently advocated limiting this classification to the instrumental and vocal works composed up to c. 1708, when Bach began his tenure as court organist in Weimar and simultaneously' left behind the truly formative stages [of composition] and established his own stylistic personality'.

The context and aims of the project

Twenty years ago it would have been relatively easy to predict the contents of a Cambridge companion to Bach: a basic introduction to the composer's life and works, fundamental information to enhance analysis and appreciation, perhaps also a summary of recent research and performance. While the present volume hardly represents a radical departure from this brief, the situation is now considerably more complex than it was in the 1970s. First, with the publication of the New Grove dictionary of music and musicians and several important monographs on the life and works of J. S. Bach, there is already a sizeable and reliable literature for readers of every level. Secondly, there is the mushrooming of published material throughout all fields of music scholarship: now it is virtually impossible to do justice to every slant, every area of study, even to every field of Bach's compositional output. Finally, there are the interesting issues concerning musicology that have come to the fore during the last decade or so: what actually is music scholarship? what are its aims? how much should we be catering for ‘music appreciation’? what is the significance today of a ‘great’ composer?

Bach studies have, in fact, set the tone for much music scholarship during the last thirty years. With the spectacular revisions to the chronology of Bach's cantatas in the late 1950s by Alfred Dürr and Georg von Dadelsen, overthrowing many fundamental assumptions about Bach's creative life and ever-increasing piety, the next two decades were dominated by a style of research that valued certifiable fact above critical judgement or informed opinion. Much has changed during the last decade or so: 'positivism' - as the activity of fact-gathering has, somewhat grandly, been named - has often been branded the occupation only of the dull and bibliographically-minded, while 'criticism' and - most importantly- interdisciplinary work are, to some, the direction for the elect.

This essay places Johann Sebastian Bach within the context of the domestic policy of his time. That is unquestionably an unusual viewpoint, since Bach is known as ‘Germany's greatest church composer’, the embodiment of the Lutheran cantor. Nonetheless, we must become accustomed to seeing this man in a political function, because Bach lived in a time of fundamental domestic conflict. Everyone who held a public office had to take a position in this conflict. I have concentrated on the Electorate of Saxony and the city of Leipzig, because Bach reached his ultimate and lasting professional position there; he worked for twenty-seven years, 1723–50, as cantor of the Thomasschule and music director of the city.

Absolutism in the Electorate of Saxony

The fundamental domestic conflict of the era was that between the ruler, who strove for absolute unlimited power, and the Estates, who limited this power. The Estates system or absolutism? – this was the question which even Bach had to face. In the Electorate of Saxony, the Estates essentially comprised two bodies, the nobility and the cities, with spiritual foundations and universities playing a minor role. The Landschaft, the parliament of the Estates, had an extraordinarily complex protocol, proceedings between the various groups usually being conducted in writing. Responsibility for secretarial duties was assumed by the body of cities, with Leipzig presiding over its select committee. The deputies from Leipzig drafted the papers and therefore had a key role in the politics of the Estates.

In the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna hangs one of the most arresting of sixteenth-century paintings, Pieter Bruegel's The Tower of Babel. It is the kind of work which repays diligent attention; not least because many of the pivotal aspects of the complex interaction between Christianity and the arts will be brought to the surface. To begin with the obvious, the painting reminds us that for large tracts of the church's history there has been a close intertwining of Christian faith and artistic practice. There have of course been times when the church's stance towards the arts has been marked by uncertainty and suspicion, but more often than not the arts have played a crucial role in her life and mission. More specifically, Christian doctrine has profoundly affected the form, content and development of the arts. (Despite the disdain in some quarters for treating the artist's circumstances as aesthetically significant, it would be hard to interpret Bruegel's output without any reference to the doctrinal traditions he espoused.) And this has worked in the opposite direction also: the arts have frequently had a decisive impact on the shape of Christian belief. In Bruegel's age, many received their doctrinal tutoring chiefly through one or more of the arts.

PROBLEMATISING THE RELATION BETWEEN DOCTRINE AND ETHICS

Any account of the relation between Christian doctrine and ethics must take account of this passage from Karl Barth. By 'take account' I mean at the very least we need to understand Barth's claim that the general conception of ethics coincides with the conception of sin.

The century now drawing to a close has seen a searching reconsideration by Christians of their relationship to the Jewish people. In part this new perception has stemmed from momentous historical events: the Holocaust, in which Christians have had to recognise their own complicity, and the return of the Jewish people, after two millennia, to the land God gave to Abraham. These events have forever altered the intellectual and social conditions under which Christian theology is practised. But Christian theologians have also found themselves prompted to re-evaluate traditional Christian assumptions about the Jews by reflection on some of their own community's most basic and central convictions. This too promises to have a far-reaching effect, the full extent of which is still not wholly clear, on what Christian theologians say about God and all God's works.

THE DOCTRINE OF CREATION

All cultures, ancient and modern alike, seek for a way of accounting for the universe that will give their lives coherence and meaning. Creation theology, in the broadest sense of an enquiry into the divinity or divinities that shape or make our world, is a universal human concern, however different the forms that it can take. But among all the theologies, myths and theories, Christian theology is distinctive in the form and content of its teaching. It is credal in form, and this shows that the doctrine of creation is not something self-evident or the discovery of disinterested reason, but part of the fabric of the Christian response to revelation. 'I believe in God the Father, maker of Heaven and Earth.' Here the word 'maker' is understood in a particular sense. As it stands, it is ambiguous. It may refer to one who is like a human maker, a potter for example, who makes an object out of a material that is already to hand. But Christian theology has rejected that sense as inadequate. The unique contribution to thought made by Christian theologians of creation lies in their development of a view that God creates 'out of nothing'. This became possible by virtue of the trinitarian form of the doctrine. When in the late second century Irenaeus taught that God the Father created by means of his 'two hands', the Son and the Spirit, he was able to complete one stage in a process of intellectual development during which the implications of the Christian form of creation belief were drawn out.

God as such is spirit, holy in himself and transcending matter of which he is the Creator. In a graphic way, and in the geopolitical context of the late eighth century BC, the Old Testament prophet brings out the transcendence of the Holy One of Israel over both equine and human creatures, showing the Lord's righteous rule over what he has made: the Egyptians are 'men, and not God', and their horses are 'flesh, and not spirit', and when the Lord stretches out his hand, they will perish together with those who have sought help from them rather than from 'the Holy One of Israel' (Isaiah 31:1-3). Or in the words of Jesus in John's Gospel (4:24): 'God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.' Yet beside this more general connection of God with spirit and holiness, the Holy Spirit is the particular name of the third person of the Blessed Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The explanation of this apparently ambivalent usage - God as holy spirit, and God the Holy Spirit - requires a historical account of the biblical and patristic developments that will already set us on the road of a more systematic exposition of pneumatological doctrine. Our procedure, therefore, will first be to retrace the self-revelation of God and the corresponding experience, practice and cognitive process of Israel and the early church.

Historical and systematic theology are disciplines concerned with the content of Christian teaching. Historical theology is that discipline whose task is to expound the course of Christian theology through time, within its different historical and cultural contexts. Systematic theology's distinctive character derives from its responsibility for articulating the meaning and implications of the church's claims for the truth of the Christian gospel. In some conceptions of its task, systematic theology is simply a fashionable way of speaking of what used to be called dogmatic theology; in others, a more conscious orientation to the characteristic conditions of the modern world is in view. We shall return to that question at the end of the chapter.

Despite their differences, however, the two studies do not follow entirely different courses, for their tracks cross in many places. One example will introduce what is meant. To study the history of the development of Christian theology in its formative years, the student needs to be aware not only of the systematic interconnections of - above all - the doctrines of God and of the person of Christ but also the relation of the Christian world of thought to other aspects of ancient culture, perhaps especially Greek philosophy and religion.

'Know thyself.' Socrates' exhortation is as urgent; and problematic; as ever: urgent, because the human race at the dawn of the third millennium; following the demise of the Christian paradigm and the break-up of modernity; is suffering from a collective identity crisis; problematic; because it demands the impossible, since to know oneself truly involves knowing more than oneself. Humans - the self-interpreting animals - have nonetheless responded to the challenge with creativity and zest; striving for self-knowledge through conceptual schemes and cultural works alike.

A THEOLOGICAL STORY?

To what extent is 'man' the proper study not only of mankind; as Alexander Pope suggested; but of theology as well? Theological anthropology offers a distinctive and decisive perspective on the issue of what it means to be human - a question of no little controversy, and one whose answer has wide-reaching consequences not only for theunderstanding, but also for the practice, of human being: for debates about genetic engineering, human rights, ecology, sexuality, education and politics. The task of Christian theology is to clarify what is distinctively theological in its account of personhood and to formulate criteria for what is authentically Christian in its accounts of human being.

THE MUTUALITY OF CHURCH AND SACRAMENTS

For this volume, ecclesiology and sacramentology are assigned to one essay. This requires some compression of both topics. The benefit probably outweighs the loss, for it is a decisive insight that shows itself in the pairing: all loci of theology are interconnected as nodes of an intricate web, but these two indeed make a systematic couple as most possible pairings would not.

Indeed, ecumenical ecclesiology is now dominated by urgent advocacy of just this mutuality of ecclesiology and sacramentology: we are called upon to interpret the Church by the sacraments that occur in her and the sacraments by the church in which they occur. And we may well take this contemporary mandate as our systematic guide, for, as has often been remarked, it is only in the late-modern period and particularly in the post-World War II ecumenical movement that the church has become an explicit and systematically central object of theological reflection. The structure of the following is thus provided by the contemporary ecumenical problematic; earlier thinking about church or sacraments will be adduced within this structure, in somewhat ad hoc fashion.

POSTMODERN PREAMBLE

At the end of the second Christian millennium it has once again become possible for the church to remember itself as a people called to bear witness to the future now. It has no settlement in past or present; but looks forward to that which it awaits even as it arrives. Through trust in the promises of Christ the church has hope of tomorrow: looking for that which it recollects in the present; in its ever renewed meeting with its Lord, in the table-fellowship he gives of himself. This is the old news that is forever new: the announcement of an ancient postmodernity.

The church's postmodernity is different from that which Fredric Jameson identifies as the cultural logic of late capitalism, yet it is the arrival of the latter which allows the church to once more recall its freedom from the law of the present.