Jeremy L. Berg

I’m digging into the writings of the early church fathers, and was reading Athanasius last night. I came across a little gem in my “digging” that perfectly aligns with one of my favorite writing projects. In The Father’s Song, I try to tell the Big Story of the Bible using the metaphor of a divine melody or “The Father’s Song.” I knew this metaphor was nothing original, but I also didn’t realize it could be traced back at least 1,700 years to the bishop of Alexandria writing in 318 A.D.!  So, check it out: we harmonize quite well together!

“For just as through some musician, having tuned a lyre, and by his art adjusted the high notes to the low, and the intermediate notes to the rest, were to produce a single tune as the result, so also the Wisdom of God, handling the Universe as a lyre, and adjusting things in the air to things on the earth, and things in the heavens to things in the air, and combining parts into wholes and moving them all by His beck and will, produces…a marvelous and truly divine harmony” (Athanasius, Contra Gentes, 42:3-4, c. 318 A.D.).

You can download / read my Father’s Song series here.