ABSTRACT
Early Christian theologians were all aware of the inherent power which music possesses to move and form the heart, mind, and soul. This paper examines what two of them have to say in respect to music’s ability to inculcate and strengthen resilience. It first explores what the third-/fourth-century bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius, writes about the effects of psalmody, and then gives an example of these effects in practice, in the fourth-/fifth-century North African bishop Augustine of Hippo’s description of his reading of Psalm 4, just after his conversion to Christianity. In both cases, singing the psalms works to foster resilience, not in an intellectual, theoretical way, or through a simple imitation of what is recounted; rather, for the singer, the text becomes their own voice, and they are formed and transformed by it in an affective, intuitive, sub-conscious way, through enacting or performing it.
