Architecture and Theology

The Art of Place

Murray A. Rae

• Publisher: Baylor University Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781481307659
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Teologia cristiana

The dynamic relationship between art and theology continues to fascinateand tochallenge, especially when theology addresses art in all of its variety. In Architecture and Theology: The Art of Place, author Murray Raeturns tothe spatial arts, especially architecture, to investigate how the art forms engaged in theconstruction of our built environment relateto Christian faith. Rae does not offer a theology of the spatial arts, but instead engages in a sustained theological conversation with the spatial arts. Because the spatial artsare public, visual, and communal, they wield an immense but easily overlookedinfluence. Architecture and Theology overcomes this inattention by offering new ways of thinking about the theological importance of space and place in our experience of God, the relation between freedom and law in Christian life, the transformation involved in God's promised new creation, biblical anticipation of the heavenly city, divine presence and absence, the architecture of repentance and remorse, and the relation between space and time. In doing so, Rae finds an ample place for theologyamidst the architectural arts.

1

New Ways of Seeing

Doing Theology through the Spatial Arts

Describing his formation as a pastor, the well-known author and pastoral theologian Eugene Peterson begins by reminding his readers of the importance of place. Places shape us; they contribute to our conception of the way things are in the world and they constitute the terrain upon which our lives unfold. Peterson writes:

I have often had occasion while walking these hills or kayaking this lake to reflect on how important place is in the living of Christian faith. As I let the biblical revelation form my imagination, geography—this specifically Montana, Flathead geography—became as important to me in “the land of the living” as theology and the Bible did. I was becoming aware that every detail in the life of salvation that I was becoming familiar with in the scriptures took shape in named places that, with a good map, I can still locate: Ur and Haran, Behel and Peniel, Sinai and Shiloh, Anathoth and Jerusalem, Nazareth and Bethlehem, Bethany and Emmaus . . . Soil and stone, latitude and longitude, lakes and mountains, towns and cities keep a life of faith grounded, rooted in place.1

Places are given, in the realm of nature, but they can also be made. From a humble shelter erected in a forest glade with materials found nearby, to such buildings as the Parthenon in Athens, Westminster Abbey in London, the casinos of Las Vegas, or the Freedom Tower in New York, we construct places that speak of our values and aspirations and that determine in no small measure the ways we inhabit the world. As we inhabit them, they accrue meaning. They become repositories of memory, symbols of triumph or oppression, places of sorrow or joy. Peterson again observes: “Place gathers stories, relationships, memories.”2 Increasingly over time, places speak of who we are and of where we have come from. They both constrain and enable what we may yet do and become. The significance of architecture, suggests Alain de Botton, is “premised on the conviction that it is architecture’s task to render vivid to us who we might ideally be.”3 Consideration of the impact upon us of place, of architecture, and of our built environment takes us, therefore, into realms of human memory, experience, and aspiration that are also of interest in theology.

Although the construction of our built environment relies heavily upon the calculations of science and the technical prowess of specialist fabricators, I am interested in the construction of our built environment as an artistic endeavor. I am interested, that is, in the ways in which our built environment exceeds the merely functional concern of providing suitable space and shelter for human activities of various kinds. Architecture is a poetic activity concerned with meaning and value. Indeed, all the arts that contribute to the shaping of our built environment—architecture, urban planning, sculpture, landscape design, and the like—share with the arts more broadly the capacity to open up new ways of seeing the world. They provide us with modes of discovery distinctly different from those employed in science or philosophy or indeed in the discipline of theology as it has customarily been practiced in the academy. Artists help us to see differently and to articulate things in ways inaccessible through other modes of inquiry.

Fascination with the different ways of seeing facilitated through art is the guiding interest of this book, specifically in relation to the subject matter of Christian theology. How might the art forms engaged in the formation of our built environment help us to explore, discover, and articulate the Christian faith today? What patterns and models might be found in our built environment that offer fresh ways of thinking about the subject matter of theology? What heuristic value might there be in a theological engagement with the built environment? The posing of such questions was not my own idea. They arose rather through conversations with Jeremy Begbie, who, through the establishment of a program called Theology Through the Arts,4 and in his own profound and very fruitful explorations in theology and music, has pioneered an engagement between theology and the arts that aspires not to offer a theology of the arts as has often been attempted, but rather to enter into conversation with the arts.5 The purpose of the conversation is simply to explore what benefit there might be for theology in the different ways of seeing that artistic endeavor affords. What might be discovered, and what new modes of expression might emerge when theology avails itself of the insight generated through art? The attempt to explore the subject matter of theology with and through the arts requires a richer appreciation of the arts themselves than is common in our consumerist society. Midway through the twentieth century, Erich Fromm observed that

contemporary man . . . is the eternal consumer. He takes in drinks, food, cigarettes, lectures, sights, books, films; everything is devoured, swallowed. The world has become one large object of his desire, one large bottle, one large breast. Man has become the eternally expectant and disappointed suckling.6

Art in the modern world is often subjected to the same consumerist impulse Fromm described. This project supposes, however, a less self-indulgent conception of the arts in which they help to extend our vision. Rather than assimilating art to a prior conceptuality so that it becomes merely a vehicle for expressing what we already know, the conversation attempted in this book is intended to open up new vistas, to seek new insight, and to draw attention to aspects of our human reality that we may have failed to see. Jeremy Begbie observes that “the ‘heuristic’ capacity of the arts has in the modern world frequently been downplayed or forgotten in favor of other functions of the arts (e.g. self-expression, entertainment).”7 Rowan Williams, also a participant in the Theology Through the Arts project, sheds further light on the capacity of the arts to be a vehicle of discovery.

Art, whether Christian or not, can’t properly begin with a message and then seek for a vehicle. Its roots lie, rather, in the single story or metaphor or configuration of sound or shape which requires attention and development from the artist. In the process of that development, we find meaning we had not suspected; but if we try to begin with the meanings, they will shrink to the scale of what we already understand: whereas the creative activity opens up what we did not understand and perhaps will not fully understand even when the actual work of creation is done.8

Williams’ phrase captures well the goal of this project to “find meaning we had not suspected,” particularly through attention to the spatial arts. As Begbie has put it, “Realities hitherto unnoticed come to meet me through art, call forth my attention, shift my outlook.”9

In the case of architecture and urban planning, the realities that “come to meet us” are complex and multifaceted. Henri Lefebvre observes that “space has been shaped and moulded from historical and cultural elements, but this has been a political process. Space is political and ideological. It is a product literally filled with ideologies.”10 LeFebvre’s cautionary tone is no doubt appropriate; the arrangement of space can be sinister and coercive, but not only so. It can also give rise to joy, celebration, and delight. It can speak of worthy goals and human aspirations, of God’s self-disclosure, and of God’s call upon us to live well in the midst of the created order.

In pursuit of “meaning we had not suspected,” this book offers a series of conversations between theology and what I am calling the spatial arts: principally architecture, but also urban planning, landscape design, and sculpture. These arts give definition to the spaces we inhabit in our daily lives. They exert a substantial influence upon the unfolding of our daily activities, but we do not often pay attention to how they do that or to what they may reveal. This book is an attempt to direct attention to the built environment and to engage in that attentiveness with an attitude of theological curiosity. The approach is not entirely new. Valuable explorations of the theological richness of the built environment have recently been undertaken by Timothy Gorringe,11 Philip Sheldrake,12 and Sigurd Bergmann, along with others who contributed to the collection of essays edited by Bergmann, Theology in Built Environments.13 Within that work, Bergmann muses on whether it makes sense to develop a theology of the built environment, whether the built environment should itself be regarded as a form of theological expression, or whether we might think of doing theology in built environments. All of these are possible, I think, and legitimate. A theology of the built environment may consider the place of buildings in the working out of God’s purposes and the flourishing of his creation. This, it seems to me, is the particular and very valuable contribution of Gorringe’s work. Studies of the built environment as theology abound, particularly with respect to church architecture and in reflections on sacred space. Bergmann’s own work, and that which he has gathered together in the collection of essays by a number of authors, is focused on doing theology “in and with regard to built environments.”14 My own approach combines some elements of the as and the in. I am interested in the ways in which theology may be developed and enriched through engagement with the built environment, and especially in the ways in which such engagement might prompt new ways of thinking about the subject matter of theology.

Each of the chapters of this book can be read on its own. There are thematic links between the chapters, but I make no attempt to develop an argument sequentially from one chapter to the next. Insofar as there is a logic to the arrangement of the chapters, it is roughly chronological. Beyond this introduction, the second chapter has as its principal focus the architecture of Abraham and his nomadic descendants. Taking the Roman architectural theorist Vitruvius Pollio as a conversation partner, and drawing upon the discussion of Vitruvius offered by Robert Dripps, I explore what is going on theologically in the building of altars as Abraham and his family journey toward the promised land. Through subsequent chapters I consider the classical orders of architecture developed in ancient Greece and Rome, explore the destruction and rebuilding of Rome, dwell for a while in medieval and Renaissance Europe, find my way to the twentieth century through the raumplan theory of Adolf Loos and the architecture of Louis Kahn, visit a number of other modern architectural sites, and finally explore Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum in Berlin and his proposal for the rebuilding of Ground Zero in the wake of September 11, 2001.

In all of this, theology is the principal interest. There is, however, no single pattern of exploration. Sometimes the architecture plays the role of text. It “speaks” of particular theological commitments and aspirations and preserves a vision of human life before God that we are seldom attentive to. The vision of the heavenly Jerusalem, for instance, preserved in the architecture of late medieval and Renaissance cities offers a very concrete articulation of what the city should aspire to be. Although we are surrounded by architecture for much of our lives, a high level of architectural literacy is relatively rare. Many of us walk about our towns and cities oblivious to the ways in which architecture “speaks.” Yet consideration of architecture as “text” is not novel. The idea that architecture can tell us something about what is going on in the world is as ancient as Scripture itself. In 1 Kings, for example, architecture becomes a medium of divine discourse, albeit in this case catastrophic. Speaking of the newly constructed temple, the Lord says to Solomon,

This house will become a heap of ruins; everyone passing by it will be astonished, and will hiss; and they will say, “Why has the LORD done such a thing to this land and to this house?” Then they will say, “Because they have forsaken the LORD their God, who brought their ancestors out of the land of Egypt, and embraced other gods, worshipping them and serving them.” (1 Kgs 1:8-9)

The temple could also be read as a text in its newly constructed state, before any threat of destruction had been realized. The temple architecture offered a theological vision of the cosmos flourishing according to God’s good intent and of the whole world as a theatre of praise.15 The narrative quality of religious architecture is perhaps commonly recognized, if not so readily understood, but nonreligious architecture is equally likely to convey through the built form particular narratives about the nature of the world and our place within it. Consider, for example, the National Mall in Washington, D.C., Trafalgar Square in London, the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, the Avenue des Champs Élysées in Paris, or the avenue Unter den Linden in Berlin. These monumental streetscapes tell stories of national identity, of what their respective nations believe themselves to be. It is no accident that these places have been again and again the stages upon which historic moments in the nation’s history have been enacted and memorialized.

Figure 1.1

The Mall, Washington, D.C.

Another form the conversation takes, other than reading the architecture as text, is to note patterns and relationships in architecture that suggest new ways of thinking about the subject matter of theology. In chapter 3, for instance, the relation between the strictly prescri...