The Temple of Man

How anthropomorphic is the temple. Incredibly so, down to the surprising details. To not understand this as a classical architect is to seriously hamstring one’s education as an architect. But especially a church architect. So many architectural history books start with the proto-Graeco or Egyptian civilization. But to overlook the Hebraic/Christian contribution is woefully misguided. Why? The text is so rich in poetry and allusions.

Vitruvius told us a short story, of a girl, her death and an artist that took notice of its random but elegant composition. But the bible describes a column with much more particular detail. Maybe 30 verses of direct description of columns, pillars. Jachin and Boaz, But in those verses are a multitude of poetic devices, tropes, allusions, reference and the like. If architecture is a record of the built, then I’d keep my peace. But its not, its a record of civilization (L. gnasci). The birthing of civility. It’s in a different category of its own: its historytelling.

God, family and country…work.

Sometimes I have to remind myself of my priorities.

Modernism is Boring

I’ve studied it all and this is the conclusion of the materialist. All there is to anchor being is pastiche. No one exemplifies this better than the classicist. This erudite mode of knowing is always more pleasant than even the most well thought out avant-garde. The zeitgeist of our current age, its architecture and art, is a non-remembered and un-monumental dogma of social being. That zeal which began as an arrogant protestation of medieval Christendom, has intellectually become a tenuous wimpier of pier review and tenure. But the classicist, he can’t really preface the intellectual mindset of creativity beyond the mimicry of what has gone before. Its a sequence of references to a past that doesn’t really capture the current being of things. E.R.H. It tries to purport a knowing, and more so an understanding of things, apart from the axioms of Christendom or Judaism . Yeah, I’ll pick that fight, heh heh, any day of the week.

Is there natural revelation? No, not really.

The more and more that I age, I am baffled by two things, the incredible, unfathomable creativity of man’s mind. I mean we can land a man on the moon after all, and synthesize genomes, or collide atoms into each other. Its magical, or that’s what we would have called it a millennia. But then there is this closely following secondi. Humanity is wondrously stupid and doesn’t have a fighting chance of not destroying itself. That is the way of Man. We read about that in Sunday school. Before the first water baptism. But since then God has more presently interveniated *not an oxford word* in our present reality. A lot more is still understated. Its a biblical pattern that I cant let go of. Yahweh shows us again and again that we will drive our ship straight into the ninth circle of hell, except that He intervenes. For no other reason than His own pleasure. He picks up this baby crawler, turns him 180 degrees and frees him to juggernaut his way to the other side of the dinner table.

At what point in time, in relation to Abraham, did Egypt, Canaan and Palestine stop sacrificing their children? I don’t know. So Amazon delivered me some books to read. But Abraham understood the normality of pagan sacrifice. It was customary, mores so, It was a natural law of the gods. But two things happened. Abraham somehow reasoned, “Even if this was condonable somehow by a truly just god, and if He is a god that can be trusted at its Word alone, then Yahweh must raise his son back to life. Yes, the stabbing and slitting of a throat and roasting all the while sucks for Issac but by faith Abraham knew Issac would be alive. Consider it a bad car accident? Abe says “That’s a huge blessing that Yahweh has promised, I trust Him, it’ll be fine in the end” Yet instead, Yahweh stayed Abe’s hand and showed him another way to Be, that didn’t require the blood of his cherished children. It wasn’t natural law, but law by covenantal decree. An eternal decree that is unquestionably stable.

My argument is, by example of a particular case, that this very action of God was a Kuhn-like paradigm shift within the history of mankind. Some gods like Molech would required the sacrifice of Agamemnon’s daughter for favorable winds, but Yahweh supplies his own sacrifice. And it wasn’t a human sacrifice, lex talionis. Instead, His own anointed scapegoat, cursed in thorns. He alone has credited our debt. Now we have a restored freedom of will. The ability to will well, unshackled by the Spirit to be in communion with our present Reality.

What does this mean for civilization? Well, it becomes more civil.

Could there be a god that is wholly trustworthy, unchanging, capable of being unchanging? If so, then it presupposes a divine penetration into man’s reality. Trust is only acquired within a history. To believe that the future expectation should be conjoined to the present promise.

Man can’t know without trust.

Degrees of Illumination

All things understood in our current reality, can only be understood within a Judeao-Christian narrative of historical, common grace epochs with varying degrees of divine ‘natural’ revelation, of things in the tangible world, from zoology to quantum mechanics. Make no mistake, natural revelation is still divinely revealed.

Symbols – Of the Church

Here are the types of symbols I’ve found that relate to the church specifically.

The Ark or Ship – see Heb. 11:7, I Pt 3:20, II Pt 2:5, Matt. 24: 37-39 [apostle @ Galilee]

The Ark of the Covenant

The Vine – see Ezek 15:1–8, John 15:1–17, 1 John 4:13, Heb. 6:4, Heb. 12:10, James 2:14-20

The Wheat & Weeds

The Menorah/ Candlestick

The Grain Mill

The Garden-City on a Hill

The Rock

The Garden, Tabernacle, Temple

This is an on-going list. If I have overlooked a symbol used to connote the church please let me know in the comments, thanks.

C.S. Lewis on Symbols

“Symbolism exists precisely for the purpose of conveying to the imagination what the intellect is not ready for.”

The Idiot Savant

The specialist system fails from a personal point of view because a person that can only do one thing can do virtually nothing for himself. In living in the world by his own will and skill, the stupidest peasant or tribesman is more competent than the most intelligent worker, or technician, or intellectual in a society of specialists. – W. Berry

Stubborn to Steadfast

I am a stubborn and pig-headed soul. I sin with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength’s desire; no bones about it: flesh and blood. I have left few stones unturned, and when I am sensible and sober, I spurn the pride of it. But that same soul takes hold of God, because He delivers me, and repents with me toward otherwise. And that, I say, makes me a juggernaut.

Lee and the Man

That the disembowelment of R. E. Lee is simultaneous unchecked federal expansion is noteworthy even if coincidence. Yet God hasn’t played dice with the universe. History matters. When will states remember their God given valor?