Aesthetics: Arts: Why architecture matters and the quality of Christian discourse in saying how it does so

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An article with many interesting thawts of criticism and norm-directive discourse that add sparkle to a long ariticle with a long introductory passage using the Bible all too biblistically on the subject of architecture, has appeared in the latest issue of Comment magazine, in both print (Sep2k6 - Volume 32,I:4) and online editions (by email notification Sep7,2k6. The Bible is indeed interesting as to what and how it touches upon architecture, but the experienced artichitect-author here, David Greusel, falters in his task regarding that particular pisteutic aspect of dwellings and buildings. He wants to critique another writer on the theme Why architecture matters. Greusel may have done better here than the other guy, but I don't find his answer of very h+ quality as to the implied question regarding what matters architecturally.

Yet here's a quote worth meditating upon:

Architecture provides a framework for meaningful community — or not. As we have seen, architecture is besieged by two opposing trends: the nihilism of the avant-garde on the one hand, and the banality of the strip mall on the other. Both these trends augur toward alienation, despair, loneliness, isolation, and antisocial behavior. Nevertheless, the two opposing trends are generalizations; they don't determine what any particular work of architexture achieves (despite its place partically in any negative trend.

Architecture, by Archibald

That these consequences are mainly temporal does not mean that they are not also spiritual. Even James Howard Kunstler, an author who is outspokenly non-religious, has commented repeatedly on the soul-killing qualities of bad architecture and suburban sprawl. If a committed secularist like Kunstler can see it, why can't we?

The "we" here is Christians of the author's kind, but that way of being among the Christian kind of persons shoulders out those who read the Bible differently and reformationally, in my judgment. Still, there's enuff good architectural stuff among the bad uses of the Bible and the zeitgeisting of trends in reductive overgeneralizations about actual buildings, a blanket dismissal of every school and feature of modernist architecture, and an anti-reformational refusal to search also to affirm the kernels of truth that a given criticized movement in the arts has contributed. As a whole, the article deifies tradition and sneers at the common-grace that is inescapably present also in modernism, postmodern, and mavericks today.

As to the Bible, you can't dwell singly on the Temples--which have always been treasuries (banks, storage locations for very expensive items before money currencies existed, and structures that were easily defended in most circumstances). It was the Temples of Israel (and its enemies at times) that God had torn down. You can't read the Bible well and yet simply by-pass the tents that figure from Genesis to Acts (and which latter book frames his Epistles). Among other things, tents leave a small footprint on the planet's ecolaic surface. To your tents, O Christians!

Futher Research:

Avoiding Biblicism: The Bible and Christian Education
Biblicism--Dooyeweerd's definition

Tags: Greusel on architecture + his bliblistic intro

• aesthetics
• arts
• architecture
• buildings
• temples
• tents
• biblicism
• modernismarchitctre
• postmodernismarchitctre
• classicalarchitctre