Friday, August 25, 2017
Architecture and Discipleship: Horizons of Trust
In all my theological education, I did not have one professor ever who spoke about place. - Dr Willie Jennings
"At that time man had begun to loose his sense of mystery in relation to the horizon. The horizon was no longer the edge of man's world, nor any longer the place where things apepared into his world. The earth had become a globe, so, upon visiting Palladio's Villa and having a conversation with him, he instructed that I imagine someone setting off from one of the four faces of his Villa, walking all the way around the globe, and mysteriously coming back upon the very same face staring back at me." - Sverre Fehn
Sverre Fehn's Sketch of Palladio's Villa Rotunda
At the time in history to which Fehn refers, man had attained a theoretical view of the globe that set him apart from his dwelling place. Man had come to, in his mind, stand apart from his own world. From then on, every act and every construction of our language had to answer the question of how to reconcile to something referenced outside itself. Every act and every speech became a critique and was to be critiqued. This is why Palladio instructed Sverre Fehn to “mysteriously come back upon the very same face staring back at” us. Sverre Fehn heard the voice of Palladio calling him to return to the mystery of entering inside of a world of meaning.
“[I]t was the text itself that Jesus and other ancient Jews affirmed to be ‘God-breathed,’ not the relationship between the text and ‘actual history,’ for this was a distinction that presupposes the post-Enlightenment rise of ‘historical consciousness.’” – Greg Boyd, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God, p. 363
“To read it as God’s word, we must by faith simply enter ‘the world of the biblical text’ with the assumption that it is ‘God-breathed’ and therefore that it is true on its own terms.” – Greg Boyd, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God, p. 368
As some have noted, criticism is also performance. To step back and analyze is itself to enter into a world that shapes meaning in a particular way. To dissect the body and remove the mystery is itself to step on a stage and put on a mask.
“Within himself, every man is an architect. His first step towards architecture is his walk through nature.
He cuts a path like writing on the surface of the earth. The crushing of grass and brushwood is an interference with nature, a simple definition of man's culture. His path is a sign to follow. And through this initial movement, he requires the movements of others. This is a most elementary form of a composition.
The globe is divided in longitude and latitude degrees. And each crossing point has its certain climate, its certain plants and winds. As an architect, you have to try to understand the difference of life in each point. Independent of these geographical points, the human thoughts float like clouds over the surface of Earth, and architecture is brought to life in the duel between nature and the irrational….” – Sverre Fehn
To theoretically stand outside our selves and the earth is to enter into the particular structured set of relationships that makes the relationship between nature and “the irrational” into a “duel.” The accomplishment of that stance was the creation or discovery of the globe. The quest to remove mystery creates the conditions in which the mystery returns unannounced - unless, of course, we ourselves re-turn and face the mystery again.
Hagia Sophia, Entrance
“[T]he posture we assume when reading scripture theologically, to discern God’s word for us, is very different from what is assumed when reading Scripture in a historical-critical manner. To assess a passage critically, one must stand over it, for the historical-critical scholar is interrogating the text, as it were, by forcing it to answer questions he or she is posing. By contrast, to read a passage theologically, one must stand under it, allowing it to interrogate them. And this means we do not investigate the truthfulness of Scripture when we read Scripture as God’s word; we rather presuppose it. We assume it possesses the integrity and truth that God ‘breathed’ it to have, quite apart from any historical-critical concern…
[W]hile the historical-critical approach subjects Scripture to our questions, the theological approach, at least as I am espousing it, seeks to enter into the ‘God-breathed’ ‘realism’ of the biblical narrative and allow it to shape us.” - Boyd, Crucifixion of the Warrior God, p. 357-9
When we “enter into” the scriptural narrative, we also enter into a history. By entering into that history, we act out its story. Scripture continues to build on itself, until it is fulfilled in Jesus. Jesus then sends his Spirit, and we ourselves embody the story that Jesus has inscribed in his flesh.
Similarly, Architects embody a tradition. Architects tell stories that reach into history. Architects bring the past into the present with their acts and with their language.
Interwoven into this dynamic between past and present in every act and every speech (and every thought) is a question of the relationship between inside and outside, between gifting and grasping.
“My most important journey was perhaps into the past, in the confrontation with the Middle Age, when I built a museum among the ruins of the Bishops' Fortress at Hamar. I realized, when working out this project, that only by manifestation of the present, you can make the past speak. If you try to run after it, you will never reach it.
But the great museum is the globe itself. In the surface of the earth, the lost objects are preserved. The sea and the sand are the great masters of conservation and make the journey into eternity so slow that we still find in these patterns the key to the birth of our culture….
"John Hejduk has created a world where the boundaries are erased. The architecture floats in the universe, extending from the cut of the surgeon's scalpel into the inner organ of a human body, to his own cut through the veil of invisibility into the vast landscape where the site is cleared for `The Cemetery of the Ashes of Thought'." - Sverre Fehn
"But Lot's wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt." - Gen. 19
Villa Norrkoping, by Sverre Fehn
It is only when we presume to live on (the outside of) a globe, when we stand outside of ourselves, when we interpret according to the rules of a historical grammatical method that we find ourselves in a cemetery and that thought falls in the form of ashes. Otherwise, we live in and out of an embodied story. There is then no cemetery. Our work does not then appear as ashes returning to dust, but it belongs in the land of the living.
“While our focus on the relationship between the text and ‘actual history’ when reading Scripture in a historical-critical manner, our focus must remain on the relationship between the text and our present situation (viz. our personal, ecclesial, social and/or global situation) when reading it theologically, for we are seeking to hear what God is communicating to us from within the world of the inspired biblical narrative.
So too, whereas the critical approach assumes that ‘the text is referentially related to some other entity’ (viz. to ‘actual history’), and whereas this approach inclines readers to look behind the text to discern this relationship, the precritical, theological way the premodern church read Scripture assumed that the meaning of the text is found in the text itself, which led them to look intensely into the text to hear God’s voice. In the words of Father Yves Congar, for people who employ a ‘technical’ approach to Scripture, Scripture becomes ‘an object to be analyzed and dissected.’ By contrast, when people read Scripture with ‘a seeking heart,’ longing to hear God’s word, Scripture can become ‘alive, a person, drawing me to it with the force of a living being.’” - Greg Boyd, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God, p. 356-7
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.” – John 1: 1-4
The question of whether we are alive or dead is inextricably connected to whether things appear and disappear on the horizon or, rather, on the globe. A dead man disappears horizontally below the earth. A living man appears on the horizon. On the globe, however, a No-man disappears into ashes of thought. A veil of invisibility is introduced. We can’t see dead people.
“How shall we respond to man and his objects affixed to the surface of the earth? Everything we build must be adjusted in relation to the ground, thus the horizon becomes an important aspect of architecture. The simplest form of architecture is to cultivate the surface of the earth, to make a platform. Then the horizon is the only direction you have. The moment you lose the horizon, your desire is always to reinstate it.” - Sverre Fehn
To theoretically stand outside our selves and the earth is to enter into the particular structured set of relationships that makes the relationship between nature and “the irrational” into a “duel.” The accomplishment of that stance was the creation or discovery of the globe. The quest to remove mystery creates the conditions in which the mystery returns unannounced - unless, of course, we ourselves re-turn and face the mystery again.
“Unlike ancient precritical readers, we have to consciously choose to read Scripture in a precritical way…to stand under it as God’s word and let it transform us.” – Greg Boyd, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God p. 362
Andrea Palladio's Villa Rotunda
At the time in history in which Palladio spoke and acted, man had attained a theoretical view of the globe that set him apart from his dwelling place. Man had come to, in his mind, stand apart from his own world. From then on, every act and every construction of our language had to answer the question of how to reconcile to something referenced outside itself. Every act and every speech became a critique and was to be critiqued. This is why Palladio instructed Sverre Fehn to “mysteriously come back upon the very same face staring back at” us. Sverre Fehn heard the voice of Palladio calling him to return to the mystery of entering inside of a world of meaning.
“I think it is vital that we specify what precisely we are trusting Scripture for…Scripture is best understood as the ‘God-breathed’ written witness to God’s covenantal faithfulness that culminates in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ…And this, I submit, is the ultimate criterion by which we should assess the trustworthiness of scripture...If we rely on Scripture to bear witness to God’s faithfulness as supremely expressed in the crucified Christ and confirmed by the resurrection, God will not fail to use it to that end. For it was to this end that God ‘breathed’ it.” – Greg Boyd, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God p. 371-2
"At that time man had begun to loose his sense of mystery in relation to the horizon. The horizon was no longer the edge of man's world, nor any longer the place where things apepared into his world. The earth had become a globe, so, upon visiting Palladio's Villa and having a conversation with him, he instructed that I imagine someone setting off from one of the four faces of his Villa, walking all the way around the globe, and mysteriously coming back upon the very same face staring back at me." - Sverre Fehn
Sverre Fehn's Sketch of Palladio's Villa Rotunda
“[I]t was the text itself that Jesus and other ancient Jews affirmed to be ‘God-breathed,’ not the relationship between the text and ‘actual history,’ for this was a distinction that presupposes the post-Enlightenment rise of ‘historical consciousness.’” – Greg Boyd, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God, p. 363
“To read it as God’s word, we must by faith simply enter ‘the world of the biblical text’ with the assumption that it is ‘God-breathed’ and therefore that it is true on its own terms.” – Greg Boyd, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God, p. 368
As some have noted, criticism is also performance. To step back and analyze is itself to enter into a world that shapes meaning in a particular way. To dissect the body and remove the mystery is itself to step on a stage and put on a mask.
“Within himself, every man is an architect. His first step towards architecture is his walk through nature.
He cuts a path like writing on the surface of the earth. The crushing of grass and brushwood is an interference with nature, a simple definition of man's culture. His path is a sign to follow. And through this initial movement, he requires the movements of others. This is a most elementary form of a composition.
The globe is divided in longitude and latitude degrees. And each crossing point has its certain climate, its certain plants and winds. As an architect, you have to try to understand the difference of life in each point. Independent of these geographical points, the human thoughts float like clouds over the surface of Earth, and architecture is brought to life in the duel between nature and the irrational….” – Sverre Fehn
To theoretically stand outside our selves and the earth is to enter into the particular structured set of relationships that makes the relationship between nature and “the irrational” into a “duel.” The accomplishment of that stance was the creation or discovery of the globe. The quest to remove mystery creates the conditions in which the mystery returns unannounced - unless, of course, we ourselves re-turn and face the mystery again.
Hagia Sophia, Entrance
[W]hile the historical-critical approach subjects Scripture to our questions, the theological approach, at least as I am espousing it, seeks to enter into the ‘God-breathed’ ‘realism’ of the biblical narrative and allow it to shape us.” - Boyd, Crucifixion of the Warrior God, p. 357-9
When we “enter into” the scriptural narrative, we also enter into a history. By entering into that history, we act out its story. Scripture continues to build on itself, until it is fulfilled in Jesus. Jesus then sends his Spirit, and we ourselves embody the story that Jesus has inscribed in his flesh.
Similarly, Architects embody a tradition. Architects tell stories that reach into history. Architects bring the past into the present with their acts and with their language.
Interwoven into this dynamic between past and present in every act and every speech (and every thought) is a question of the relationship between inside and outside, between gifting and grasping.
“My most important journey was perhaps into the past, in the confrontation with the Middle Age, when I built a museum among the ruins of the Bishops' Fortress at Hamar. I realized, when working out this project, that only by manifestation of the present, you can make the past speak. If you try to run after it, you will never reach it.
But the great museum is the globe itself. In the surface of the earth, the lost objects are preserved. The sea and the sand are the great masters of conservation and make the journey into eternity so slow that we still find in these patterns the key to the birth of our culture….
"John Hejduk has created a world where the boundaries are erased. The architecture floats in the universe, extending from the cut of the surgeon's scalpel into the inner organ of a human body, to his own cut through the veil of invisibility into the vast landscape where the site is cleared for `The Cemetery of the Ashes of Thought'." - Sverre Fehn
"But Lot's wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt." - Gen. 19
Villa Norrkoping, by Sverre Fehn
“While our focus on the relationship between the text and ‘actual history’ when reading Scripture in a historical-critical manner, our focus must remain on the relationship between the text and our present situation (viz. our personal, ecclesial, social and/or global situation) when reading it theologically, for we are seeking to hear what God is communicating to us from within the world of the inspired biblical narrative.
So too, whereas the critical approach assumes that ‘the text is referentially related to some other entity’ (viz. to ‘actual history’), and whereas this approach inclines readers to look behind the text to discern this relationship, the precritical, theological way the premodern church read Scripture assumed that the meaning of the text is found in the text itself, which led them to look intensely into the text to hear God’s voice. In the words of Father Yves Congar, for people who employ a ‘technical’ approach to Scripture, Scripture becomes ‘an object to be analyzed and dissected.’ By contrast, when people read Scripture with ‘a seeking heart,’ longing to hear God’s word, Scripture can become ‘alive, a person, drawing me to it with the force of a living being.’” - Greg Boyd, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God, p. 356-7
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.” – John 1: 1-4
The question of whether we are alive or dead is inextricably connected to whether things appear and disappear on the horizon or, rather, on the globe. A dead man disappears horizontally below the earth. A living man appears on the horizon. On the globe, however, a No-man disappears into ashes of thought. A veil of invisibility is introduced. We can’t see dead people.
“How shall we respond to man and his objects affixed to the surface of the earth? Everything we build must be adjusted in relation to the ground, thus the horizon becomes an important aspect of architecture. The simplest form of architecture is to cultivate the surface of the earth, to make a platform. Then the horizon is the only direction you have. The moment you lose the horizon, your desire is always to reinstate it.” - Sverre Fehn
To theoretically stand outside our selves and the earth is to enter into the particular structured set of relationships that makes the relationship between nature and “the irrational” into a “duel.” The accomplishment of that stance was the creation or discovery of the globe. The quest to remove mystery creates the conditions in which the mystery returns unannounced - unless, of course, we ourselves re-turn and face the mystery again.
“Unlike ancient precritical readers, we have to consciously choose to read Scripture in a precritical way…to stand under it as God’s word and let it transform us.” – Greg Boyd, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God p. 362
Andrea Palladio's Villa Rotunda
“I think it is vital that we specify what precisely we are trusting Scripture for…Scripture is best understood as the ‘God-breathed’ written witness to God’s covenantal faithfulness that culminates in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ…And this, I submit, is the ultimate criterion by which we should assess the trustworthiness of scripture...If we rely on Scripture to bear witness to God’s faithfulness as supremely expressed in the crucified Christ and confirmed by the resurrection, God will not fail to use it to that end. For it was to this end that God ‘breathed’ it.” – Greg Boyd, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God p. 371-2
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