We find it difficult to conceive of evil and beauty together. The fear of the beautiful fay that ran through the elder ages almost eludes our grasp. Even more alarming: goodness is itself bereft of its proper beauty. In Faerie one can indeed conceive of an ogre who possesses a castle hideous as a nightmare (for the evil of the ogre wills it so), but one cannot conceive of a house built with a good purpose—an inn, a hostel for travellers, the hall of a virtuous and noble king—that is yet sickeningly ugly. At the present day it would be rash to hope to see one that was not—unless it was built before our time. —Tolkien, On Fairy-Stories
I was thinking more along the general lines of what you wrote here, “We get trapped in a nasty, dirty, cramped and dark view of the world, and this is true *even when* we have the gospel to beautify, cleanse, expand and enlighten it, because the nature of that worldview causes us to struggle to actually *use* the gospel.” This topic is bigger than just architecture.
Very true, this is really about the vision of all of Christ for all of life, and trying to figure out what that means and how to apply it. In one way or another, that is always lurking behind everything I write or preach. It was definitely something I was working out when I wrote The Spine of Scripture, and a lot of my sermons circle around how to expand our view of some particular topic (you can listen to them here: https://redwoodchurch.substack.com/). I don't really have anything explicitly developing the idea itself though. Not yet.
I was thinking more along the general lines of what you wrote here, “We get trapped in a nasty, dirty, cramped and dark view of the world, and this is true *even when* we have the gospel to beautify, cleanse, expand and enlighten it, because the nature of that worldview causes us to struggle to actually *use* the gospel.” This topic is bigger than just architecture.
Very true, this is really about the vision of all of Christ for all of life, and trying to figure out what that means and how to apply it. In one way or another, that is always lurking behind everything I write or preach. It was definitely something I was working out when I wrote The Spine of Scripture, and a lot of my sermons circle around how to expand our view of some particular topic (you can listen to them here: https://redwoodchurch.substack.com/). I don't really have anything explicitly developing the idea itself though. Not yet.
Will you do a podcast on this idea, or is there a sermon or another audio you've already done that expands on this?
Tentatively, season 3 will be about architecture—houses, churches, civic buildings, city planning etc.