Angels in the Architecture "A Wine Dark Sea and Tumbling Sky"

Like many others, I first gave serious consideration to the holiness of God after reading R.C. Sproul’s book on the subject. I also watched a video series on the subject. I remember being struck by the comprehensiveness of that attribute. The idea that God’s holiness is so pervasive and so complete that not even the angelic creatures can “fully bear that sight” was unimaginable. This first real essay calls us back to a proper understanding of God’s holiness as “the manifestation of all His attributes in all their splendor.” What a great way to put that! But Wilson doesn’t just want an academic contemplation of God’s holiness. He wants a practical application of the doctrine. Specifically to our understanding of beauty.

In short, while beginning with God’s holiness, as I am becoming more and more convinced everything should, the chapter is really about a return to an objective, universal, and invariant doctrine of beauty. Wilson actually says that sound doctrine should include a love of the beautiful.

What is beauty? Where does it come from? In the throes of modernity we have come to accept as gospel truth the maxim “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” What rubbish! And yet, it is difficult to get around the differing ideas of beauty and taste. How can I say that your love of green apples is doctrinally flawed while my love of red apples is orthodox? This isn’t really what the Bible teaches about beauty. When the Bible considers beauty it does so in contrast to the pagan notions of beauty. While we offer living sacrifices to God out of our gratitude for salvation, the pagans offered their babies to the fire and their daughters to prostitution. Which is more beautiful? While Bezalel fashioned the ark of the covenant and the implements for the worship of the living God, we have “artists” who stick a crucifix in a jar of urine and go on about their right of free speech to do it, and isn’t it clever?

While I need to think more about the standards of beauty to come to grips with what they say, I have no doubt that there are such standards. Wilson is right. Our sense of beauty, like our sense of truth is derivative, not originative. We live by presupposition. This must affect our aesthetic as well. I haven’t worked it all out, but I know it works. Wilson points to two basic responses we, as modern evangelicals, typically have to this.

“The modern evangelical either says that our aesthetic vision should be borrowed from the world, or … we must be content with no beauty at all.”

This is no way to live. Art is to reflect the glory of the living God as we are to reflect the glory of the living God. God is the first and greatest artist, and we (as well as creation) are His handiwork. We are some of the first pieces of art. Let us bask in the freedom this allows.

Angels in the Architecture - Introduction "Positively Medieval"

Wilson begins the book with an introductory essay and posits a medieval / modern antithesis. He admits it may be odd, but says it is important to flesh out the Christian worldview and “Christian medievalism” is the best way to flesh out that story. The essays that follow cover subjects ranging from predestination, lovemaking, feasting, and agrarianism.

The obvious question for Wilson and Jones is how to define modernity and medievalism? Modernity is the current shape of the world, with all its sterility and loneliness. Modernity is whatever rejects truth, beauty, and goodness. This is why postmodernism is simply the child or grandchild of modernity, according the Wilson and Jones. The rejection of these categories means little until we recognize what they replace them with. Rationalism and sentimentalism are the virtues that modernity puts in the place of truth, beauty, and goodness. Modernity is the Enlightenment lived out to the n^th degree. It is a world without feeling, only sentimentalism. It is world without love, only cold rationalism. Medievalism, on the other hand, is the fullness of truth, beauty, and goodness and all the things that go with them. Wilson says,

“The medieval period is the closest thing we have to a maturing Christian culture.”

This maturing culture was cut short in the 16^th century by none other than the Reformation and the Enlightenment. While the Reformation was cut of the same cloth as medievalism, neither survived the Enlightenment very well. The Reformation was a revolution of sorts and revolutions always call for some serious calls to be made. Shipwreck survivors must make some very serious decisions about life and death in the immediate wake of the wreck that do not necessarily reflect how they would live normally. But the situation determines the actions. This is not a call for or an endorsement of situational ethics. No one can do anything immoral in the wake of a shipwreck or plane crash and call it OK because of the wreck. The situation never justifies the choice, but it can reasonably inform the choice. Luther and Calvin and the others made some societal and cultural choices to distance themselves from Roman Catholicism so much that their descendents mistook the emergency decision for the proscribed norm and made it normative for the resulting group.

But the true test between medievalism and modernity is the appeal of the story. Which has a better tale to tell? Would you rather hear the tale sitting before a roaring fire in a Danish Mead Hall with a mug of dark brew or in a cold, sterile restaurant on 5^th Ave in New York while you daintily sip your trendy mixed drink? Would you rather hear the tale after a long hard day’s work in your fields or after a long shift in the cubicle? To ask the question is almost to have it answered. We consider the medieval story more valuable because it was so rich. Yeah, it was dirty and we can learn that lesson later.

The introduction tells us that the medieval story was taken over by Protestantism but then lost in the trenches of modernity. We can recover it and move forward. The rest of this book, the essays that follow are guides to what medieval Protestantism would look like.

End of a school year reflection

The end of a school year always calls for a little reflection. I would recommend this for students as well. What have we accomplished? What did we intend to accomplish? For teachers the first question is always a little short of the second question. However, I would submit that once we reflect a little, many wonderful things, experiences, conversations, and discussions that were not intended took place. That is the joy of teaching to me. I love it when honestly spontaneous discussions of an eternal nature break out in the classroom. It makes a difference, I suppose, that I teach humanities and not math (but I imagine good conversations could be sparked there as well). The conversation is what it is all about. After all, we are trying to get these students to engage in the Great Conversation. If they are not going to engage in the Small Conversation (their own classroom) how can we expect them to engage the culture?
I would hope that next year as I make my intention plans, I would take the unforeseen conversations into account. I hope to make more time for them. I think it is where the true learning takes place.

Angels in the Architecture Foreword

George Grant wrote the foreword to this book and if anyone has listened to or seen his Modernity lectures through Gileskirk, many of the themes contained herein are going to sound familiar. This foreword is typical George Grant, which is always a good thing.

Grant begins with a statement concerning the oddity of naming the period between the fall of the western Roman Empire and the rise of the Renaissance the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages, or even medieval. The naming convention reflects pure Enlightenment thought concerning this time period. Read a little Voltaire and you can figure where the terminology came from. Interestingly it only came from those Enlightenment gurus who were hostile to Christianity. Artists like Van Eyk, Michelangelo and scientists like Newton and Bacon were not as harsh toward the previous thousand years or Christendom.

Grant makes a point, as do Wilson and Jones, of calling the period Christendom. It makes a difference. The dominant ideology in place during the thousand years between say AD 500 and AD 1500 was Christianity. This is reflected in its art, architecture, culture, feasting, economics, theology, politics, everything. It was not always reflected perfectly, we do live in a fallen world.

Looking at and considering what Christendom still has to say to Modernity is what the book is about. The rest of the essays reflect that theme in very remarkable ways.

Angels in the Architecture

I'm back. I am going to begin my summer (technically the students are still testing but I am not teaching anymore so ly time has opened up a little) by blogging through Angels in the Architecture by Douglas Wilson and Douglas Jones.
I read this when I was still a student and all these ideas about a reformed worldview and classical education were still in their idealistic infancy. However, I have picked this book back up again recently, eight years later, and realized its great worth. It is the kind of book you should read once a year, not once a decade. Who knows, I might even assign this book next time I teach Christendom, or Modernity.

Going to be gone for a little bit

I am going to have to put this blog on hold for just a little bit. We are at the one month left mark at school and there is a lot to do with grading research papers and making and grading final exams. As soon as summer hits though I have planned to blog my way through a couple of books. The first in Richard Weaver's Ideas Have Consequences. I have been reading it lately (as you can see on the Book List) and am absolutely blown away. It is truly one of those paradigm-changing books that you think "I know I should read that" but never get around to it and then kick yourself repeatedly once you do get around to it. The other book I want to blog about is Angels in the Architecture. It is a great book of essays written about 1998 by Douglas Wilson and Doug Jones. I read it when it first came out but haven't really touched it since. I picked it back up a week or so ago and am refreshed with the content. I am slowly becoming an agrarian anyway, so this is just fuel for the fire.
I hope you'll pick these books up and play around with them as well and we'll compare notes once I come back in late May or early June.

Idealism and Pragmatism in Animal Farm

If you haven't read Animal Farm recently, pick it up. It only takes about 3 hours to read. I always find out how long a book is on an audio CD recording and tell my students it should take you no longer to read a book than x hours. I know reading is different from comprehension, but I have some slow readers. If a speaker can read a book to someone else in 3 hours, you can read the book in that time too. But I digress.
I was reading Richard Weaver's classic Ideas Have Consequences recently and was reminded of how pragmatic we have become. The realm of the Ideal has no meaning for us anymore. Everything must have real, tangible value for us to even consider it. I noticed this even in Animal Farm. The only reason the animals are roped into Old Major's plan is that he promises them material gain for their effort. They are not idealists. They are materialists. They want their stuff. They want their eggs and milk. They don't want Jones to have it, they want to keep it.
Just a few thoughts from the reading list this week.

The Titanic (April 15, 1912)

It is funny to me how much of my love of history actually was spawned by Heavy Metal music. I learned of Coleridge's great poem, the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, from the Iron Maiden song of the same name. My interest in the Titanic actually came through a song by the band Metal Church who did a song called Rest in Pieces (April 15, 1912) about the Titanic.
Today marks the 96th anniversary of the sinking of the poor ship that was supposed to be unsinkable. I remember watching James Cameron's Marxist film about the boat and hating all the social commentary and the ridiculous love story, but loving the imagery of the ship and the collision and sinking of the boat.
I also listened relatively recently to George Grant's stunning lecture "Why the Scots?" from his Modernity lectures done by Gileskirk. In it he explained that the men who staffed the boat had a solid grounding in the legend and history of seamanship inherited from Scotland. The rule of the sea, "Women and children first" was a lived commitment to them. How utterly ridiculous such a notion would sound to us today. I teach young girls who are offended when chivalry rears its head in the school. They feel looked down upon, not elevated. How backwards we have become. Over 1,500 people died in the wee hours of the morning.
This post feels a little rambled to me, but I just wanted to commemorate the Titanic today. There are very few times in history where chivalry and Christian virtue are able to show themselves so objectively as on the deck of the Titanic as men watched their beloved wives and children float to safety while they sunk into the icy Atlantic ocean.

Recession, Depression, and our Stimulus Package.

I was listening to Dr. George Grant's Gileskirk lecture on the Great Depression the other day (the 2001 edition, available from WordMP3.com) and was struck by his list of the steps taken by the Federal government to avoid or stave off depression.
According to Grant, first the Federal Reserve expanded the money supply in the US 62 times from 1920 to 1929. When the inflation caused a downturn in the market, Hoover tried some interference strategies to hold off the stock market crash. This was designed to prop up the market. It resulted in a massive loss of confidence in the market and sped up the depression instead of thwarting it. In 1931 Hoover launched a massive spending program to try to "outspend" the depression. Finally, when all this caught up with the treasury, Hoover had to put a very large tax hike in place to stop the bleeding. This obviously did not help, as we all know from our parents, grandparents, and the history books.
I wonder how much inflation has been happening in the last decade. The reason this concerns me is that our current stimulus package reminds me an awful lot of Hoover's spending program to try to revitalize the economy in the 1930's.
We apparently learned nothing from the Great Depression. But then, when do we?

Liberty in Livy

Titus Livius (59 BC - AD 17), perhaps most famous for his history of Rome is a must-read for the student of ancient history. His treatment of the stories of the kings of Rome and the beginning of the republic is really entertaining reading. I teach it every year to Antiquity students.
At the beginning of book two, he has a short discourse on the nature of liberty that is invaluable to the modern mind. Livy exclaims that the preceding 244 years of Roman history (years spent under kings) were necessary to prepare men for liberty. Liberty, the essential freeness of men, is not to be understood as something that can granted by anyone, it must be earned. Livy understands that had the Romans achieved the liberty of self-government earlier, it would have been disastrous. Men need to learn how to be free before they can be free.
The root of liberty in the state, is liberty in the individual. However, the examples that Livy uses to showcase that prove that he understands liberty in the individual to refer to self-discipline rather than political freedom. A self-controlled man is a man in possession of liberty. Only a man who knows how to control himself is able to choose the right thing and avoid the wrong thing. Only such a man is truly free and at liberty.
Our nation was founded by self-disciplined men of great character. If we want to know what is wrong with our country today, we need only look at the level of self control in our elected officials. If our nation's leaders cannot control themselves, and do not place a high premium on such a virtue (by example), how can we expect the people to cultivate this virtue in themselves.? It does not appear to be the way to get ahead.
Livy understood better. May we cultivate self-discipline and liberty in our own lives that we may take back the culture that has ignored this basic Christian virtue for far too long.