Why Sacred Space Matters

As C. S. Lewis' oft-repeated line has it, "God likes matter. He invented it." Christianity has always affirmed God's own verdict concerning the work of his hands. Human work (vocation) was established before the Fall as an expression of the image-bearing status of the Great King's royal servant. The principle of flourishing, which God had encoded into the natural world, was also given to humanity: "Be fruitful and multiply, subduing the earth." It was not a matter of using, raping, and pillaging the earth, but of taming its lushness and "living off of the land." It was not the earth that was Mother, but God who was Father, and he placed it under human supervision.

But, as we know from Genesis 3, human rebellion-the mutiny against the Great King-brought the curse upon the image-bearing race, spilling over into the whole natural order. The lushness of Eden would soon be a wasteland. When God forms a people from Abraham's aged loins and Sarah's barren womb, liberating them from Egypt and bringing them through the wilderness into the Promised Land, he again made his dwelling on earth. Once more, his heavenly kingdom was reproduced in miniature in an earthly Paradise, with the temple of God's presence in the midst of his people. This whole arrangement was a type or shadow of the everlasting kingdom. In that day, there will be no boundaries, as the glory of God will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. It will be a new creation.

If anything, the Jew would have been tempted (and was, in fact) to miss the heavenly purpose of God in the earthly shadows, but our tendency often lies at the opposite extreme, for our Western thought-forms are more Greek than biblical. Creation "in the beginning" is often a sort of preface to the fall and redemption. And the consummation "on the last day" is often an afterword. Even in the middle, we often either "spiritualize" the reality of a "heaven on earth" or insist upon ushering in the everlasting kingdom of righteousness ourselves. How often is sinfulness identified with the body in Christian circles? And yet, it is the body as much as the soul which God created and redeemed, which participates in worship and sanctification, and which will be raised forever on the last day.

Obviously, if one emphasizes the way of salvation as the ascent of the spirit, transcending the bodily, historical, institutional, and social dimensions of existence, the best route is to escape as much as possible from the world. Monastic spirituality, though rarely as crudely anti-material as the Gnostics, represents an antithesis to the spirituality which pronounced the creation "good," commissioned secular vocations, and issued the command to be fruitful and to multiply. As Paul complained of the proto-Gnostics of his day, the forbidding of marriage is a sharp contrast to the "earthy" piety of the Bible.

But there are more insidious challenges to the biblical doctrine of creation. Often, for instance, Christians believe that they must justify not only secular callings by a "spiritual" cash-value; they must also "Christianize" culture. The assumption here is that the creation is not good. But, in fact, it is not the creation which is bad, but we who have rebelled against the Creator, subjecting the creation to frustration (Rom. 8). The Christian inherits two commissions. In the first birth, the believer becomes an heir of the "cultural mandate," the creation-commission to subdue the earth, settle the pioneers of God's earthly city, and protect the garden-city from the entrance of the evil one. But since God's kingdom is no longer identified with Eden, and ever since Cain began building his city "east of Eden," human civilization has emerged as a secular enterprise under God's common grace. Thus, the cultural mandate which all human beings inherit as God's image-bearers pertains to the command to be fruitful and to multiply. This includes secular callings, as well as the institutions of the home, neighborhood, society, and civilization. In the second birth, the believer becomes an heir of a second commission: the Great Commission. In this Commission, "subduing the earth" pertains to redemption rather than to secular callings or institutions of creation. It is not by instituting Christian legislation or electing Christian officials that we fulfill this commission, but by going into all nations teaching, baptizing, and leading the reconciled into citizenship in the City of God.

So here we are, "east of Eden" according to our secular citizenship, and yet flourishing in the Paradise of God according to our heavenly birth. When one becomes a believer, it is neither necessary nor possible to diminish one's creation-identity or one's obligations to this world. Fleeing from the world's lusts is required, but such sinful affections take up residence in our own hearts, as Jesus said, and not in the mere existence of secular institutions, occupa-tions, and opportunities for bodily refreshment and human society. In one sense, all people are brothers and sisters. There is one origin, one Creator, "in whom we live and move and have our being," says Paul, going so far as to cite one of the pagan poets: "'For we are all his offspring.'" (Acts 17:28). We do not have to swallow creation up in redemption in order to affirm the significance of the former. Nor should we confuse the two. We do not have to say that "all of life is sacred" in order to justify the sphere of creation and common grace, which is quite definitively not sacred. God has set apart for himself a people, a Holy Land of Sabbath Rest which is already here in the presence of Word and Sacrament and will descend finally and forever on the last day.

In that day, the serpent will be driven finally from Paradise. The Second Adam will serve the Creator and protect the City from the invasion of evil, suffering, and sin. But this is not salvation from the world, bodily existence, culture, and the like. In contrast to many of the popular portraits of disembodied spirits rising helium-like to the clouds, where they will strum on harps of gold for eternity, the biblical vision is decidedly earthy. The prophets clearly have in view a restored heavens and earth, and this is carried forward carefully by the New Testament writers. For instance, Paul reminds us,

For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body (Rom. 8:20-23).

We may affirm, with the Creed, "I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come," but much of our discourse tends toward the more Gnostic theory of salvation. In this scenario, death is a good thing because it frees the soul from the body and this world. Salvation is more a matter of learning the "spiritual principles" that will lead us back to our heavenly home than of the historical Incarnation, death, and Resurrection of the Son of Man. An individual affair, such a "liberation" hardly requires a mediator-much less, the mediation of such earthly elements as water, bread, and wine, or the preaching of ordinary human words. The visible church is deemed so unimportant that membership is either downplayed or perhaps not even offered. It is only the invisible church which counts, like the disembodied spirit. And it is the naked self's encounter with the naked Divine Spirit which is central, rather than the incarnate God and his human ministry of Word and Sacrament.

Do we really affirm the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come? Is Paul's hope, affirmed in Romans 8, our own? Perhaps we are put off by the disparity between the state of the world as it now exists and the picture of the prophets, Jesus, and Paul. And yet, we should find exactly the same disparity between our slight sanctification and the glorification which awaits us. If such a disparity does not keep us from pursuing the mark of our high calling here and now, then surely the restoration of all things at the end of the age should inspire us to pursue our calling in the secular city with justice, righteousness, and peace in view. After all, this future reality (which is already the reality for God in his heavenly Paradise) is already breaking in on us here and now, as we have already "tasted of the powers of the Word of God and the age to come" (Heb. 6:5).

So How Does This Affect Our Approach to "Matter"?

Theology is practical, and there is no better testing ground than in the so-called "worship wars." But, with few exceptions, such debates rarely address one of the most important questions: If matter matters, why don't our church buildings?

"It's just a building," we say of the church-and so it is. "The church is the people, not the brick and mortar." Right again. According to Scripture, worship is no longer bound to the ceremonies of Mosaic covenant, types and shadows of the reality to come; namely, Christ. He is, after all, the true Sanctuary and Temple of God's dwelling among his people, and we worship "neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, for the time is coming and now is when people will worship in Spirit and in truth" (John 4:21-24). God commanded the old covenant worship, with its elaborate regulations governing liturgical, ceremonial, and sacrificial rites, but when the "temple greater than Solomon's" (Matt. 12:42) arrived and, after being reduced to rubble was rebuilt after three days (John 2:19-21), the Holy of Holies could not be located in any particular earthly structure. Instead, as Jesus promised the Samaritan woman, new covenant worship is eschatological-that is, it takes place in the heavenly sanctuary in which believers are already "seated with Christ" (Eph. 2:6).

Calvin's impatience with liturgical extravagance and novelty focused on just this concern. Like the covenant people gathered at the foot of Mount Sinai around the golden calf, we are all inveterate idolaters. We want to worship "our way," and our minds are "idol factories," so "our way" always ends up at odds with God sooner or later. The greatest tragedy in all of this is that, in our impatience with God's redemptive time-table (like Israel at Mount Sinai), we create our own "image of the invisible God" instead of waiting for the advent of the only legitimate incarnation of God (Col. 1:15).

At the heart of Reformed approaches to the space and elements of worship are three chief concerns: (1) The fear of idolatry, which is to say, the fear of undermining the authority of God's Word by the human propensity for innovation; (2) The centrality and finality of Christ as the mediator between heaven and earth; (3) The eschatological transition from promise (in types) to fulfillment (the reality). Within these parameters, there is a great deal of freedom. On the other hand, the Reformed tradition has always underscored the importance of reverence and the distinctiveness of God's covenantal meeting with his people. Governed by the dialogical principle ("God Speaks"/"We Respond"), Reformed worship has historically emphasized God's present action in this assembly which he has called each week. Accordingly, the accent falls not on what we are doing (even if it is more godly than pure "entertainment"), but on what God is doing. When we meet, it is not to hear the preacher lecture, entertain, cajole, or inspire us, but to hear God address us through his minister. We come not to enjoy the special music, but to receive God's saving promise and the benefits of Christ's work through the Supper and to respond in grateful thanksgiving. As Westminster Seminary Professor D. G. Hart observes concerning Calvin's approach, "Music for entertainment (at home or in the pub) could be light and frivolous. But music for worship, he believed, should be majestic and dignified. … According to Charles Garside Jr., 'The antithesis [in Calvin's theology] between the secular and the sacred could scarcely be more pointed.'" (1)

Nothing could be further from much of current Reformed practice. While unbelievers in the New Testament were confused by the strangeness of Christian worship, the trend in our day is to make the service as familiar as possible. Not only does this manifest itself in the dissolution of the line between secular and sacred music and communication; it is apparent also in the architecture.

Issues of space are rarely raised in the "worship wars," and perhaps this itself reflects the triumph of a certain type of rationalistic (mind over matter) mentality that has always lurked beneath the surface of certain (especially Zwinglian-leaning) sections of the tradition. But does the Reformed emphasis on the fulfillment of the Mosaic system and the amazing rupture between the two covenants in the new world which dawned that first Easter render the question of ecclesiastical space irrelevant? Not at all. This is evident in the seriousness with which our forebears struggled with inherited forms and put forward reforms.

While Gnostics would rank a building next to the body in the scale of being, as we have already seen, God sanctified time and space, consecrating the Sabbath day and the Sabbath land as the earthly copy of the heavenly reality. It is not time versus eternity, matter versus spirit, earth versus heaven, but the harmonization of the two, that was involved in creation. It was the Fall-human pride and rebellion-that divided what God had joined together, separating the City of God from the City of Man. Only in Canaan would God restore such a union between the two cities, cult (i.e., worship) and culture, the sacred and the secular. A future kingdom was anticipated by the prophets in which these realms would be joined forever because of the perfect sacrifice of the perfect High Priest. After his ascension, Jesus was worshipped as God incarnate by the growing church, and the Sabbath gave way to the Lord's Day. Circumcision and Passover gave way to Baptism and Eucharist, respectively, as promise gave way to the reality. So while there is no Holy Land on earth, no city or temple of God's presence, the whole community of faith is regarded as living stones being incorporated into Christ's body, which is the ever-expanding temple and city of God (1 Pet. 2:5).

Although it is commonly misin-terpreted to justify a presumed insignificance of space, time, or specific elements in worship, our Lord's promise, "Wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them" (Matt. 18:20) refers to the ministry of Word and Sacrament. This is clear from the context, in which "the power of the keys" is explained. The ascended Savior is the Glory in the midst of Jerusalem, his church. He is the Holy of Holies, the place of access to God, and even the small, persecuted, and scattered believers who come together in clandestine meetings may be assured of God's presence in Christ among his people. God has still set apart earthly time, an earthly people (Jewish/Gentile believers and their children), and earthly space ("where two or more are gathered"), as well as earthly elements (water, bread, wine) and earthly speech (preaching). The most common of everyday things are set apart for special use. Thus, it is not the case that everything is sacred (so why not use any building or any style of music?). Just as congregational singing is part of the ministry of the Word (Eph. 5:19), the architecture and furniture of the church building are as well. In both cases, something significant is proclaimed, the former orally, the latter visually. And in neither case is style neutral.

After the Fall, humanity lives "east of Eden." There is nothing inherently wrong with this location: culture is God's creation and is upheld by his common grace. But Christian worship takes place in the New Eden. Does our worship lead us to fix our eyes on "this present evil age" which is passing away, or to fix our eyes on Christ (cf. Col. 3:1-3)? There is nothing inherently ungodly about music halls, stadiums, movie theaters, shopping centers, business parks or malls. They may be ugly and unconducive to enduring and flourishing cultural forms, but there is no divine layout for the mall. However, they are certainly not neutral. And a church which, in its attempt to reduce the discrepancies between the secular and the sacred, imitates one of these forms already preaches volumes concerning its view of God, humanity, sin, salvation, the church, worship, and discipleship.

It's true: the church as the body of Christ is what is holy, not the building itself. Nevertheless, just as the soul is united with and expresses itself through bodily action, the Holy Land, which is the baptized people of God, gathers in ordinary, non-consecrated space in order to participate in extraordinary, consecrated events of divine condescension. It seems to me that this is the theological balance that must be struck: our architecture must neither rivet our attention to earthly temple-worship (leading us again from Christ to Moses), nor distract us from heavenly worship by an austerity or an outright ugliness that results from denying the role of material environments. There is no place for either materialism or spiritualism. It is neither matter over mind, nor mind over matter-the former a "high church" tendency, while the latter reflects the often rationalistic "low church" bent, which reduces worship to information, education, and exhortation.

While studies of Reformed theology and architecture are all too rare, there are a few worth noting. In their 1965 work, Christ and Architecture (Eerdmans), Donald J. Bruggink and Carl H. Droppers provided the most thorough study to date. "Architecture for churches is a matter of gospel," they insist.

A church that is interested in proclaiming the gospel must also be interested in architecture, for year after year the architecture of the church proclaims a message that either augments the preached Word or conflicts with it…. The particular insights of these [Reformed] churches-the indispensability of God's Word, the importance of the Sacraments, justification by faith, the priesthood of all believers, the kingship of Christ as the only Lord and head of his Church, the Presbyterian form of church government-are an understanding of God's Word that needs to be shared with the rest of the Church and proclaimed to the world. (2)

The Reformers were not motivated by "aesthetic inclinations on the part of the Reformed clergy," they write. Changes were made, whether liturgical or architectural, "because the gospel was so important that the Reformers could not allow the churches to remain as they were. The Reformers were acutely conscious of the power of architecture and the constant message that it held for the people." (3) A theater-style already announces a church's view of God and how one relates to this God, as does a cathedral in which the congregation is separated from the liturgical action of the priest and choir up front. "Church architecture is therefore first and foremost a matter of theology rather than a matter of style." (4) According to these authors, Reformed churches tended to lose their confessional distinctiveness first by adopting the eclectic architectural styles of American churches. "Architecture, however, must also be a liturgy in working out the theology of a church in its physical structure. Just as liturgy is theology in action, so architecture is theology in material structure." (5) So some Reformed churches today imitate Pentecostal and nondenominational groups, while others imitate Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox liturgical and architectural styles. Our confusion in these areas, our pick-and-choose approach to styles, reflects an underlying fragmentation and disorientation in our theology. For instance, the priority of the Word is often displaced architecturally even before the service begins, either by a stage and choir or by an altar and candles.

But Reformed believers do not believe that the Word is the only means of grace. "How does Christ communicate with his people? The [Reformed] answer … is that Christ communicates himself to his Church through Word and Sacrament! This was the message Luther and Calvin found in God's Word; this remains the position of those churches which are reformed according to his Word. God communicates himself through Word and Sacrament." Thus, they insist, the sacraments must share the spotlight together. (6) A central pulpit with a table that is not equally prominent speaks volumes about one's theology, especially if the table bears the inscription, "Do this in remembrance of Me," as if this statement from our Lord's institution were the only aspect of the sacrament. Although Zwingli's rationalistic tendencies were repudiated by Calvin and by the Reformed confessions and dogmatics, it lives on in the "mind over matter" presuppositions of many today.

The old Reformed pulpits were exalted works of superb craftsmanship. Why so many steps? Why so high? Why so prominent and unmoveable? Because, theologian Karl Barth answered, preaching used to be God's Word to his Church. But now it has become the preacher's wit and inspiration for the consumers. This preacher may be like us, but God is different; he is "other." Barth explains why Reformed churches have high pulpits and related expressions of God's "aboveness" and "otherness":

Preaching takes place from the pulpit (a place which by its awesome but obviously intentional height differs from a podium), and on the pulpit, as a final warning to those who ascend it, there is a big Bible. Preachers also wear a robe-I am not embarrassed even to say this-and they should do so, for it is a salutary reminder that from those who wear this special garment the people expect a special word. A formidable and even demonic instrument, the organ, is also active, and in order that the town and country alike should be aware of the preaching, bells are rung. And if none of these things help, will not the crosses in the churchyard which quietly look in through the windows tell you unambiguously what is relevant here and what is not? (7)

"Heaven and earth will pass away, but my word will never pass away": Such promises should move us to make it impossible to turn the chancel into a stage. It should be inconvenient to move the pulpit, font, and table. It is, after all, these which make us a Christian people, not the praise band, not the drama team, not the special effects. Bruggink and Droppers hint at these points, as they emphasize the Christian conviction that the Word became flesh:

The question may well be asked how it can be that the Word of God made flesh in Jesus Christ can possibly come to us as Word of God through the instrumentality of some minister in the pulpit. At the same time it must be noted that this is precisely the same question as to how the Word of God made flesh can come to us in water, bread and wine through the instrumentality of some minister at font or table. The two problems are no different, and for both Scripture has an identical answer: whether Christ comes to us from pulpit, font, or table, he does so through the operation of the Holy Spirit. (8)

Thus, worship "in Spirit and in truth" is not "spirit" as a general category (i.e., "spiritual" as opposed to "material"). Rather, it refers to the Holy Spirit, and he works through ordained means. The architecture must avoid sacerdotalism (i.e., a magical view of the "priest's" activities) and a rationalism which requires little more than a hall for a public lecture. Worship that is reformed according to the Word of God will concentrate on the vertical rather than the horizontal, so shouldn't the space lend itself to that orientation? In other words, isn't a vaulted ceiling with high walls more likely to draw our attention upward than an indoor amphitheater? Is the font something we bring out of the sacristy for baptisms, or is it front-and-center, as a permanent fixture as a testimony to God's covenantal promise in Christ and our duty to "struggle against the world, the flesh and the devil"? "Baptism involves continuing participation in the atoning work of Christ; therefore the font should stand emphatically before the congregation as a continuing reminder of this redemptive relationship to Christ." (9) How did we ever start putting the American flag up front, where symbolism is most important, despite the fact that the people of God gathered for worship belong to the communion of saints in all places and times? And the "Christian" flag? It's actually an invention of a Methodist Sunday school society at the turn of the century. Do we not find God's ordained symbols (pulpit, table, font) sufficient for proclaiming Christian unity?

But the questions continue. Why is the choir up front, instead of in the back, as it is in the older Reformed and Presbyterian churches? Bruggink and Droppers go so far as to charge the "theater-plan" with a "choirolatry" every bit as dangerous as that of the medieval choirs.

Where did this innovation begin, and what allowed it to take such tenacious hold in American church life? How the choir attained this position of eminence, where visibly more mighty than pulpit, font, or table it reigns throughout the service, is a story too recent to have been thoroughly chronicled by the historians. (10)

Ironically, the origins are in the Romantic appropriation of the medieval split-chancel:

In low-church Protestantism, the pulpit may be central, but the parishioner, like his high-church counterpart, goes to church with the expectancy of the drama of the service, except that his drama is not one of ecclesiastical awe and mystery but of a performance by choir and minister in which the personalities involved are given the opportunity to play a larger part in relation to their function in the service. Through almost nineteen centuries Christian choirs had been content to sing praise to God unobserved by the congregation, while ministers had preached the gospel from ambos or pulpits which generally took visual precedence over the minister. (11)

In the late nineteenth century, evangelical revivalism's adaptations of secular entertainment began to shape Reformed archi-tecture (and eventually made its liturgical mark). The chancel, which only had room for a large pulpit, font, and table, was dis-mantled and replaced with a stage:

With this emphasis upon the "performance" and the "performers" the visual place of Word and Sacraments was decreased until the pulpit became but a small reading desk on a platform, while the table and font were delegated to the floor in front of the pews. Is there a relationship between the loyalty of so many Protestant congregations to a particular preacher (allowing people to move from church to church in search of a minister) and this nineteenth-century attitude which put personalities to the forefront? (12)

It is important to remind ourselves that we do not have a choice between architectural expression and non-expression. Some readers may find the questions raised here pedantic, concluding that we have given too much weight to the material environment. But it isn't a choice between making an architectural point or not making one. Every church building expresses a particular theological orientation. If, as Reformed theology teaches, Christ mediates his threefold office of Prophet, Priest, and King, through his church, do our buildings devoted to that purpose conform to such teaching? The great danger in allowing the culture to provide models of architecture and worship style is that the precious jewel of the gospel is loosed from its setting and is then easily lost in all the activity. Matter matters.

In 1983, Professor Bruggink authored an analysis of architecture speci-fically in the Christian Reformed Church (CRCNA). (13) In recent years, this denomination too has adopted utilitarian and prag-matic approaches to architecture, revealing deeper shifts. Recently, Arie C. Leder, Old Testament professor at Calvin Theological Seminary, has offered a seminal contribution to this question. As we have seen, Gnosticism defies authority, tra-dition, institutions, sacraments, discipline, and order. But Leder describes megachurch functionalism in much the same way:

Functionalism fits Protestant icon-oclastic tendencies because of a shared protest against forms, traditions, language, and hierarchies. The denigration of traditional symbols is accompanied by a symbolization of such important cultural symbols as the mall, the marketplace, the theater, or the celebrity. Upon entering such a building, one is overwhelmed as when entering the Mall of America in Minneapolis: an enormous space and a platform to allow for free expression. No restrictive spaces; no playing with dark and light; no symbolic hint of the eternal impinging upon the temporal. With one act following another, the traditional vertical aspect of ecclesiastical design has been replaced by an almost vaudevillian horizontalism. (14)

Industrialist Andrew Carnegie said it first: "The business of America is business." But evangelical marketing guru George Barna has reiterated the point: "Think of your church not as a religious meeting place, but as a service agency-an entity that exists to satisfy people's needs." (15) Functionalism wins hands-down if the church is a voluntary society, like the Elk's Club, says Professor Leder. "But the church is not a voluntary organization, nor is the consecrated space and time of Christian worship the product of a worship committee's will. Just as the nature of the family shapes the design of a house, so the nature of the church is foundational for the design of its meeting place and worship." (16)

A human-centered theology will regard worship as our activity, for God, each other, or ourselves. Consequently, it will demand architecture that borrows from the entertainment or business world. Instead of calling us out of the world to "sing a new song," it will perpetuate our old identity which was buried in baptism. While God does not prescribe the size, style, or color of buildings devoted to new covenant worship, he has clearly defined the new covenant theology that must govern our use of space. To deny the importance of our material space, our architectural design, and the symbolism of the furniture, is implicitly Gnostic. It may perhaps be compared to a specific version of that heresy which threatened the early church: docetism. From the Greek verb, "to appear," this heresy taught that the Word seemed to become flesh. In truth, the Savior was a pure spirit, undefiled by "corrupt" materiality. By suggesting that the liturgical, architectural, aesthetic, and other ineluctable aspects of every church are inconsequential to the "spiritual" worship of God, one wanders far from the earthiness of the biblical outlook.

The goal of this article (as of the sources I've cited) is hardly the advocacy of an aesthetic elitism. I know that new churches often get off of the ground by leasing space in an industrial or business park and that it is difficult to raise sufficient funds to convert the space, especially in cases of shared use. Nor have I argued for architectural uniformity. In fact, that would be to sacrifice the particularity and diversity of creation, which God preserves and accentuates in redemption, to a homogeneity that would be theologically disastrous. However, my hope has been to get us to be more theologically deliberate and constructive as we seek to worship God with our bodies as well as our minds. Let all that is in me–and around me–bless his holy Name!