Tillich on Art and Architecture

In my classic evangelical training, I was dutifully "warned" about Paul Tillich..he was a "liberal," heretic, whatever. (I especially appreciate my professor Larry Wood's insights into how Tillich's home life lead him to believe in a God who is not "personal; " and kudos for not being afraid to assign Tillich books in a "conservative" seminary).

But I was not "warned" (other than by Dr. Wood)about how, though Tillich may get some things wrong, he can get some things startlingly right...even if he has a different dictionary (some even say a different god). He was prophetically proleptic and presciently postmodern-sensitive; ahead of his time and peers in several areas...

On issues revolving around emerging church, culture, media, wineskins, etc., I find the compilation of all his writings on Art and Architecture fruitful. Thanks to St. Mark the Artist for handing me this book from the back of his truck...no, you can't have it back!).

Mark himself has written insightfully on the Reformation and images here , here here and here, (polific, eh?), so after you read all that, consider some startlingly relevant Tillich soundbites below.

I love and use the concept and construct of "cultural architect" for a pastor, thanks to Mushroom Erwin. So when Tillich talks "architecture" of buildings, churches, etc.;I yank open the curtain of the semantic domain to include cultural architecture.


In my classic evangelical training, I was dutifully "warned" about Paul Tillich..he was a "liberal," heretic, whatever. (I especially appreciate my professor Larry Wood's insights into how Tillich's home life lead him to believe in a God who is not "personal, " and for not being afraid to assign Tillich books in a "conservative" seminary). But I was not "warned" (other than by Dr. Wood)about how, though Tillich may get some things wrong, he can get some things startlingly right...even if he has a different dictionary (some even say a different god). He was propheticly proleptic and presciently postmodern-sensitive; ahead of his time and peers in several areas...On issues revolving around emerging church, wineskins, etc., I find the compilation of all hiss writings on Art and Architecture fruitful. Thanks to St. Mark for handing me this book from the back of his truck...no, you can't have it back!). Mark himself has written insightfully on the Reformation and images here , here here and here, (polific, eh?), so after you read all that, consider some startlingly relevant Tillich soundbites below.

I love and use the concept and construct of "cultural architect" for a pastor, thanks to Mushroom Erwin. So when Tillich talks "architecture" of buildings, churches, etc, I yank open the curtain of the semantic domain to include cultural architecture.

I keep interfacing his quotes below with Wolf Simson, Marshall McLuhan and Len Hjalmarson, Buhro and Cooke...



Anyway, if you get past the first two quotes without being overloaded with implications for the current scene, email me:

"Literature contains too much philosophy to be...honest" (5)

"Even today, many congregations and ministers still assume that the choice...is merely a matter of taste and preference. They fail to see that ONLY by the creation of new forms can Protestant churches achieve an honest expression of their faith." (220)

"Today (1962!!!!!), genuine Protestant church architecture is possible, perhaps for the first time in our history. For the early experiments were too swiftly engulfed by eclecticism to act as evolutionary factors in developing a recognizable Protestant architectural language." (220)


"Sacred emptiness should remain the prediominant attitide for the next forseeable time.. God has ' withdrawn' in order to show us that our religious forms in all dimensions were largely lacking in both honesty and consecration" (278)




"I want oranic materials...How can architecture combine the emotion-filled idea of 'home' with the ethics of honesty? How much architectural honesty has the architect to sacrifice in order to build a cozy middle-class home?. How much of the sentimental idea of home must the customer sacrifice to accept the idea of honesty by the architect?...
honesty condemns imitation as well as trimming." (223)


"It isthe human predicament, the universal estrangement of man from his true being, which demands CHURCH in every s ense of the word.....we must communicate through new stylistic forms but never relapse to the dishonest" (226)

"style itself is revelatory....In all human creativity, whether cultural or spiritual, the form is that what makes a creation what it is...the subject matter is formed by the form" (126)

"Whenever a new period is conceived in the womb of the preceding period, a new image of man pushes toward the surfcce and finally breaks through to find its artists and philosophers." (241)

That last quote is from 1959, the year of my birth, and find fulfillment in our day (to come full
circle in the stripe of tribes that Mark Deraud belong to; and beckon us into.

That quote is also chillingly parallel to Graham Cooke's "When the old wineskin is dying, the new wineskin is created by people who are not afraid to be vulnerable. " Which in turn may eb based on the line by Rudolph Bahro, the secular (? as far as I know) ecologist: "When the forms of an old culture are dying, the new culture is created by a few people who are not afraid to be insecure."



Here we are..

Carpe manana, baby!