This article is an attempt to draw an analogy between the destruction
and proposed restoration of the Notre Dame Cathedral and the traditional text
of Scripture.
One of the biggest news stories this week was, for course,
the fire that destroyed a substantial part of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris
(on Monday, April 15, 2019). The source of the fire is still unexplained,
though online rumors have run rampant about the possibility that it might have
intentional act of arson or terrorism. Over the last year there have apparently
been hundreds of acts of vandalism against French churches and Christian
religious objects. One would have to be particularly dull not to be suspicious
of the fact that the fire occurred during the so-called “holy week” leading up
to Easter Sunday.
It is hard not to see symbolic significance in the damage done
to this church, which had long been an icon of the Christian and RC heritage of
France. I wonder how many poems will be written that memorialize this fire as a
reflection of demographic, political, and religious changes in France and the
West as it enters a post-modern and post-Christian era.
In a much-discussed online Rolling Stone article, posted the day after the fire and titled “How
Should France Rebuild Notre Dame?”, EJ Dickson notes that the fire did not
end up doing as much damage as some initially feared. He cites Jeffrey Hamburger,
a Harvard art historian:
The
fact that the building did not collapse — a concern in the hours immediately
following the blaze — serves as a “powerful testimony to the skill of medieval
builders,” Hamburger says. He credits the survival of the structure to the
building’s iconic rib vaulting and flying buttresses, which prevented collapse.
“It’s worth remembering why they went through the trouble building it this way
— it wasn’t for aesthetic reasons, it was for fire-proofing,” Hamburger says.
“In a way, what we have here is proof of concept.”
After noting the building’s role in French history and the
fact that it serves as the “Point Zero” or supposed center of the city of
Paris, the article offered this startling observation:
But for
some people in France, Notre Dame has also served as a deep-seated symbol of
resentment, a monument to a deeply flawed institution and an idealized
Christian European France that arguably never existed in the first place. “The
building was so overburdened with meaning that its burning feels like an act of
liberation,” says Patricio del Real, an architecture historian at Harvard
University.
The
article also discusses the very difficult question of how the reconstruction of
the cathedral should proceed. The cathedral began to be built in 1160 and was
completed a hundred years later in 1260. It was built on a site that had
previously held not only a fourth century Christian church but also on a site
where a Roman temple to Jupiter was once situated. Over the years various
additions and renovations were added, including a spire (now destroyed by the fire),
in the nineteenth century.
With
regard to reconstruction, the question arises as to which church should be
reconstructed. The original completed in 1260? The church as it stood in April
2019? Should, for example, the spire be restored or left out? Should it be modernized
with contemporary innovations and features? There is also the realization that
no exact reproduction can be achieved in our day. We simply do not have the
skilled workmen and artisans today who completed the original work by hand
using pre-modern methods. We cannot do today what was done then.
Here
is another quote from the conclusion of the RS article:
Although Macron and
donors like Pinault have emphasized that the cathedral should be rebuilt as
close to the original as possible, some architectural historians like Brigniani
[an architecture professor at the City College of New York] believe that would
be complicated, given the many stages of the cathedral’s evolution. “The
question becomes, which Notre Dame are you actually rebuilding?” he says.
Harwood [architecture professor at the University of Toronto], too, believes
that it would be a mistake to try to recreate the edifice as it once stood, as
LeDuc did more than 150 years ago. Any rebuilding should be a reflection not of
an old France, or the France that never was — a non-secular, white European
France — but a reflection of the France of today, a France that is currently in
the making. “The idea that you can recreate the building is naive. It is to
repeat past errors, category errors of thought, and one has to imagine that if
anything is done to the building it has to be an expression of what we want —
the Catholics of France, the French people — want. What is an expression of who
we are now? What does it represent, who is it for?” he says.
Hamburger, however, dismisses this idea as
“preposterous.” Now that the full extent of the damage is being reckoned with —
and is less than many initially feared — he sees no reason to not try to
rebuild and preserve one of the few remaining wonders of medieval architecture.
“It’s not as if in rebuilding the church one is necessarily building a monument
to the glorification of medieval catholicism and aristocracy. It’s simply the
case that the building has witnessed the entire history of France as a modern
nation,” he says. “[You] can’t just erase history. It’s there, and it has to be
dealt with critically.”
So, why this reflection on Notre Dame de Paris? Certainly it is
intriguing on many levels. What it brought to my mind, given the general
interest of this podcast in the text and translation of Scripture, are the parallels
that might be suggested between Notre Dame and the traditional text of Scripture
(the Hebrew Masoretic Text of the OT and the Greek TR of the NT).
The traditional text of Scripture is not a physical edifice,
like Notre Dame, but it is a priceless literary artifact that reflects the
history and heritage of Christianity in both the West and the East. One might
say that Notre Dame was there for some nine-hundred years, and the traditional
text only represents a printed tradition of some five-hundred years. Even if we
granted only a five-hundred-year span for the traditional text, that would be
significant, but, in fact, we might just as well cogently argue that its legacy
extends even further back. The Masoretic text goes back to Ezra and the TR reflects
a predominant, organic ecclesiastical consensus largely present in the Byzantine
tradition and confirmed by the Protestant orthodox in the Reformation and
post-Reformation eras that, we might argue, goes back to the apostles. So, in fact,
while Notre Dame has only a nine-hundred-year history, the traditional text has
stood for over two thousand years.
To continue the analogy, we were told that this text had been
severely damaged through blazing corruptions and errors in transmission from
some unknown sources. In hindsight, however, many now fear that the damage might
have been done from inside out by post-Enlightenment scholars who saw the
traditional text as a monument of a bygone era, whose significance was eclipsed
by modern “advances.” Such scholars likely saw the traditional text as the
historian in the RS article says that some modern Parisians saw the Notre Dame,
as “a
deep-seated symbol of resentment, a monument to a deeply flawed institution … that
arguably never existed in the first place.” Many, no doubt, saw and stillsee the toppling of the traditional text
as a “liberation.”
Despite claims of its total collapse under what can only be
described as the withering claims of modern criticism, further examination shows
that the structure actually stands up still quite well, a testimony to the “proof
of concept” not only of the inspired writers but also of the providentially
guided tradents of the text. It still serves quite well as a “Point Zero” for finding
the true center for Christian faith and practice.
While some would still suggest undertaking radical reconstruction
to get back to the as yet undefined and elusive original, others suggest that
the moment to be seized for making supposed modern updates and improvements. To
borrow again from a scholar in the article, one might observe, “The question becomes, which [text of
Christian Scripture] are you actually rebuilding?” The traditionalist,
however, rightly recognizes that such an undertaking is fraught with difficulties
and unintended consequences. For starters, we simply do not have the artisans
and skilled laborers to undertake such a task. We cannot do now what a previous
generation so expertly did under divine providence. Our attempts to tinker with
and improve might be devastating for its preservation for future generations.
Of course, this analogy breaks down. Notre Dame has been severely
damaged, and it will need to be repaired. The traditional text, however, though
under intense assault, has not yet been consigned to the flames. To both the
chagrin and wonder of many, it still stands as a monument to God’s immediate
inspiration of his Word and his providential preservation of it. It does not need
repair or replacement, but appreciation and admiration.
JTR
