https://building.christkirk.com/
For those familiar with Wilson's 1998 'Angels in the Architecture', this appeal for a new building is nothing new. It is but a continuation of his celebration of the Middle Ages, along with the usual refrain to 'live it up' and do everything on a grand scale - big buildings, big feasts, and all the rest. His ethos is one of triumphalism, an outworking of his over-realized eschatology, itself a result of his misreading of Scripture on a massive and dare I say mortal scale.
He laments the cultural impoverishment that typifies post-war Evangelicalism and yet cannot seem to understand what is the source of the American ethos - which given that Evangelicalism is simply (like Medieval Catholicism in its time) a form of acculturated Christianity and therefore is bound to express the values of its culture.
The American story is one of austerity and progress which exist alongside (and in contradictory fashion) with its wasteful consumerism and the utilitarian ethics that so often undergird it. America's story has always been one of mammon and eventually this crystallized in the form of democratic and capitalist theory which is part of the larger Enlightenment idealism of the Founders. Wilson decries this Liberalism and yet at the same time embraces many of its aspects. Such a culture does not produce the kind of architecture he would like to see. As such his call is little more than a passionate plea for Romanticism.
As a pilgrim and thus a cynic regarding culture - and in particular the grand sweep of Christendom I too can relish the stories and the art it has produced over the centuries but for very different reasons. And as always, these things are enjoyed with a sense of detachment. My shelves are filled with poetry and art books and I frequently partake of them but not as a reverent nostalgic - but as one probing transcendence and pursuing reflection. Wonders these works of art may be but they are not part of Zion, though the best artists (in my opinion) can evoke the transcendent. And yet such aesthetics are rarely in keeping with that of the Sacralist and the tendency toward realism (and for Magisterial Protestants) the mundane - which they historically have sought to sanctify.
It should be noted that Wilson like his medieval forebears exhibits a perilously low view of the Fall - a great irony that I always feel compelled to point out. Calvinists may advocate for Total Depravity but this has been softened and even eliminated in light of sacral and dominionist concerns and the over-realized eschatological call to redeem culture, often fueled by Abraham Kuyper's framework of Common Grace. The advocates of this school will admit that 'heaven now' is not possible in light of the Fall but many believe that the effects of the Fall can be mitigated and for the postmillennial-chiliast sect, the effects will be sharply curtailed when the Church attains its golden age 'victory' - a victory that is still overshadowed by death. As such it is not the victory Christ speaks of and few seem to grasp that if their scenario is in fact accurate, then large sections of the New Testament will be rendered as functionally obsolete.
Wilson's errors rest on foundations found within the New Testament itself - not in what it teaches, but in what is being condemned.
The apostles did battle with both Hellenists and Judaizers and it seems clear enough that in some cases (such as Colossae) both impulses were extant in a kind of triadic-syncretism - the doctrine of the apostles (and the gospel) were combined with the both Jewish and Greek errors - creating a kind of syncretist worldview that Paul harshly condemned.
The Hellenistic (and thus pagan) tendency provides a philosophical apparatus for the sacralism espoused by Wilson and he (and a long line of other thinkers associated with Christendom) borrow from Greek philosophy's understandings of beauty, aesthetics, ritual, as well as a concept of lordship (or dominion) over the Earth that in the solafideist context of Magisterial Protestantism often tends toward the libertine as opposed to the ascetic. There are exceptions to this of course as seen with the Puritan and Pietist movements and their legacy.
Obviously there are other Hellenistic traditions that promoted asceticism and others (like Epicureanism) could easily be manipulated into something other than the practice of its original adherents.
But Wilson also exhibits a Judaizing understanding of the Old Testament, and a refusal to embrace what the apostles taught about it. Judaizing tendencies can dovetail nicely with sacral impulses as the Christ-rejecting Jews also looked for a Messiah that would establish a global dominion - a kind of holy world empire, the very thing postmillennialists like Wilson continue to seek. Christ and the apostles revealed this expectation is fulfilled in heaven and yet the Jews and Judaizers rejected it - as do their many worldly-minded offspring that dominate the history of the Church.
His attempts to replicate Temple typology are surely expressions of Judaizing as such thought is alien to the New Testament wherein the Temple is revealed to be the heavenly Body of Christ - not a building made of stone. Even the defective Old Covenant revealed that. The building was just a type and thus fulfilled by Christ. To turn back to the type is to return to empty forms and it is tantamount to saying that Christ's fulfillment was somehow insufficient.
Nowhere are we told to go back to the Old Covenant and try to emulate or transform its rites, rituals, or outward forms transforming them to be suited for the Church. The New Testament has already done this in its doctrine of the Church and in the Sacraments. The ad hoc and self-serving methodology advocated by Wilson and so many others has no leg to stand on apart from vain tradition born of the post-Constantinian epoch. It is this false Christianity that Wilson represents and champions.