For audiences inclined to Biblical interpretation, you can ask - why is heaven described as a city, e.g., the New Jerusalem, and not something like the Elysian fields?
For audiences inclined to Biblical interpretation, you can ask - why is heaven described as a city, e.g., the New Jerusalem, and not something like the Elysian fields?
Mark, I resonate with your comment, with one caveat: Abraham looked for a city, but not one made with human hands. The New Jerusalem "comes down out of heaven like a bride adorned for her husband." Our human cities are built up of "creative destruction," a past always being erased or exploited for purposes that obey chimerical human intentions.
A fuller description of the Biblical city is much more complex than "city is good." The first city happens after Cain murders Abel. Babel and Babylon are cities. Cities are concentrations of power, and at first these concentrations are so out-of-proportion from the world around them that they are only created by sin. But as we are led into virtue first by the law and then efficaciously by grace, the ability to handle the power of a city does not necessarily overwhelm a man but instead can be directed towards a greater glory, e.g., the construction of the Temple.
On your last sentence, I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean to say that any sort of city-building is only ever erasing or exploiting, and so cannot be good? Or simply that, because the world is finite and material, the presence of a new thing in some place implies the removal of an old thing?
Thank you for the prospect of a robust exchange. Clearly, the biblical mandate is to look to the welfare of the city, whether Jerusalem, Rome, Babylon, even Sodom. But we must also hear the reckoning: "for here we have no lasting city." The great cities of the world are in states of "creative destruction," always being demolished, corrupted, or reimagined. Human genius is mingled with greed and sloth. Sometimes we experience a decade something like a golden age, but much of the time we lament a debacle: the disappearance or despoiling of something we thought might last forever, No, human beings are not being perfected by their works.
For audiences inclined to Biblical interpretation, you can ask - why is heaven described as a city, e.g., the New Jerusalem, and not something like the Elysian fields?
Mark, I resonate with your comment, with one caveat: Abraham looked for a city, but not one made with human hands. The New Jerusalem "comes down out of heaven like a bride adorned for her husband." Our human cities are built up of "creative destruction," a past always being erased or exploited for purposes that obey chimerical human intentions.
A fuller description of the Biblical city is much more complex than "city is good." The first city happens after Cain murders Abel. Babel and Babylon are cities. Cities are concentrations of power, and at first these concentrations are so out-of-proportion from the world around them that they are only created by sin. But as we are led into virtue first by the law and then efficaciously by grace, the ability to handle the power of a city does not necessarily overwhelm a man but instead can be directed towards a greater glory, e.g., the construction of the Temple.
On your last sentence, I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean to say that any sort of city-building is only ever erasing or exploiting, and so cannot be good? Or simply that, because the world is finite and material, the presence of a new thing in some place implies the removal of an old thing?
Thank you for the prospect of a robust exchange. Clearly, the biblical mandate is to look to the welfare of the city, whether Jerusalem, Rome, Babylon, even Sodom. But we must also hear the reckoning: "for here we have no lasting city." The great cities of the world are in states of "creative destruction," always being demolished, corrupted, or reimagined. Human genius is mingled with greed and sloth. Sometimes we experience a decade something like a golden age, but much of the time we lament a debacle: the disappearance or despoiling of something we thought might last forever, No, human beings are not being perfected by their works.