Notre Dame was more than a building. It was a unifying force across time and space. The cathedral was begun in 1163, but it took 182 years before it was opened in 1345. Imagine a modern building project begun in 1838 and not yet open for business!
Generations poured time, talents and treasures into a church they would never see completed. They were building not for themselves or their children. They were looking seven and eight generations down the road.
Moderns prefer to build in wood and plaster. Stones that withstand the weather of centuries do not comport with a culture capable of changing centuries-old truths like yesterday’s laundry.
The permanence of stone reflects the permanence of the ideas behind the stones. Notre Dame would never have been built if the children and grandchildren of those who laid the foundation decided to abandon the faith of their fathers.
Yet that is exactly what modernism does. The wisdom of millennia is excoriated as “outdated” and “restricting.” Some that abandon it go on to use the power of government to coerce others to do the same.
The most noticeable transformations have come in the area of sexual ethics. For decades counter-cultural forces have been working to remake marriage. They have been largely successful. Marriage as a permanent and exclusive union of a man and a woman is no longer protected by our courts, taught by public schools, or even understood by society at large.
But marriage is only the tip of the iceberg. Disrespect for authority and the adoption of a culture of lies are other signs that Western culture is imploding. For years words like “tissue,” “vegetable” and “fetus,” have been used to deny humanity and to provide ethical cover for destroying it.
In recent months, however, the gloves have come off. From Virginia governor, Ralph Northam’s, comments on public radio to the passage of New York’s draconian “Reproductive Health Act,” we are beginning to see open support for the killing human beings without any attempt to conceal it.
What does all of this have to do with the stones of Notre Dame? Simply this: architecture in stone proclaims an unchanging God who creates a stable and unchangeable world. Without that foundation, every single point of human ethics is up for grabs.
As the almighty and immutable God of Christianity has been incrementally driven out of culture, the result is not some purely secular and non-religious vacuum. A different god has taken His place. Western culture is not losing religion. It is changing religions.
This new god does not say, “I am the Lord, I change not” (Mal. 3:6). Rather, it asks, “how shall I change to suit your mood today?” It builds not in stone, but in plastic. It writes not in Scripture but in cyberspace. It doesn’t create anything but is itself forever being created.
This replacement god is not capable of building another Notre Dame. It may have the technical know-how to make precise replicas of what was burned, but it could never have created such transcendent beauty itself. For the same reason, an ever-evolving god of incapable of creating any coherent and sustainable ethic either.
New atheists have been attempting for several years to construct a convincing ethic in the absence of an unchangeable God. People like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris have been trying to give evolutionary reasons for love, respect for human life, truthfulness and faithfulness. They have failed miserably.
Love is not a product of evolution, but of creation. Aspirations toward love may remain in a culture cut off from its creator, but they are merely remnants of a lost culture. They may even remain for a long time—like stone ruins of an ancient cathedral. But an ever-changing God can never build a culture of love, any more than it could build a cathedral like Notre Dame.
We are increasingly becoming a culture that lives and works among the stones of an ancient cathedral with no understanding of how those stones got there. Notre Dame is now such a pile of stones. It remains to be seen if they will be rebuilt into a living and worshipful cathedral or into a sterile museum of what once was.
Whatever happens, there is one image of hope that will forever be seared into my mind. As the sun set on the burning cathedral, a drone captured a glimpse of transcendent beauty. The bright flames were doing more than consuming centuries-old treasures. They were also emitting a blazing light.
The stones of Notre Dame contained and shaped the flames in the form of a blazing cross. That cross, emblazed against the sky, recalls the love that created our world. It’s the only thing that can remake it again.
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