ANGLIA POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY
(now
Anglia Ruskin University )

 BUILT ENVIRONMENT AND BIBLICAL THEOLOGY

MAKING CONNECTIONS: DISCERNING RELATIONSHIPS

MICHAEL POWELL

 

 Doctor of Philosophy  February 2003

 

11- RESOURCES: GENESIS AND JOHN 1

 

It is a decision coming from commonality that you choose a place out of all places to build...

It is important that you honour the material that you use... (Louis Kahn)

 

11.1 Purpose

The purpose of this Section is to develop insights into some of the main resources used in the development of the built environments of Chelmsford and Tasmania , and generally.

The centripetal pull brings these usages and practice up against the challenges of environmental theology and of the biblical texts themselves.

 

11.2 Nature of the theme

Land, seen as locations and sites, and materials are the main physical resources required for the creation of built environments.

In the case of both Chelmsford and Tasmania , there are a variety of texts that give information on the usage of sites and land and of particular building materials. The theme is also amenable to direct observation.

The longitudinal relationship beiween wooded sites and timber as a common building material is particularly enlightening and significant.

While in the contemporary world issues of mechanised construction and energy consumption in buildings are part of the resources agenda, they are not specially considered here_

 

11.3 Chelmsford

 LAND

In the Chelmsford textual materials, land has three nuances: location or site, landscape, and land ownership and use. The awareness of land in some of the texts studied is evoked visually by means such as maps and photographs and less directly by means of language. The contemporary pressure on land as a resource was noted previously.

 

Materials relating to the wider Essex context make one aware of the sites of the Neolithic Springfield Circus with Bronze Age dwellings, now within the Chelmsford town area, the Roman villa in the rural village area of Chignall St James and the medieval castle, moat and island at Pleshey at the heart of the present village. Beyond the Borough, reference is made to the numinous amalgam of land, sea and sky characteristic of Essex generally and in particular of the area surrounding St Peter's Saxon Chapel at Bradwell. Into this are placed modern features such as the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge over the Thames at Thurrock . Cressing temple3, with its great medieval barns, evokes the landscape of the inland agricultural industry, still an inherent part of the Borough's economy. Easton Lodge at Dunmow is an example of designed landscape.

 

The detailed exploration of the town of Chelmsford shows it to be the site of the market authorized by King John in 1199, of the Roman villa and Dominican Friary at Moulsham and of the Tudor mansion at New Hall. The Friends of Chelmsford Museums' town centre walk follows the line of the London-Colchester route, through Moulsham, across the River Can and up Chelmsford High Street. To walk this line is to experience the land, both as a whole and as the site for each of the 74 specific buildings or locations pointed out.° From Marriage one learns of the compulsory purchase in the eighteenth century of the land for the Chelmer-Blackwater Navigation and of the `sweeping` nature of the sanatorium (now hospital) site at Broomfield. The modem cycle map guides one through streets and parkland, both longstanding and new as in the Beaulieu Park development. The present writer found himself speaking of landscape and environment currently `being made' in this newly developing area.

 

Grieve's comprehensive history and other specialist studies, emphasise that site is significant. Grieve (1988) notes that the Friary was near to the town in order that the friars could work in the town. Like other medieval towns, Chelmsford was congested. A complex argument about the choice of site for a new gaols included giving consideration to which of the possible sites would give minimal risk to the cleanliness of the town's water supply. Begent's survey of Second World War bomb damage reminds one that the site of each house and industrial or other building has a significance for those who live or work there, whether they be the Mayor and his family or unknown citizens.

 

It can be noted that a site of six acres was purchased in 1822 for the prison and that High Street sites were purchased for banks. The Hylands landscape was a gentle one of `rolling meadows and well-cultivated fields'. Skreens at Roxwell was constructed for a family of landowners and political figures. In the twentieth century riverside farmland became the location of South Woodham Ferrers.

 

The re-development of land is a continuous process. In Chelmsford , major current examples include the replacement of industrial buildings with residential and university developments. With current pressured housing programmes, the nuance of land as location is superseded by that of land as resource.

 

TREES AND TIMBER

The Roman circus at Springfield had timber ramparts. The medieval water conduit installed by the friars through the town centre was of elm and the market cross was of oak. The earlier bridges over the Can were constructed of timber and the relevant texts make detailed references to the work of carpenters and sawyers.

 

Brown's (2000) wrote as part of Essex County Council's celebration of the Millennium. His text is a book of over a hundred images, which are a mix of paintings, drawings and computer reconstructions, depicting interlocking locations, buildings and people. Well outside the Borough but highly significant is Cressing Temple as it was c1300CE in the time of the crusading order, the Knights Templar. Cressing was the first rural estate granted to the order in England and provides a link between Essex and the Holy Land . The two great timber barns that can be visited today are shown, together with chapel and small stone buildings, the foundations of which have been uncovered. The artist's reconstruction of farm buildings has been based on an inventory of 1315CE.

 

Rackham (1999) considers the woods, parks and forests of inland Essex and in particular Cressing Temple itself. Cressing is in the lime woods area; among the limes, oaks were grown for building, including the building of Cressing Temple itself. The main vertical posts of the building are simply local oaks trimmed. There is no complicating materials procurement and distribution industry: here are the trees, here is the building. Rackham writes:

 

I have estimated that the Barley Barn represents 50 years growth of timber oaks on 11 acres of woodland, at a reasonable balance between timber and underwood. The Wheat Barn represents about three-quarters of this. The barns would thus have been well within the capacity of the Knights Templars' woodland. Having 110 acres of wood, they could (had they nothing else to do) have built one Bailey Barn every five years, or one Wheat Barn every four years, for ever.

(Rackham 1999:32)

 

Roxwell Revealed Group (1993) is the publisher of a village history. The text is notable for the drawings it contains of a range of listed buildings, mainly residential, annotated with the statutory details including materials, construction methods and dates. Some thirty relate to dwellings, either in the central area of the village or farmhouses, and the remaining ten to barns, the mill, a shop and to Skreens, the large countryseat of the Bramston family, who were extensive landowners and major political figures. The dwellings illustrated date mainly from the 15th-17th centuries and are of timber frame construction with various rendered and boarded finishes. The bams are of similar construction. The notations frequently draw attention to extension, adaptation and alteration. One contributor to the text comments:

 

The survival of so many early buildings may seem curious at first sight but it illustrates the lasting qualities of good oak and the real economic advantages of adapting an existing building. Historical buildings are valuable, not only as beautiful objects in the landscape but also as reminders of man's social development and of the evolution of building techniques.

(Roxwell Revealed Group 1993:84)

 

While timber was the main structural material for relatively ordinary property and earlier stages of the large house, known as Skreens, it was a contributory finishing material in relation to the later stages.

 

When purchased by Sir John Bramston in 1635, Skreens was said to be a dark wooden structure with brick chimneys and foundations with gardens, orchard and moat. In the early eighteenth century the estate was enlarged and a new manor house built on a new site to the southeast. `This was a very imposing structure of red brick with stone facing, a large entrance porch and many windows. There was a large, richly decorated Hall, the Drawing Room had a very ornate ceiling and the Dining Room was panelled with wood and had many good pictures on the walls.' (Roxwell Revealed Group 1993:26).Walled kitchen and fruit gardens were constructed in 1765. The estate was a significant employer of local labour. However by 1860 the tide had turned, mortgages were taken out and the Bramston interest had changed from ownership to life interest only. From 1870 the property was let to a series of tenants and by 1916 much of it sold off as twenty separate farm lots, the manor house itself having been sold in 1914. After Worid War I, demolition followed quickly. The staircase was believed to have gone to America ; some features were installed in local properties.

 

In 1840 a new building for the Baddow Lane Independent Chapel was completed, a large building with seating for between 1500 and 2000 people. The interior would have been fitted out in timber; like the exterior it was in the classical style. It had `a spacious gallery running around the front and both sides and a singing gallery at the back behind the pulpit'. (Grieve 1994:311). Contributions towards the building fund had been made the brewers William Collings Wells and Isaac Perry of Duke Street . `In recognition of this', Grieve continues, `the pulpit was designed in the semblance of a beer barrel'. (Grieve 1994:311). Doubtless that was a challenge to the skills of local carpenters.

 

Opposite the Chapel and built at the same time was the Institute, a lecture and debating hall_ That too had an interesting interior. `The main part of the building had room for 650 people, and was fitted up like a theatre, with raised stage, pit boxes and gallery'. (Grieve 1994;313). A colonial link was made by the inaugural lecture which related to the emancipation of slaves in the West Indies .

 

The work of carpenters is included in the descriptions of the restoration after fire of St Mary's Church in 1800 and in the 1990's restoration of Hylands House.

Marconi's wooden hut at Writtle could become an icon for modem communication technology.

Traditional elevationai boarding, reminiscent of both Essex and New England, features prominently and characteristically in some contemporary housing developments such as those at Beaulieu Park  The descriptive literature for `The Village' of five hundred dwellings being built in Writtle Road draws attention to doors and their ironmongery as attractive features.

 

OTHER MATERIALS

 

None of the texts studied is a specialist treatise on the building materials of Chelmsford . However, reasonable insight can be gained into local materials and those brought in from other parts of England and elsewhere.

 

Stone is imported to the area. The town water conduit incorporated an arch of Caen stone, together with a slab of Purbeck marble. Of greater significance was the town bridge, still described by the children of Chelmsford as the Stone Bridge , 13 the Portland stone for the eighteenth century replacement bridge being brought to Maldon from Swanage and hauled over Danbury Hill. Portland and Purbeck materials for the frontage of the Shire Hall," chosen as an alternative to brick, came by the same route. The plaques on the front of the Shire Hall representing Justice, Mercy and Wisdom are of Coade stone. Stone is included in the structures of banks, notably the cornices and other features in the Georgian Barclays.

 

Brick is local. The brick at Barclays was applauded for being red and attractive, unlike the grey Mildmay stocks used for the non-frontage parts of the adjacent Shire Hall. Yellow stocks feature in the former Marconi building in Hall Street . Brick making is mentioned in relation to the 16"'/17t'' century walled garden at Cressing and the bombed Mayor's house in Chelmsford was sited at the location of a former brickworks. The symbolism of the laying of the first brick in a building is noted in relation to Terling Place . In the early Skreens brick chimneys contrast with dark timberwork.

 

External rendering is noted in locations as diverse as Hylands House and the new housing developments at Beaulieu Park . Internal plasterwork is notable for its high quality and craftsmanship at Hylands and in the rebuilding of the Cathedral after collapse in 1800. It occurs as a standard finish on the modem developments such as Beaulieu Park . Some copper work is noted in relation to the Shire Hall and roof slating in relation to the Cathedral rebuilding.

 

In the texts under consideration materials of the modem era frequently go unmentioned. It is only war damage to key factory buildings that causes reinforced concrete and steelwork to be mentioned. However, brick is noted as a principal material in the new Essex Record

 

Office building; not only is it hidden, it is also displayed as a feature in the reception area. Glass as an elevational material is mentioned in relation to the Ashcroft International Business School at Anglia Polytechnic University . 15 In the consultative documents on the future plan for Chelmsford and the development of the Borough, emphasis is placed on sustainability. It is self-evident that the use of sustainable materials and the use of materials that facilitate sustainability through, for example, energy conservation, is part of sustainability.

 

11.4 Tasmania

 

LAND

 

Since the arrival of the Europeans, the story of land and sites has been that of settlement. It has been shown how the development of northwest Tasmania can be traced from the police base at the Rubicon and Port Sorrell, through the Forth , Don and Mersey areas, on the coast, along the rivers themselves and into the upper areas. Landing places and crossing points dictated the locations of the earliest structures. In Devonport, development has spread from the riverside in a broadly upward and outward movement, generally higher locations with views being the most desirable. Nowhere, and at no time, has there been any discernible sense that land has been a commodity or resource in short supply. Generally, there has been plenty. While older, outdated industrial areas have been redeveloped for housing and leisure, this has been a matter of taste and common sense planning, rather than the result of any urgent pressure to contain development.

 

TREES AND TIMBER

 

Louisa Meredith (1852) describes her first sighting of the cottage which was to be a temporary home for the Magistrate's family, located about five miles inland from the police office:

The cottage occupied the top of a slight slope, which was so far cleared that the chief of the great trees had been cut down, but not cut up, and the enormous dead trunks, lying over and under and across each other, made a most melancholy foreground to the everlasting forest, which bounded the narrow view on all sides, like a high dense screen.........

From the back of the house, the close dense forest was the only view; so close that anyone looking for sky from the kitchen door must gaze up to the zenith for it. Altogether, as may well be imagined, our new home was not a cheerful one in its external characteristics; and we soon found it to be exceedingly damp, and very cold.

(Meredith 1852 Vol 2:134-35)

 

The Merediths were able to improve the situation by carefully burning down trees to 'excavate an opening towards the sunshine'. (Meredith 1852 Vol 2:178).

 

Meredith is a concise observer of construction technique and a frank critic of house design:

The walls were built of upright "slabs', that is to say, of pieces of rough split timber, six or seven inches broad, two or three inches thick, and about nine feet high, fastened to logs at the bottom and wall-plates at the top. These slabs were lathed and thinly plastered within, and lathed, but not plastered, without; whence, as the cottage had no name, I bestowed upon it the sobriquet of "Lath Hall". The slabs were in many places some inches apart, and the inside plaster displayed multitudes of capacious crevices, which enabled the external air to keep up a friendly and frequent communication with that within. Five doors and a French window, all opening into our only parlour, were not calculated to diminish the airiness of the apartment.

(Meredith 1852 Vol 2:129)

 

When they had moved to their permanent home, the visual situation was much better:

We continued to improve our pleasant seaside home in various ways... [including] marking an avenue through the wood, in the direction of the police station, which was partly cleared at our own expense, and partly by the occasional labour of watch-house prisoners; and, when completed, opened up a beautiful vista, ending in a distant view of the station, and the woods and mountains behind...

(Meredith 1852 Vol 2:243)

 

Fenton (1891, 1970) describes how virgin bush land becomes built environment in a very

immediate way. He describes his first house at the swamp in detail:

The house was built of green saplings placed upright, secured at bottom by a trench in the ground, and on top by a wall plate of the same material, with tea-tree rafters, nailed on the plate for a skilling roof. The roof was covered with sheets of bark, weighted by spars to keep them from warping, and the end walls were also lined with bark to keep out a portion of the wind and wet. The fireplace, which occupied the whole end, was built of long spars leaning inwards against a framework of saplings to reduce the size of the opening at the top. This, with a partition in the middle, and the sleeping bunks, completed the first settler's edifice in West Devon .

(Fenton 1891, 1970:42)

 

His sensitivity enabled him to see when beauty and business went hand-in-hand. Rather cavalier clearance of the bush yielded a rich timber by-product:

 

The ornamental woods of Devon were being destroyed wholesale by the settlers, who burned indiscriminately when clearing the land, the most beautiful specimens of musk, myrtle, blackwood, box, sassafras etc. The firm [Cummings, Raymond & Co of Don] resolved to turn this material to account by establishing a furniture and upholstery business on their premises.

(Fenton 1891, 1970:109)

 

On a visit in 1875 to the hotel at Forth , Governor Weld marvelled at the beauty of the `tables, chiffoniers, sofas, chairs, whatnots, bedsteads etc' (Fenton 1891, 1970:109). Unfortunately, Fenton implies, there was too small a market for such products in a sparsely populated district where wealth and luxury were almost unknown, and this aspect of the company's business did not survive its sale in 1873.

 

Gardam, Don's historian of today, has entitled her first major work Sawdust, Sails and Sweat. Sawdust evokes the work of the timber-getters and sawyers 'who laboured for six long days a week' (Gandam 1996:30). Trees were commonly 7-17 feet in diameter and height could be up to 200-300 feet. It could take 40 bullocks to move a large log to the tramway, sometimes working knee deep in mud. Exported timber could be taken to Victoria , New South Wales , South Australia , and, on occasion, New Zealand . A sawmill fire in 1880 led to the uninsured loss of 160 000 feet of hardwood, 80 000 feet of sawn Blackwood,15 000 feet of Huon pine and 30 000 feet of Blackwood logs. As a result of the fire, `No one was laid off. Saw millers became carpenters; truck drivers became labourers; bush workers sought the correct size poles and timber required, and horses and bullocks were brought out of the bush to add their power to the effort'. (Gardam 1996:41). The sawmill was quickly back in business.

 

In her later text, Shifting Sands Gardam (2001) considers the development of the riverside Victoria Parade area of Devonport, which `enjoys one of the best outlooks in Devonport; tall trees, attractive gardens, the various moods of the river entrance, and a view of shipping coming and going.' (Gardam 2001:81). The clearing of woodland on a significant scale began in 1889. This consisted of a mix of tea tree scrub and some heavier timber. Earlier, in 1873, the Griffiths family had used some of the timber to build their residence and slipways for their shipyard. A sawpit was located nearby to facilitate the shipbuilding work.

 

Gardam goes on to describe the planting of the new promenade area:

Some trees were marked for retention and the remainder of the vegetation removed to make way for extensive planting of ornamental trees. .... The parkland plantings were all fenced off from the street, a necessary action to protect the trees from the town's roving cows.

(Gardam 2001:83)

 

Moving to the Latrobe area, we find adjacent to Sherwood Hall'8 an uncommon sight in this part of Tasmania today - a large modem building under construction. This is the Axemen's Hall of Fame. The Australian sport of wood chopping originated in Latrobe. This new building is to enable the sport to continue within a heritage and visitor centre context. The structure is of tree trunks brought from every State in Australia , with a modem trussed roof structure and lightweight roof and wall claddings.

 

In contrast to this basic building, the texts tell of the beautiful Tasmanian hardwood timbers, including blackwood, box, musk, myrtle and sassafras, being incorporated into individually designed and built houses and into special features such as the altar reredos in St John's Church Devonport.'9

 

All early bridges were of timber, including the 1902 major town bridge at Devonport. One of the bridges at Don was called the Sawdust Bridge because of the vast amount of sawdust that accumulated in the vicinity of it. Both light, local tracks and standard railways were built to transport felled timber more expeditiously than bullock teams could do.

 

Although timber itself was plentiful, labour to use it was limited. Therefore complete buildings were moved from place to place, for example Sassafras School .

 

A particular case of temporary buildings were the huts for the accommodation of men working in the highlands over the period 1910-1968 in the construction of dams and other works for the hydro. To commemorate that centenary, the local community at Bronte Park , planted 100 trees and incorporated a Tree of Life in a restored hydro labourers' hut.

 

Because so much bush land was taken and so much timber utilised from this part of Tasmania , it is good that something significant is being put back into the area, not by government but by voluntary initiative. At Eugenana, adjacent to the Don, is the Tasmanian Arboretum. Founded in 1984, it comprises 58ha of undulating land with a creek and small river flowing through it. A small lake is its central feature. As well as Tasmanian timber species, the arboretum contains trees from a range of temperate climates including New Zealand , South America , Europe , the Mediterranean and eastern Asia . The main walking track follows the route of an old industrial tramway. As one walks round, one sees farmhouses and farm buildings on the far side of the lake and, in the foreground, the education centre and other small buildings serving the arboretum. This is a very simple built environment. On a warm, sunny spring day its stillness is as profound as that remarked upon by James Fenton in the Lower Forth area.

 

One knows that here past ravaging of the land is being healed. An eight year old turns and says that she comes here often, and adds, `I love this place'. That is hope!

 

OTHER MATERlALS

 

Faye Gardam at Don tells how rocks gathered from the hillside became the foundations of her cottage home. Logs and stones were used for building the breakwater at Don.

 

In Devonport the brick-veneered house is an advance on the timber-clad and St John's Church is a brick structure utilising bricks made at nearby Spreyton.

 

The 1950's wharf extension in Devonport utilised materials from Australia , Japan , Korea and the UK . Devonport bungalows, with their lightweight structural materials and, in some cases, stucco walls and diamond windows, are linked to California and, more remotely, India . The Meercroft nursing home extension uses light, modem claddings.

 

In Latrobe, timber and brick walls, iron and tile roofs, together with refinements such as ironwork lattices and Georgian windows in the hotel, mark variety and movements towards sophistication. Inter-state and international movements of materials are in evidence. The hotel's iron shed comes from Europe and the floorboards at Sherwood Hall from Boston USA , albeit as ballast.

 

Cement is a major export from Railton near Sheffield via Devonport, and concrete is used in projects as varied as Don College and the hydro structures.

 

Groves , the sailor, recycled oil drums to form his store and the rural poor similarly used what they could lay their hands on in constructing their dwellings.

 

Port Sorrell's early school was a redundant one brought from East Sassafras and the top storey of the Forth inn becomes a cottage nearby. The port authority's office at Devonport is moved to a new site and enlarged. These simple examples suggest that there is a value in materials; they are not to be wasted but reused.

 

11.5 General Built Environment texts

 

If land, timber and other materials are the practical basics of built environment work, a philosophy of some sort is a necessary intellectual basis. Benedikt (2000) advances such a philosophy in the text of his Raoul Wallenberg lecture in architecture at the University of Michigan . 'Architecture', he believes, `is the conscious shaping of the material environment to protect and enhance life'. (Benedikt 2000:13). The enhancement of human life necessitates meeting needs for survival, security, legitimacy, approval, confidence and freedom.

 

In this lecture, Benedikt expounds particularly on the matter of security as a facet of material shaping, and he does so in relation to the eariy chapters of Genesis: `The first and culturally all-important chapter of Genesis portrays God as good - indeed, as happy in His work. He creates the world we see as an ordered one, sheltered from chaos, protected from formlessness. The Garden of Eden is finite, protecting.' (Benedikt 2000:37). All architecture as we know it happens outside the security of Eden , is exilic in nature and an attempt to return to Eden .

 

Whatever the location or site of a particular built environment and whatever the building materials of which it is formed, by Benedikt's argument ft has a direct, conceptual link to Eden and Genesis.

 

11.6 General Biblical Theology texts

Northcott (1996) writes on the environment and Christian ethics. One of his principal concerns is `relationality`, by which he means the perceived relationship between human beings and the earth, which is the resource for life.

 

He notes that in medieval England the monasteries were model communities of sustainable farming, self-sufficiency and self-government, according with the Hebrew and Christian vision of stewardship.23 Modem Europe, including aspects of the Reformation, replaced these principles with those of instrumentalism, a general secularism, and a money-based approach to economics, which transformed human relationships in time/space:

 

.... the crucial distinction between traditional societies and modem societies is the spatial distancing and abstraction of human relations which is enabled by the new power of money.......... money is a means of bracketing time and so lifting transactions out of particular milieus of exchange..... money provides for the enactment of transactions between agents widely separated in time and space.... It creates a new concept of space and time which is abstract from the natural order of land and seasons, night and day..........

.... money, commodity, dissolves traditional time-space relations, and it dissolves traditional ethical obligations of neighbourliness, justice and care between persons, and between humans and the non-human world.

(Northcott 1996:77)

 

This depicts what Northcott takes as a major loss of the given and essential relationality within the created world. Not only Christianity fostered good relationships but other religions did so as well: `... this conserving function of religion may be seen as much in the rituals and offices of the medieval Cistercian or Benedictine monastery, based as they were on the Hebrew Psalms with their powerful natural imagery, as in the rituals of the African Nuer or the Australian aboriginals'. (Northcott 1996:84).

 

The contemporary need is for reformation of approach to the environment. This must begin with giving an ethical account of land, which, Northcott argues, needs to be viewed in terms of relationality. The land is the focus for creativity and it provides the resources necessary for food, shelter and imaginative work. The highest good is the relationality between God and creation. Part of that relationality is human vice-regency as set out in Genesis. In practical terms, the aim must be to order human affairs so as to achieve the common human good which will tend to preserve the good of the non-human material creation also. Such an approach contrasts with modem economics which works to generate scarcity in land, food and shelter and which sees land as a commercial resource.

 

Living in harmony with the land is a characteristic of indigenous peoples, which came into conflict with the approach of colonialists:

The denial of native land tenure was the first act of colonialism during European expansionism. The recognition of inherited land tenure is a fundamental feature of an ecologically revised natural law ethic. The quest of native peoples for the return of their stolen lands is the first step in the reversal of the racism and genocide to which they have been subjected on every continent at the hands of Europeans. In New Zealand , Australia and North America , tribal groups have been challenging the legality of government land theft with little success....

(Northcott 1996:281)

 

Northcott asks: `How in a globalised economy can we begin to rebuild the moral economy that must underiie the economy of wealth creation if industrialism is not to undermine both human goods and communities and ecological integrity? How can we begin to draw anonymous and dehumanising economic and industrial processes back into scale with the face-to-face character of human communities and the self-in-relation, and the localised and particular character of ecological goods and biodiversity?' (Northcott 1996:299). He dismisses consumerism as an abdication of political responsibility to mere market forces and is sceptical about internationally driven ecological programmes: `The emergence of an international ecocracy is not without ambiguity for like sovereign national governments, global environmentalism can also subvert the environmental responsibilities and potential of local communities. The new ecocracy conjures up the chimera of global resource management which is in reality the continuation of the Western myth of limitless economic growth facilitated by new levels of human technological control over nature.' (Northcott 1996:310).

 

Northcott supports emphasis on local decision-making, including environmentally driven urban planning decisions: 'Instead of the mass division of social life into sectors connected up by cars, we need to recover neighbourhoods and communities where people can work, live, relax, learn, communicate, and knock about, and which they manage together as their place of life in common'. (Northcott 1996:306).

 

There is a need to recover a robust theology of creation: ; It becomes clear then that the recovery of an ecological ethic in the modem world requires the recovery of a doctrine of creation redeemed and the worship of a creator who is also the redeemer of the creation. It will also involve the reaffirmation of the relationality of God as creator to all that is created, to the materiality and embodiedness of all life, and of all human selves-in-relation.......... it is the divine intention not only to restore the created order but to make it new, a 'new creation' in which the deep relationality of all things as well as all persons is, in the eschaton or the last days, finally affirmed.' (Northcott 1996:222).

 

Perhaps most fundamental of all in Northcott's approach is the belief that land, as part of creation, is gift for which praise is due to God: `Human praise, the praise of kings and commoners, of young and old, is part of this heavenly chorus, but it is a praise which is also a participation in the whole of creation. This praise is the response of thanksgiving to the creator for the plenitude of creation. It receives creation as gift, not as right, as promised land held in trust, not owned or possessed by humans.' (Northcott 1996:181). Such praise is response not only to the physical but also to the covenant: `The covenant which was established after the Flood offered the promise that the fruitfulness of the earth would not again be threatened by the bursting forth of the chaotic waters and that Noah and his children would themselves be blessed. !t was a covenant made between God and humans and "living things of every kind"....' (Northcott 1996:168).

 

11.7 Genesis and John 1

In Genesis 1:9-10, the dry land is separated from the waters. In Genesis 2:8, after the creation of man, a garden is planted in Eden to be a home for man and woman. The location of the city of Enoch is not indicated ( 4:17 ) but Babel is in the land of Shinar . (11:2).

 

In Genesis, trees are the source of fruit for food ( 1:11 and 2:9) and an object of visual enjoyment (2:9). Cypress timber is the raw material out of which the ark is constructed ( 6:14 ) and it is reasonable to assume that the window (8:6) was a timber component. Hamilton (1990) emphasises that the ark is depicted as a structure of considerable size, 440 feet by 73 feet, with a total deck area of 95700 square feet. Figurative trees are the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil ( 2:17 , 3:2, 3:6) and the Tree of Life ( 3:24 ).

 

Genesis 11:3 refers to the brick, stone and bitumen used at Babel and 4:22 to the bronze and iron tools made by Tubal-cain.

In John's prologue, the fact that `the Word became flesh and lived among us' ( 1:14 ) is an affirmation of the value of materiality in general. The actions and presence of God do not occur in some disembodied way and in some un-locatable place.

 

The following excerpt from Macquarrie's paraphrase of the prologue links with Benedikt's approach to shaping:

meaning has been embodied in the world from the beginning and has given the world its shape.

 

11.8 Synthesis and centripetal dynamic

 

The Chelmsford texts relating to land created a vivid awareness of the town's location in relation to major features in the surrounding area. Both the town itself and particular features within it are distinguishable as sites. The medieval town was congested. As time has passed, some areas have been redeveloped to provide for new uses. In Tasmania , the dominant note is that of location, particularly in relation to the rivers, and in both rural and urban situations. In the case of both Chelmsford and Tasmania , land is often simply taken for granted as resource to be appropriately utilised. In Chelmsford the supply is demonstrably limited but in Tasmania there is no likelihood of shortage or pressure.

 

While all materials used in building are derived directly or indirectly from the earth, it is timber that is particularly vivid in its demonstration of the connection between what grows and what is built. The growing tree has life and the timber that it becomes has new life as built environment, whether in medieval Cressing or the new Axemen's Hall in Latrobe. In Tasmania there was the nuance of a timber harvest; the phenomenon of the Sawdust Bridge approached through deep sawdust underlined the element of hard labour inherent in the gathering and use of the material. The re-cycling of some buildings was noted. As the wooded land may be beautiful or dark and sombre, so the built world may physically create, or affectively evoke, something good or dark.

 

In both locations a range of building materials is apparent, from imported stone to local brick, including traditional iron and the newer lightweight materials, and, in the case of Groves ' store, the use of anything to create shelter.

 

Northcott's text is the most systematic and integrating. There must be a sense of relationality between human beings, the earth and God. This was achieved in medieval monastic estates. Today there needs to be a rediscovery of land, and its products, as gift to be used for a common good, bringing about a new and redeemed creation. This is neither conventional economics nor a Babel-like eco-globalism that detracts from the acceptance of local responsibilities. His final notes are of the reconciliation of all things to God, and of praise; these have resonance with the Ephesians and Colossians texts, and with Westermann's emphasis on praise.

 

These complementary insights give the centripetal pull into the biblical materials where Cain and Noah and their families do practical things and where towers are built with real bricks and bitumen. John, as interpreted by Macquarie , believes that in the shaping of the world there is meaning. That includes the practical shaping of the land with materials to give security, as suggested by Benedikt.

 

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