8 - CONCLUSION

This final Section reviews what has been done in the research, suggests what can be gained from it, and makes a final connection between Building and Scripture.

8.1 Review of the Research

In this dissertation, four things have been done.

First, taking a comprehensive view of what Building and Professional Practice are, five key areas have been studied: the major royal project at Windsor; the issues surrounding homelessness and the housing of the old and others with special needs; the Latham review of ethos and effectiveness in procurement and contractual matters; the concept of professionalism; and the adarnic experience of every particular person involved in Building. It has been argued that each of these is a major axiological, values-related matter. They may not be the only ones but they are important and they are varied.

Second, each of these Building matters has been viewed in a dyad with, respectively: Solomon's developments in Jerusalem: the insistence of the prophets on social justice, often using housing-related images; the Mosaic law, the torah, which is the scriptural model for life in relationship and community-, the concept of Wisdom; and the person of Christ as the new Adam.

Third, in each dyad connections have been made in terms of historical continuities, ethical discussion and metaphorical interplay. The varied natures of these three connectivities has indicated the subtlety and richness of the relationship between Scripture and Building. With each dyad, all three types of connection are necessary and authentic. There is nothing contrived.

Fourth, out of the work done in relation to each dyad. detailed and specific axiological, values-related aspects have emerged. While the selection of the Building components of the dyads was itself based on value judgements, only the detailed work has revealed what the embedded values are and enabled them to emerge.

The first aspect of the research objective was to discover valid ways of making connections between Building and Scripture. It is believed that the disciplined taking of these four steps has enabled such validity to be achieved, when judged from both the Building and scriptural viewpoints. 

8.2 Benefits of the Research

It was stated at the outset that the need for making these connections was an intra-personal one for the researcher. Hitherto it had been taken on trust that good connections exist. The research has given the opportunity for that trust to be tested. Although one cannot disprove a commitment in the same way that one can disprove a hypothesis, the research has enabled implications and details of the commitment to be more fully- understood and appreciated. This has led to greater confidence in the commitment. It has been demonstrated that there is an underlying robustness.

It was further maintained at the outset that this matter of establishing connections was important for consideration by all who seek the good of Building and by all who believe in the significance of Scripture as practical guide. To each of these constituencies, the research offers an unusual but important way of seeing itself. It has enabled the process of inter-illumination to take place. Each has shed light on the other. Each has been a mirror to the other.

Looking at Scripture in relation to the specific scenario of Building has helped to reveal its relevance at least to one area of life in the late twentieth century. It will be for others to discover whether similar investigations into other specific areas of life yield comparable benefits. Similarly, looking at Building in relation to Scripture enables it to be seen as more than a set of professional tasks to be carried out in response to a need and for a payment, more even than a matter of public and social concern. It is an activity of human beings which, whether they wish it or not, always embodies and constantly challenges their attitudes to each other and to the purposes towards which they direct their considerable creativity and inventiveness.

The second aspect of the research objective was that it should discover ways of making useful connections. To increase confidence through careful study and to put two major elements in life, Building and Scripture, into a situation where they are seen to give greater depth of meaning to each other in ways that are durable, constitutes usefulness. This is not the kind of usefulness that yields a quick solution to project, social, systems or professional problems. Rather, it indicates where the solid strata may be, on which durable judgements and decisions can be based.

8.3   Singularity in the Research

It is important to reiterate that this research started out with the concepts of Scripture as a whole and Building as a whole. For the puposes of investigation five facets of each have been identified and formed into dyads. This breaking down is to enable the internal structures of Building and Scripture to be revealed and related to one another. 

In order that the benefits may accrue, Building and Scripture have to be put back together and become unities or singularities again. It is not possible to take the insights of only selected dyads. Scripturally. Solomon and the prophets are contrasts and to some extent in tension with each other. The Mosaic law and wisdom, respectively structured guides to living and open-ended education in living. need one another if a heavy legalism on one hand and an unanchored individualism on the other, is to be avoided.. Similarly with Building, the magnificent project and the homes of the people, the structured, industry-wide relationships addressed by Latham and the individual and personal aspirations of professionals, are all necessary. Neither the scriptural nor the Building element is complete without the adam and new Adam concepts of Section 7.

While there are times when it may be possible to see only part of the picture, it is not within the terms of this dissertation for one to pick and choose between its five component parts.

8.4   Imagining and Building a Future

As this research was being brought to a close, Johnson's paper Imagining the World that Scripture Imagines (1998) was published. Johnson suggests that what Scripture does is to imagine a future world and that what readers of Scripture must do is come to imagine the same world. Scripture is neither history nor archaeology nor the verbal archaeology of textual analysis. It is about picturing the future, as Brueggemann (1978 and 1986) imagines the prophets imagining the future. The scriptural future, suggests Johnson, is like a city. The more intimately we know the streets of the city, the more able we shall be to visualise, and imaginatively create, the city of the future.

Building looks to the future. As a work-hungry industry, it does not want Windsor to become a permanent archaeological site or a conserved, static ruin bearing the marks of fire. Its purpose is to use its skills, effectively and ethically, to enable Windsor to do tomorrow's work. Building does not want homeless or inappropriately housed people. Its purpose is to build a world in which those things do not exist. The purposes of Law and Wisdom were to build up a useful people, able to play their part in the human story. Latham models a future of justice and prosperity. Rice ended his life in engineering by thinking back over his years of imagining structures, which, through being built, had become part of the future of the built environment and of the life of the people.

So, Building and Scripture are connected by the twin concepts - another kind of dyad - of 'imagining' and 'the future'. They do not stand 2000 years apart (the New Testament). 3000 years (Solomon) or longer (Moses). Rather, when each is its true self as authenticated by the other, they stand together imagining and building the city of the future. (Rev 21: 22-27 and Grey 1995 ppl-2). That is no easy task. As Ecclesiastes put it, '...one bungler destroys much good'! (Eccles 9:18).

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