So, if you haven’t seen the videos about The Line, the new Saudi Supercity, I do highly recommend it. Because, simply reading about the concept of this supercity is really not enough, and frankly, the videos made me want to see more. There is something fascinating, and yet also, threatening and intimidating about a city built on such a vast scale and scope. There’s something impressive and attractive and yet repulsive all at the same time.
Over the past several years, I’ve been thinking through the theology of aesthetics, architecture, and cities. Admittedly these have all been side projects; I haven’t been able to put sustained intellectual energy into it, but by emphasizing these notions and thinking through them, I’ve come to a few conclusions that have been helpful to me, and I hope will be helpful to you.
First, cities are very misunderstood. From a Biblical perspective, from God’s perspective, a city is no more nor less than a set of permanent residential structures that have come together to form permanent communities and social bonds.
In the Bible’s mind, the differences that we make between hamlets, villages, towns, and cities, metropolises, and megalopolises are artificial. The Biblical difference was whether a community was made up of permanent structures or temporary structures. Or, to put it in more philosophical terms, permanency is the essence of the city and size is accidental.
Second, cities develop their own unique character and even culture, and those characters and cultures can be better or worse, in various aspects, than others, but they are noticeable and can help us to understand people and places.
Third, cities are centers of industry, trade, and development of ideas that would not be possible if everyone lived nomadic or rural lives. And therefore, cities are necessary to the growth of humanity in the arts and sciences.
Thus, I wish to offer a Biblical theology of the city, that I hope will be helpful. The city is the realization of man’s attempt to fulfill the creation mandate to rule the earth and subdue it.
Now, I know that that’s a bit of a mouthful, so let’s think through this definition. A city is the realization of man’s attempt to fulfill the creation mandate to rule the earth and subdue it. What I am not saying is that man is fulfilling the creation mandate to rule and subdue the earth in a way that pleases God. What I am saying is that the city is the most complete image of what it looks like when fallen man attempts to do what God has made him to do: rule and subdue the earth.
I’m saying a couple things. 1, even fallen men and women, because we are image-bearers, we still have a desire to rule over the earth and subdue it. 2, men are born into and live in rebellion against God. 3, because we are rebels, the way we attempt to rule over the earth and subdue it is going to be distorted and perverted. 4, because God wants us to rule over the earth and subdue it, and because we’re rebels, and because God is still active in the world and still has grace, not all people are as bad as they could be, and some cultures and societies are less evil than others, and some are even more good than others. 5, those cultures and communities that are less evil or even more good, will (generally speaking) experience more flourishing, because the way they attempt to rule over the earth and subdue it is more pleasing to God and therefore more in line with His will and therefore more prone to be successful in providing flourishing. 6, the easiest way to measure the godliness and strength of a culture is to consider it’s cities (and by that I mean all permanent residential communities, not just large towns) and measure their flourishing.
Cities are important, and again, remember, when I am saying cities, I’m not talking about large, densely populated spaces, I’m talking about groups of permanent residences to form permanent communities. Cities are important, because they are expressions of what humanity is trying to accomplish in any given space. But, since man is fallen, cities are also the clearest expression of the flaws and faults and frailties of a society.
Large cities are everything in the small cities, except moreso. Cities because of the density and the human subduing and ruling over creation express the best and worst of human nature. And everything about a city’s culture, from its habits, and its character, its businesses, its society, its institutions, its schools, its churches or temples, its design, its architecture, its arts, everything about that city tells you something about the people who live in it.
And throughout all of history cities have been, as I said, expressions of the best and worst of humanity – because cities just take everything to the nth degree. Cities maximize traits and tendencies in human nature, or at least, they express the maximum because when you have so many people, you will certainly have every kind of person your society produces and they will have much more impact because they will have contact with many more people.
Cities, of course, despite the wonderful things in them, like centers of education, centers of art, centers of religion, entertainment, food, culture, despite these wonderful things, cities are also homes of poverty, crime, degradation, exploitation, and dehumanization.
Again, this is not new. But the extremes to which cities are falling into are new because as cities grow larger and larger, they maximize more and more traits and tendencies in human nature and put more and more of the good and bad of humanity on display.
But the desire has existed always and forever to create the perfect city. There has always been a Utopian ideal, at least among Utopians, of creating the perfect city; to create a city where all people can be happy, healthy, wholesome, and obedient to government. Because forget not that Utopianism always involves a very powerful government to make sure that the utopia remains Utopian and not dystopian.
And you may have noticed that over the years I’ve spoken quite a bit about utopia as a concept. That’s because Utopia is a key concept in the scriptures. From Cain building the first city in exile, east of Eden, to the Tower of Babel, to Jerusalem and Davidic and Solomonic Zionism, to the Holy City of Rome, to Babylon and the New Jerusalem in the Revelation. Christians have noticed for a very long time that the efforts of humans to recreate Eden are always and everywhere failures, but that God will recreate Eden. Indeed as Augustine argues there are two cities, the City of Man and the City of God that are in competition. But the scriptures are far more literal and less metaphorical than the Bishop of Hippo, because the scriptures speak of real cities builded by real men and a real city that shall be built by God. Yes, of course, these competing metropoli are also such enormous concrete concepts that they are suitable to use as stand-ins and metaphors for other spiritual phenomena.
The Line is just another in a long line of Utopian attempts to reclaim Eden. Again, all cities are, to some degree attempts to recreate Eden, because all cities are attempts to Edenify – to subdue and rule over the earth to maximize the flourishing of human beings – but the Line is different. It’s different because it is an entirely planned city, from beginning to end, and it has a specific vision of what kind of city will be conducive to maximize human flourishing. Rather than previous planned cities, which largely followed traditional designs, The Line scraps them, attempting to maximize efficiency of space, economization is the watchword in The Line. And, of course, this is not significantly different from small, well defined communities that have always existed in big cities, or even as there are mega-skyscrapers that are deliberate attempts to be cities within cities. The stuff of video-game and sci-fi fantasy is possible to see in real-time.
Only time will tell whether The Line will be successful in its goals, which ostensibly are: to be built; to be maximally populated; and to have The Line perform, at least, marginally better that traditional cities. And let’s be honest, traditional cities in America and elsewhere certainly have their problems: crime; drugs; homelessness; despair; overwork; and very important to me, the fact that cities are just plain ugly, almost deliberately aggressively obnoxiously ugly – as Tom Wolfe said of Modern Art in Back to Blood, it’s “ugly on purpose”.
And, perhaps, you think I’m making too much of aesthetics. I think I might be making too little of it – ugly cities that nobody wants to walk around in say an awful lot about our culture – but that’s another sermon.
Will The Line be successful according to the metrics the Saudi’s are setting? Will this be bin Salmon’s Success or Mohammed’s Mess-up? I don’t know.
But what I can say with confidence is that it will not achieve the goal of making Eden. It surely will be man’s attempt, but that means it will be man’s attempt. It will be one more baby-Babylon, anticipating and typifying The Babylon, the Babylon par excellence – what The Holy Spirit calls The Whore. Will The Line be better than any other city of 9 million in Saudi Arabia – a nation whose biggest city today is Riyadh and has a population of 7 million? Maybe, maybe not. But while we as Christians should seek the prosperity and peace of our cities, where we sojourn we should never, we MUST never forget the words of Hebrews:
“By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. And by faith even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because she considered him faithful who had made the promise. And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.
All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.”
Let’s keep our hope in the City of God, the New Jerusalem, while we pray for the city of man.