Let us start this itinerary by presenting concisely the thought of both Paul Tillich and Rudolf Schwarz on sacred emptiness. One pleads for this need out of his concern for Protestant church architecture, the other from his desire to create liturgical spaces for Roman Catholic communities.
2.1. Tillich’s Plea for Sacred Emptiness
Paul Tillich’s theology of religious architecture is well known and has been studied in recent years; thus, it does not need introduction (
Dudley 1995;
Reymond 1995,
2001,
2004;
Daelemans 2012,
2015b). Therefore, we will move directly to the core of his thought on sacred emptiness and only present the results of this research. Although the following might seem little more than a collection of quotations from his writings, more in-depth studies that retrace this concept in Tillich’s thought can be found in the aforementioned publications, which discuss the five mentions of sacred emptiness throughout Tillich’s writings (especially
Daelemans 2012;
2015b, pp. 237–44).
The German theologian gave his first lecture on art and architecture on American soil in 1952. It was entitled “Art and Society”. Here, he suggested that “the most expressive form of art today in connection with religion might be sacred emptiness; an emptiness which does not pretend to have at its disposal symbols which it actually does not have” (
Tillich [1952] 1989, p. 40). This seems to be, as far as I know, the first occurrence of this important term in his writings. Tillich uses it when discussing the bridge between art and religion.
Even though proposed tentatively, there are valuable elements to consider in his prophetic comment. Let us name seven of them. First, art and religion must somehow be connected. Second, Tillich looks essentially for expressiveness, whatever that might mean (we will come back at this later). Third, in his view, sacred emptiness seems to be a way to bridge art and religion. Fourth, sacred emptiness is for him the most expressive form to do so. Fifth, sacred emptiness might be the best solution for religious art and architecture of his day. Sixth, he gives a definition of sacred emptiness in relation to religious symbols (objects such as icons, crosses, figurative art, and liturgical furniture). Seventh, honesty and humility seem at the core of this definition because we should get rid of the pretention to have religious symbols which we do not possess, for they have lost their power: many religious symbols are not understood in the way they were historically. This is still true for us today.
Following this statement, Tillich continues and broadens his perspective: “In all realms of life today we must have some emptiness. It can become desperate emptiness; it can become sacred emptiness. We have examples of such sacred emptiness in the history of religious art and in the history of assembly houses among those who are ultimately concerned with each other. On the basis of a preliminary sacred emptiness, something may develop” (
Tillich [1952] 1989, p. 40).
To the seven elements noted above, we could now add the following five: eighth, Tillich acknowledges the importance of emptiness not only in church art and architecture, but in all realms of life, because it is a religious symbol in its own right (a symbol of silence and of the need for silence, we could say). Ninth, emptiness is never neutral but might evolve into desperate, nonsensical, dead nothingness or rather an empty space somehow filled with the presence of the sacred. Tenth, what sacred emptiness is can be learned from historical examples. There are still historical examples of buildings that demonstrate the power of an emptiness that is sacred. Eleventh, Tillich defines religious buildings as “assembly houses” for those with an “ultimate concern”, his favorite term for the sacred, meaningful dimension of life. Twelfth, as Tillich was always attentive to newness, sacred emptiness seems the preliminary step for something new to develop, for new religious symbols to emerge.
To put this in the context of his theological thought and especially of his theology of art, we must acknowledge (even though for the purpose of this article we cannot address this question properly) Tillich’s controversial claim that “all specifically religious art is expressionistic” (
Tillich [1955] 1989, p. 190;
Thiessen 1993;
Manning 2009;
Daelemans 2012). With this term, he did not express his preference for any artistic style, be it German expressionism or any other. Instead, at a safe distance from fruitless discussions around style, he rather spoke about “expressiveness”, probably using the term expressionism in an ambiguous way. Hence, what makes art religious is its expressive character, which he described as “the principle of breaking through the beautified naturalistic surface of things to the real depths which break out with disruptive power” (
Tillich [1955] 1989, p. 191). Hence, expressiveness speaks about a sudden direct, immediate contact between the viewer and the mystery (the “real depths”) through the means of the material outlines of a specific artwork or building.
Another element to understanding his theological framework and this connection between art and religion is his method of correlation (
Clayton 1980). This is a likewise controversial method in which, basically, an existential question is related to a theological answer (in recent times, theologians have proposed correctives to this method; see
Depoorter 2006;
Stoker and Grube 2020).
Furthermore, sacred emptiness and religious symbols relate to each other in the same way as what Tillich described as the “Protestant principle” and “Catholic substance”. For him, the Protestant principle is “the acknowledgment of the majesty of the divine against every human claim. From this it follows that no church, and no self-expression of any church, is in itself absolute” (
Tillich [1955] 1989, p. 188). This principle is symbolically expressed by sacred emptiness (
Tillich [1962] 1989, p. 217).
On this basis, emptiness could be “filled with symbolic objects of all kinds”. However, “Protestantism need not reject these elements of Catholic substance, but it should subject them to some definite criteria” (
Tillich [1962] 1989, p. 217). In this sense, rather than “objects of veneration” with their tendency to idolatry and magic, Tillich pleads for symbolism in the form of “elements of architecture” that “heighten the religious impact of the church building” (
Tillich [1962] 1989, p. 218). This is exactly what Kieckhefer pointed out in the quote above: Tillich’s emphasis on preserving the absolute transcendence of the holy (Protestant principle) and the relativity of any religious symbol (of Catholic substance).
Finally, his diagnosis of the religiosity of his time is that many religious symbols simply “have died”, have become meaningless and devoid of expressive power, as yet unable to “open up the soul” (
Tillich [1952] 1989, p. 40), to break through the material limits to reach directly the personal core of the viewer. The emptiness that is needed in such a time should get rid of those symbols that are not religiously expressive anymore, albeit without falling into a mere emptiness that has lost its sacredness and its expressive power. In this sense, Tillich is highly critical with the “simple” emptiness caused by the iconoclast fury of early Reformation and which he calls “ugly”, “painful”, and “desperate” (
Tillich [1962] 1989, p. 215).
Hence, emptiness is only sacred when it is not the sign of absence and privation, but when it is space “filled with the presence of that which cannot be expressed” (
Tillich [1965] 1989, p. 227). The question is how, when, and where emptiness can be a religious symbol in its own right, an apophatic symbol of the sacred with therapeutic, soothing, and healing qualities.
A desire for minimalism in his time can be understood to get rid of the “abundant manifoldness” of dead or dying symbols. However, today, church architecture might have fallen into the other extreme, seemingly at odds with symbolism and iconography. It is probable that religious art, apart from some felicitous exceptions, is today still in crisis and has not yet found its proper way to address our contemporaries.
However, in 1957, Tillich argued prophetically that it was “quite probable that the renewal of religious art will start in cooperation with architecture” (
Tillich [1957] 1989, p. 124). Considering the latest and smallest sacred buildings constructed in western Europe alone, I believe the times have proved him right. Indeed, in recent years, numerous smaller chapels have popped up as do mushrooms, as if the private chapel were the paradigmatic religious building of our postmodern age (the cathedral being the paradigm of the Middle Ages, the lavishly decorated parish church belonging to the Baroque, and the “living room”-church having its home in the 1970s; see
Panofsky 1957;
Simson 1962;
Debuyst 1968;
Daelemans 2015b, pp. 72–85).
Famous architects, not always particularly religious, seem eager to design the smallest sacred spaces. To name only a few well-known examples in western Europe: Christian Kerez’s Oberrealta chapel (1992) in Switzerland; Peter Zumthor’s Bruder Klaus chapel (2007) in Mechernich, Germany; Bob van Reeth’s Pilgrim chapel (2012) in Westvleteren, Belgium; Alejandro Beautell’s Ermita de San Juan Bautista (2013) on the Canarian island of El Hierro, Spain; John Pawson’s Wooden Chapel (2018) in Unterliezheim, Germany; and the chapels of the first Vatican Biennale pavilion in Venice in 2018.
In this sense, sacred emptiness seems the perfect answer to a time of
horror vacui, in which every gap is filled with some meaningful symbol. Our times have a lot in common with former times of
horror vacui. The need for silence and quietness has become acute (
van Rooyen 2018). Therefore, it is important again to ask ourselves for the place of sacred emptiness in our lives.
In 1962, Tillich came to the following conclusion: “The sacred void can be a powerful symbol of the presence of the transcendent God. But this effect is possible only if the architecture shapes the empty space in such a way that the numinous character of the building is manifest. An empty room filled only with benches and a desk for the preacher is like a classroom for religious instruction, far removed from the spiritual function which a church building must have” (
Tillich [1962] 1989, p. 217). Again, he contrasts sacred and mere emptiness, which does not have the power to express the “numinous”, the presence of the divine.
Finally, near the end of his life, he described the desired effect of sacred emptiness upon us: “The experience of the presence of the holy by the kind of space the architect has created is what must be intended, even before anything else happens within this space. Since the experience of the holy is never directly possible, because it transcends everything finite, its presence must be mediated by authentic representation and symbolic expression. Which kind of expression is adequate, depends on the character of the relation of a religious group to ultimate reality” (
Tillich [1965] 1989, p. 227).
Tillich speaks here of the established theological polarity between transcendence and immanence, the first of which could best be expressed by sacred emptiness (according to the Protestant principle) and the second by an abundance of symbols (according to Catholic substance). Again, the first “is not an emptiness by privation, but it is an emptiness by inspiration. It is not an emptiness where we feel empty, but it is an emptiness where we feel that the empty space is filled with the presence of that which cannot be expressed in any finite form” (
Tillich [1965] 1989, p. 227). This corresponds with the polarity between honesty and consecration ((
Dudley 1995); see an in-depth study of this polarity in (
Daelemans 2015b, pp. 237–44)).
It is noteworthy that, at least according to this theologian, the spiritual and numinous dimension, which could also be named sacramental from a Roman Catholic point of view, is essential in contemporary Protestant architecture. Even though he does not say
how architecture concretely could create this effect, his insistence on the fact that it is the architecture itself that “shapes the empty space” is noteworthy. In 1955, he acclaimed the specifically architectural play of space and light as “a mysticism from below”, which neither needs to be “beautified” by aesthetic ornament nor “signified” by religious symbols because architectural emptiness is powerful enough as a religious symbol by itself (
Tillich [1955] 1989, p. 192).
Let us now turn to Rudolf Schwarz, whose book
Vom Bau der Kirche is quoted by Tillich in 1955, just before he deals with sacred emptiness (
Tillich [1955] 1989, p. 192).
2.2. Schwarz’s Understanding of Sacred Emptiness
Highly influenced by the theology of Romano Guardini, the Roman Catholic architect Rudolf Schwarz is most famous for his primer on church building,
Vom Bau der Kirche, translated in 1958 into English as
The Church Incarnate (
Schwarz [1938] 1958;
Zahner 2018;
Daelemans 2019). Here, he presents his view of architecture as essentially dynamic, as the “combination of life, space, and time”, as he defines architecture in his first publication (
Schwarz 1924, p. 274). Kieckhefer dedicated a whole chapter to this architect, his theory, and his practice, but, unlike my own reading, he considers his buildings more of a “contemplative” than of a “kinetic” kind (
Kieckhefer 2004, pp. 229–64). Unfortunately, the literature on his figure and works still does not (in my view) sufficiently address his essentially dynamic and communitarian view of church buildings, which I would like to emphasize here.
Architecture is, according to Schwarz, life wrapped around a living body, life that allows a living body to move and to dance: “What then comes into being is first and foremost circumscribed space—shelter, living space, ceremonial space, a space which replaces the space of the world. We could almost say, and indeed it is true, that building is based on the inner spaciousness of the body, on the knowledge of its extent and the form of its growth, on the knowledge of its articulation and of its power to expand. Indeed, it is with the body that we experience building, with the outstretched arms and the pacing feet, with the roving glance and with the ear, and above all else in breathing. Space is dancingly experienced. However, the surroundings are the inversion of the dance: that space inside of which the dance extends itself, that space which stands ready for the body, is not, as is usually assumed, the outward radiating of the body but rather its inverted space—the body’s space turned inside out and projected into the outer world. The body’s space, however, forces itself outward whereas the space of the building forces itself inward so that its skin lies close to that of the dancing people. The inside of the structure overflows; the content of the space is larger than its skin” (
Schwarz [1938] 1958, p. 27).
In this sense, Schwarz’s thinking on church building starts with the body, the individual body and the collective body of a Eucharistic assembly called to become the Body of Christ (
Schwarz [1938] 1958;
Daelemans 2015b, pp. 278–99). The body needs empty space to dance. This dance is not in the first place to be taken literally but rather as a metaphor for the changing expression of the living body: the body adopts different postures over time. These postures, in a religious context, express diverse attitudes towards the divine.
Over time, architecture is as organic as a plant that grows out of the “space of a point” (
Punktraum, the German word that Schwarz uses, expresses well that even the smallest dot is in itself primarily “space”: (
Schwarz 1924)). Architecture is space over time for a living body. Architecture is first and foremost “living space” (
Lebendiger Raum) that grows and develops, giving way to a variety of “fundamental manifestations” (
Grundanschauungen). These are akin to hinges or “oscillatory stations” (
Schwingungsstände), each with a “definite direction” (
bestimmte Richtung) towards a higher reality (
Schwarz 1924).
This initial idea is further developed in Schwarz’s grand vision of the “Cathedral of All Times”, which is his dynamic vision of the diverse spatial configurations that a Eucharistic community adopts over time (
Schwarz [1938] 1958;
Daelemans 2019). In other words, it is the communitarian use of a church building over time, valid for “all (liturgical) times”. Schwarz recognizes six basic
Grundanschauungen or hinges that express fundamental expressions of the relationship with the divine. If it were not a “cathedral”, that is, if the community were reduced to only one spatial configuration, without growing organically into another configuration, time would not have been taken into account, and architecture would be drained of its life and reduced to mere space.
These six configurations or archetypes are well known and need not be addressed here: the ring, the open ring, the chalice of light, the way, the dark chalice, and the dome of light. It would be wrong to consider them mere “plans” or “blueprints”—although it was in this limited way that his book was read and used, producing buildings as static containers around some of his fundamental archetypes (
Struck 2018, p. 60). Similarly, Frédéric Debuyst considered his book “one of the most dangerous ever written” (
Debuyst 1968, p. 45).
More important than these separate expressions of a different communitarian attitude towards the divine is the communitarian use of the empty space over time. For instance, the ring is the natural configuration of a group of people around a meaningful center. Some church buildings have a centralized plan with the altar in the exact center (for instance, Saint-François de Molitor, as we will see). However, this ring breaks open during specific liturgical rites towards a meaningful symbol or an empty space in front of the altar (the open ring) or above (the chalice of light). Further on, people proceed as pilgrims in procession (the way) until they arrive at a dark point in life (the dark chalice), where precisely light is born again (the dome of light).
In this sense, we might understand Pope Francis’s statement that “time is more important than space” (
Francis 2013, p. 222). We have spaces in order to use them in complementary ways over time. Indeed, “only the cathedral is true body. The archetypes were like limbs of the hidden body of history; they contained the whole by implication but they themselves remained its phase. […] A higher life is at hand, and it speaks from time to time in changing forms” (
Schwarz [1938] 1958, p. 195). It is the same organic life, the same mystery, which speaks through different communitarian configurations (
Grundanschauungen) of the same community.
Although Schwarz uses the expression “sacred emptiness” only once, the idea of emptiness is recurrent in his oeuvre and is always synonymous with the “resplendent abundance” of God’s mystery (
Schwarz [1938] 1958, p. 87). It is most of all in his discussion of the open ring that he speaks of emptiness with this symbolic density (
Schwarz [1938] 1958, pp. 67–94). The open ring is, as its name states, a ring opened towards God, a ring that God has entered as mystery and as emptiness: “The hidden openness of the world’s center has become visible. […] Wherever the earthly form breaks off prematurely, God begins; it shows […] that it was through God that the earth was wounded, and that it is the open place in the binding rings which is the sacred place; […] that all things are made perfect in God, that in God all things are redeemed, that it is God who makes the earth whole. This archetype makes it clear that when emptiness breaks into a thing, God is near, for this invasion of emptiness is not meaningless annihilation: it is the beginning of growth into the light” (
Schwarz [1938] 1958, pp. 74–77). Again, very similar to what Tillich said, emptiness is not mere absence but presence, not privation but inspiration.
The empty space in the open ring “is also Christ’s empty seat at the table of this world. The death of the Lord and his going forth are the wound where history bleeds. When the Lord departed, he left the world open behind him” (
Schwarz [1938] 1958, p. 78). Sacred emptiness expresses at the same time vulnerability and presence, expectation and promise, human limitation and divine fulfillment. The open ring, in which the gathered community allows emptiness to be meaningfully included as a theological symbol in their liturgical gathering and in their liturgical space, expresses well Schwarz’s favorite image of the human being as open hand, open eye, chalice, and answer to God’s initiative and call.
It is noteworthy that in what often in the literature still wrongly is referred to as a “plan” (as if it were the blueprint of a building and not the scheme of a momentary hinge of a living body adopting diverse postures), the open ring is a spatial configuration of a community, in which each member of the assembly is sketched as a small open chalice oriented towards the sacred emptiness that stands as the expression of the divine mystery. Even the presider is oriented towards the emptiness. This is the famous liturgical direction of versus orientem, for Schwarz writes before the liturgical changes of the Second Vatican Council, most plastically expressed in the space by the celebration versus populum (which would close the ring, if the presider fills the emptiness which is so meaningfully left open in the open ring-configuration). Due to his fondness for this plan, it comes as no surprise that Schwarz chose the open ring for the cover of his book.
In this sense, Guardini defended the powerful, gripping emptiness of Schwarz’s
Corpus Christi church (
Fronleichnam, 1930) in Aachen: “This church is the home of the Holy Presence. To people who see only an empty interior, I reply that they should examine their feelings more deeply. Actually we frequently fail to recognize the serene calm of large uninterrupted planes, the clear expanse of an uncluttered chamber, the pure essential being of simple forms. We tend to call this ‘emptiness’. We prefer to be surrounded by various forms, objects, pictures—just as we prefer sound to silence. Have we forgotten that silence and words go together, just as inhaling and exhaling? That reverent silence is the deepest prayer before God, and that voiced prayer is impossible without silence? The same is true of a vast surface that is neither articulated nor filled with pictures and ornaments. This is not emptiness, this is silence—and in the silence is God; and from the stillness of these walls an inkling of God’s presence may flower” (
Guardini 1931;
Schwarz [1960] 1969, p. 21).
Indeed, the altar is the Christocentric threshold between the space of the Spirit and the emptiness, which well “represents heaven” or the invisible space of the Father (
Schwarz [1938] 1958, pp. 81–94;
1960, p. 29). For Schwarz, “heaven” should be found where the six archetypes remain “unfinished and open” (
Schwarz [1938] 1958, p. 190). Schwarz is ever interested in the way that a Eucharistic community inhabits the space, for this way is expression and symbol in itself: “Thus the simple standing of the people in the open ring is itself the intimation, for it was the Lord himself who, at the very beginning, taught them to stand in this way. When the people follow him, they sit with him at table. This form is not the final one, but it precedes the final form as question precedes answer. If this form of the world is still empty, then its emptiness says that God is rich abundance, when it is dark, it makes manifest Gods sacred light, when it is open, it awaits God as its consummation and completion. Is not the Church, when she so stands, like one of the early sculptured figures who stand in prayer with upraised arms, embracing a space—the space of their heads and hearts—and at the same time uttering the heartfelt plea that God may come? And is not the whole of humankind standing like this before the Lord in the earthly interim?” (
Schwarz [1938] 1958, p. 90).
Hence, emptiness seems, in Schwarz’s view, and already succinctly pointed out by Kieckhefer, mostly experienced as sacred in communitarian enactment of the space, in communitarian interaction with the space, adopting different postures during a Eucharistic celebration or a liturgical year, allowing emptiness to become a religious symbol of expectation, promise, presence, and fulfillment. In other words, emptiness needs a worshiping community to be experienced in its fullest sense, for the inherent sacredness to come to the fore. In this sense, Schwarz goes further than Tillich, and both approaches enrich each other. Let us now turn to recent examples of sacred architecture to discover whether their ideas are still fruitful for the way we understand, use, and maintain emptiness in our church buildings today.