A Theological Concept about Church Door

ABSTRACT

The door of the Christian church is a division between sacredness and profanity. At the same time, it is a middle in between to communicate. It is also a threshold linking an external and an internal world. The imposing-looking door of the medieval times was designed to bring a feeling of awe for the church and God into illiterate believers and unbelievers, which contributed to their reflecting on their sins. When designing a contemporary church door, it is pointless and nonsensical to faithfully reproduce the traditional medieval iconography of the medieval church door. It might sound reasonable to take the size and materials of church doors into account for the sake of the doctrine of the church, but their size and materials should be in harmony with the whole church building. The concept of the contemporary church door should overcome the iconography of the medieval Western church door. Instead of the narrow door to heaven, the big door to welcome all to church, the door to success, and to the way to the Lord, it should be a door to answering. In other words, it should be a door to compassion. In every sort of religious structures, people tend to form preconception of the religion fr om the door that they come acr oss with for the fir st time. The door is such a significant factor in comprehension and education of religion.