"The cathedral was supposed to be a setting in which humans could glimpse heaven, thereby experiencing a taste of the hereafter. It served to draw people toward heaven. Durkheim's ideas about the sacred, however, suggest a different, almost opposite view of the cathedral's purpose -- in which the cathedral is a place designed to draw the divine down among people. We might say this is done by creating a congenial habitat for the divine."
The Gothic Enterprise by Robert A Scott, pg 153
I'm thoroughly enjoying this book on Gothic cathedrals and highly recommend it. Scott is working with a lot of the same ideas as Lewis' Discarded Image and is very interested in the connection between politics, medieval theology, and cathedrals. He gets into Scholasticism and Bishop Suger and all kinds of interesting stuff. For all that, I laughed really hard when he described cathedrals as a habitat for the divine. It's so... contemporary. He makes it sound like they were building hamster cages.
Also, he's kind of off-kilter due to not coming from an informed Christian philosophy himself. I would argue that one could, actually, describe the Tabernacle and the Temple as a "habitat for the divine" (if you dared!), but not so much churches anymore. The veil was torn in two, and now the Lord is building a new house out of living stones, which are His people. For that matter, the cathedral builders were off-kilter themselves on occasion.
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If you want even more interesting thoughts on Gothic architecture, look at the Gothic Revival during Victorian times. John Ruskin (Stones of Venice) was a big advocate, as was A. W. N. Pugin (Contrasts and The True Principles of Christian or Pointed Architecture), but they did not agree on the reasons that Gothic was great.
Also John Mason Neale, if I remember rightly; a reverend gentleman chiefly notable for translating all sorts of stupendous ancient hymns....
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