In light  of eternity

We’ve just come down from the 533 steps of the South Tower of Cologne Cathedral – lungs burning at times, legs trembling on occasion, and a panoramic view of the Rhine still imprinted on our minds.

On Saturday, November 8th, I filmed the full experience: the overwhelming exterior, the cavernous Gothic interior, the spiral climb past the giant bells, and finally the wind-swept platform 97 meters up – that’s 318 feet for you non metric types like me.

Architecturally and historically, the place is staggering. Begun in 1248 to house the newly acquired relics of the Three Magi, the cathedral was intended to be the greatest church north of the Alps. Construction dragged on for centuries; by 1473 work stopped completely, leaving a gigantic construction crane in place for almost 400 years (the longest construction pause in European history). The two spires were finally completed in 1880, making the Kölner Dom the tallest building in the world for four brief years.

The numbers still make you blink:  

– 157 m tall (515 ft) – the twin spires  

– Nave length: 144 m (472 ft)  

– Internal length: 86 m (282 ft) from entrance to high altar  

– Vault height in the nave: 43 m (141 ft)  

– Width of the façade: 68 m (223 ft)  

– Total floor area: 7,914 m² (85,185 sq ft)  

– Stained-glass surface: 11,500 m² (123,785 sq ft) – roughly one and a half football fields of colored light  

– South Tower staircase: 533 steps rising 100 m (328 ft) to the viewing platform  

– The great bell “Decker Pitter” (St. Peter’s Bell): 24,000 kg (52,910 lb or over 26 US tons) – the heaviest freely swinging bell on earth  

(For context: if you laid the cathedral’s height on its side, it would stretch farther than one and a half American football fields end-to-end. And that bell alone weighs more than five full-grown African elephants.)

During World War II the cathedral was hit by 14 aerial bombs yet never collapsed. The twin spires served as perfect navigation markers for Allied bombers, so the city around it was flattened while the Dom stood like a blackened skeleton among the rubble. Restoration continues to this day; there’s always scaffolding somewhere.

All of that is undeniably impressive.

And yet, as a Protestant who believes the Church is people, not masonry, walking through this place felt strangely foreign.

The interior is designed to overwhelm. You look up and the stone ribs seem to disappear into infinity – a deliberate architectural sermon on the transcendence and otherness of God. Beautiful, yes. But for someone raised on the Regulative Principle and the priesthood of all believers, the sheer theatricality of high Catholic liturgy feels like a distraction from the simplicity that Christ modeled. The building screams “Look at me,” when my heart wants to whisper “Look at Him.”

Then we entered the Treasury.

Gold reliquaries studded with gems, monstrances that cost more than entire medieval villages, arms and skulls of saints encased in silver-gilt busts, fragments of the True Cross, a supposed nail from the crucifixion, and, of course, the magnificent 12th-century Shrine of the Three Magi – the largest reliquary in the Western world. The craftsmanship is breathtaking. The theology behind it leaves me uneasy.

I stood in front of the gilded skull of one of Saint Ursula’s 11,000 virgins and couldn’t help thinking: we would never design a church this way today. Crypts full of dead archbishops line the side aisles like a macabre hall of fame. Bones, relics, and centuries of incense have turned the place into a museum of medieval piety rather than a living house of prayer.

That’s the tension I carried up those 533 steps and back down again: awe at what human beings can accomplish when they set their minds to glorify God, mixed with sorrow that so much effort, wealth, and artistry were poured into a form of worship I believe actually obscures the gospel rather than revealing it.

And yet grace abounds even here.

Standing on the tower platform on a beautiful November day, looking out over a city that once lay in ruins and now thrives again, I was reminded that God is not confined to our architectural preferences or liturgical tribes. He met me on that tower the same way He meets His people in a simple living-room Bible study back home: quietly, personally, without need of flying buttresses or gilded bones. His power transcends the show of power this cathedral represents.

In the end, it’s hard to stay too solemn about any of it when, less than 500 feet from the high altar, those familiar golden arches are shining – not leading to heaven, but straight to McDonald’s.

If a Big Mac and fries right under the shadow of the world’s most ambitious Gothic cathedral doesn’t put all the heavy theological wrestling into instant perspective, I don’t know what possibly could.

The Cologne Cathedral is a masterpiece of human devotion.  

It is also a monument to how easily we complicate what Christ made simple.

I’m grateful I saw it.  

I’m even more grateful I don’t need it to meet with God.

Soli Deo gloria – in Gothic stone or in a circle of folding chairs, wherever two or three are gathered in My name, there I am.

**P.S.** I barely touched the footage from our 360° camera for this cathedral tour. What you see is almost exactly the real-time experience we had as we moved slowly through that overwhelming, awe-inspiring space. I only added a subtle layer of haunting, solemn music to match the mood of the visuals. Be prepared: you’ll be looking straight up a lot… and spinning in every direction. There’s simply too much beauty and grandeur to take in all at once.

I’m genuinely grateful we got to experience the Kölner Dom this way.

(Unlike poor Strasbourg Cathedral, which completely skunked us – of all days, Armistice Day! The place was closed for ceremonies. Who knew? Definitely not us.)