The symbol is not a mere sign. It is an exogeric mechanism created by the psyche to convey a reality that the individual needs to be met with in the processes of individuation yet cannot directly confront nor be confronted with due to the foundational nature of the reality being transmitted and the immensity of that reality. The symbol is then coded information scaled to the communicational capacities of the recipient, purposefully and continually transmitting information, and therein attempting the incremental transformation of the recipient according to both the willful receptivity of the recipient and the underlying purposefulness of the transmission for the integral well-being of the recipient. The symbol is thus a means of growth into wholeness. It is not something that can be grasped intellectually or emotionally. Rather, it is the platform that seeks to inform, to form, to format, an ever-maturing intellection and emotionality. Its goal is not knowledge, be that of intellectual, emotional, or intuitive nature. Its purpose is the integration of the individual into the fullness of selfhood, into wisdom, into, literally, homo-sapiens.
In this regard, the primal symbols that seek to establish the holistic personality concern those creative-most powers of humanness: faith (trust), hope, and their ultimate manifest, love. In Christian theology these are named the theological virtues in that they iconicize the triune nature of the Theos (God). In this sense the primal symbol is God, or Love. Therein the equation of God with Love is underscored. All other religious symbols become subsets of this primal symbol, just as love is the primal virtue. Here love and God become the guarantors one of another. Theology and morality form a unit. The one is the eternal ideal underwriting the pragmatics of the quotidian other, the latter in its daily struggle pointing to its other as both the source of its power and its purposefulness, as it were to is formal and final causality.
Symbols are bearers of relatedness, connecting the world-immersed and evolving individual to the unsearchable depths of us. This relational function is mirrored in the everyday symbols of human interaction, from the gifts of chocolates and flowers to the greetings we send to remember (to connect past to present) for those special days in our personal calendars. This relational function is most profoundly expressed in the symbols that connect us all with our ultimate past and meaningfulness. These are the great symbols of religion: God, the triunity of God, the Christhood embraced by God in the manifestation of the saving power of God, and not least the sacramental semiotics of the believing community.
In a certain sense the spirit of man is itself a symbol, a symbol of the Spirit of God, which is the bond of divine unity, binding not only the integrity of the eternal One, but also its creative outpouring which is the cosmos created and redeemed. The spirit of man leads man to the integrity of self, but in so doing speaks to man of his roots, his purpose, his meaning, his end. In its fullness it reveals the Spirit behind creation. Thus the apostle Paul writes: “What knows the things of man except the spirit of man which is in him? Even so, the things of God are known by no man, but by the spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.” (1 Corinthians 2: 11-12).
One might be tempted to speculate that the opposites of Christian theology developed because a fuller psychology of symbol had not yet come to flower. We may take Aquinas and Calvin as exemplars of this opposition. Calvin, who certainly did not discount grace, was endlessly caught up in the orbit of divine justice. Aquinas, like most of the scholastics, was a champion of grace. Unfortunately, the scholastic position led to abuses, to ideas of “cheap” grace, grace that could be bought with good works or a coin tossed into the right box. Therein was roused the need of a corrective. Here was the fertile ground of the reformers. It cannot be doubted that the anfractuous interplay of ideas is an evolution of ideas, and that the struggles of doctrinal enunciation are part of that. Polemics may place parties at considerable distance, but it is easy enough to see that a turn of a phrase can illuminate both sides and placate opposing forces. The fluidity of the reformers’ dispositions can be seen in Archbishop Cranmer’s responses to Bishop Gardiner concerning the presence of Christ in the sacrament of the altar. At one moment one thinks one is in the midst of solid scholasticism, and then with the turn of a word, one finds Calvin. That liquescence betrays an underlying indefiniteness—if not of argument, then decidedly of the overshadowing spirit of the idea. The symbol, as a power of relation, has at its base a certain plasticity that allows for permutation. Its depth and volume almost demand multiple perspectives. When doctrinal disagreements arise, perspectives tend to become hardened, and eventually calcified. In this faith, a relationship of relaxation of one into another, “the substance of things hoped for,” is lessened to a lawyerly agreement of terms, and love is exscinded in blind partisanship.
The symbol, thus, may be expressed, and expressed in myriad ways. It is in this something not definable, but a manifest of a power of connectivity, a power of transformation which seeks to define those it is allowed to touch. We go to divine service, we partake of the sacraments, we confess the items of the creeds not to do something, not to accomplish something, but to be enveloped in an inexpressible and unsearchable power that only—in this world—a symbol can provide. God infolds us and evolves us in the language of the spirit, the Spirit that alone understands our spirit, and thus vivifies it in its grace and love. That grace and love belong to both the spirit of man and the Spirit of God, the first being the imago Dei, the indwelling symbol, mystery, presence, grace, benefit and blessing which is at root the grace of creation.
The great symbols of faith—the creeds, sacraments and doctrines—are not facts. They are evolutionary voices, echoes of the Spirit-filled Word, connecting the present to the past, and step by step in faith and hope guiding into us into love, into the future wherein Love alone will abide. The great symbols of faith are not items to be understood. They have come into being to give life standing, to reveal the truth of life’s standing, life’s exsistere, to attest to the reality that life is authentic and autonomous only under the cross of Christ wherein the meaning and purposefulness of both God and of man are met. Under the cross we find God not above us or beyond us, but for us, sub-mitted to us, standing under us to up-hold us, to hold us, to hold us in the energizing light of who we are and who we are destined to be.
It is here that God is revealed as love. Here he be-holds us for who and what we are, and binds himself to us in redeeming love. Here—in faith and in hope—we realize we are held in his acceptance, forgiveness, love. Here we acknowledge we cannot understand God for it is he who in humbling love stands under us.[i] Here we realize we cannot love God, but that we are saved from our ego-driven selves in his love, by his love, through his love. We cannot love God as he deserves to be loved. We cannot, even incrementally, “fall in love” with God. To turn to an analogy from physics, God is the singularity into which we fall. Into his dark Mystery we can merely and simply, by faith and in hope, allow ourselves to fall into God, into Love. Here we are evermore falling into the singularity whose event horizon is the “Light from Light.” Here we submit to Love, and allow Love to work in us, for us, through us. As we draw near the end of our worldly journey the great symbols of faith seemingly find their richest radiance, and we begin to see no longer “as if in a mirror darkly.” Here the great symbols of faith fulfill their worldly purposefulness and give consolation to our dying. All is right. Christ is our righteousness.
[i] Cf: God, Knowledge, and My Dog (February 2024).