Symbol Primer
A coworker of mine had a tattoo of a snake on her right arm, the tail starting at the shoulder, its body slithering down her arm to a diamond head at the wrist, a forked tongue extending to the thumb. It was clean, proportioned, and expensive enough that she chose not to disclose the price.
“What does it mean?” I asked.
“Nothing. It doesn’t mean anything. I just like it.” she said.
“Why a snake, though? Why not a hedgehog or a grasshopper or sloth?” I asked. “Why pick an animal that is symbolically loaded with more symbolism than perhaps any other animal in Western civilization?”
She paused. “I guess I like how it is associated with temptation and evil but then it is also beautiful at the same time. Because that’s how I feel.”
Wowsie. That got meaningful fast. If you will excuse me, I need to flee real quick.
When it comes to human activity, meaning is ubiquitous. Colors, sighs, decisions, shapes, vocables, words, pictures, paintings, texts, tattoos, emojis, and middle fingers – all of human activity is replete with meaning that we stuff into symbols. Everything means something.
We need to take a quick side quest and understand what symbols are and what they are for. Then we will have the tools to continue our symbolic query with scrutiny towards grape juice.
I recently listened to a discussion on communion where a gentleman said that the change to grape juice was no big deal; it was simply the modern convenience of refrigeration and pasteurization that gave us another option for the sacrament that Jesus lacked in his time. He finished his talk with a gentle knuckle wrapping that those insistent on wine are creating a false standard and picking fights.
This is an unsatisfying conclusion. There is simply too much meaning stuffed into the biblical symbolism to dismiss the swap with a hand wave, particularly when the backstory of grape juice is known. One cannot read the Bible without seeing the motifs, recurring themes, and breadcrumb symbols dropped suspiciously close together, and in a straight line, almost as if they meant to be followed. To say symbols are no biggie is to cut out the tongue of the Bible and make dumb the language it speaks.
One of our deficiencies as moderns is that we are chubby enlightenment thinkers; we know that there is no necessary connection between a symbol and what it symbolizes, other than the sovereign choice of man. Nothing about red octagons compels a stop. Five linked, colored rings do not necessitate friendly athletic competition among the countries of the world. Because of this, we presume all symbols are arbitrary. It is the reason of man alone that pairs an object or idea with a particular mouthy sound, squiggly line, or invented shape that we call symbols. In the end, I say potayto, you say potahto, both dialects end in a creamy mashed substance that pairs with steak.
Insisting on high levels of capriciousness in symbol choice is ironic because humans are symbols themselves. We are images of God.
Images represent persons, things, or ideas expressed through a medium, and the best symbols capture the essence of the original most accurately, though, of course, are never as “real” as the original. Humans are derivative; lumps of clay cannot make themselves into a shape, they are molded by a potter. And this mold is not arbitrary, but purposeful, taking shape after our Creator in our design, mental capacities, emotional depths, gender, relational dispositions, etc. One of the ways we image our Creator is that we are symbol makers ourselves. We make symbols and stuff them with meaning because we are symbols stuffed with meaning.
The symbolic is the matrix of reality: only through symbols can anything be known. This is not philosophical hyper-analysis or Hegelian hocus pocus, neither is it reductionistic; it is the nature of a created world.
Humans are sign users. All day, every day, we are using signs and symbols to communicate meaning to each other. (Signs and symbols here will be used interchangeably, though there are important differences). This meaning is expressed explicitly through spoken or written words, and implicitly in myriad artistic and cryptic forms. Non-verbal communication, which makes up the bulk of human interaction, carries meaning in shifts of posture, sighs, the eyes, and subtle lip twitches. Everything means something.
For me to understand or know anything, objects and ideas must be translated into signs and “downloaded”, if you will, into my mind where the world is then recreated symbolically through the process of naming. Looking out my window, there stands a shaggy tree, and in my mind, it is identified by a corresponding letter sequence or audible vocal pattern: T-R-E-E, or “tree”. A distinction sometimes applied to this external world of objects and the internal world of the mind are the German words Welt and Umwelt. (German philosophers love capturing difficult concepts and stuffing them into burlap language bags where they wriggle into submission.) The Welt is the shared, external world filled with objects that become part of my internal, mental world, Umwelt, through symbols and signs. Thus, when my wife says to me, “The goat is in the begonias again”, the string of symbols she speaks recalls images within my Umwelt, and I make for the garden.
A unique, reciprocal relationship exists between sign-users, but not an equal one; there is always a sign-giver, a namer, and a sign-receiver. The sign-giver chooses the message and the medium that will best recreate his intent to the receiver. Through the giving of signs, the giver is inviting the receiver to participate in his Unwelt through the symbol. Graphic designers and advertisers excel at this, choosing symbols that carry the mission and meaning of the product in short phrases and simple graphics that convey the product’s essence using shared motifs and paradigms (green = youth, red = passion, acorn = growth potential, owl = wisdom, etc).
Naming is the means by which an object in the Welt is downloaded into my Umwelt. A toddler marveling at a balloon is transfixed by its properties (red, shiny, slippery on the tongue when licked, does not fall but floats, etc). He points at it with a chubby finger and looks to his father making a quizzical cooing sound. “Balloon,” his father says, naming the wondrous object. The child’s mouth repeats the vocable, trying to figure out how this floaty object bumping its head on the ceiling fits into the sound his father named. But he has it. Balloon has been downloaded into his mind, this slice of reality has become part of his world, lassoed by a name.
Through the gateway of names, he is invited into the namer’s world of symbols. He is now free to receive and share symbols with others as he learns them. He has been let in on “the code”; he has a seat at the table of symbols where names are shared. At long last, he knows what something is.
For sign givers, creating a symbol that no one can decipher negates the purpose of the symbol. Also, poor symbol choice impedes their message. Symbol clarity causes no small agony on the part of the sign-givers, such as writers, who pine over jots and tiddles. Oscar Wilde lamented, “I have spent most of the day putting in a comma and the rest of the day taking it out.” Selecting words and symbols that carry the meaning is serious business, and the miscommunications (misreading or misappropriating symbols) that result can be very funny, clever, or devastating.
If symbol use is necessary for communicating with earthly matters, like who will pick up the kids from soccer, it is indispensable to grasp the spiritual world. Since we cannot see the objects and activities of that realm, for us to understand anything about it, we must necessarily use physical objects, concepts, and relational phenomena of creation to speak of uncreated realities. We glimpse God’s invisible qualities through the physical universe He made (Romans 1:18-20). Christ’s relationship to the church is like that of husband and wife (Ephesians 5:23). Ezekiel saw a form that was like a man, with a waist like he was on fire, and a torso like molten metal (Ezekiel 8:2). Apocalyptic authors especially stretch simile thin just to find an adequate image to apprehend the phantasmagoria of the spiritual world.
Creation, then, is a shared symbolism God made available to all humans. The four-legged, ruminating, mooing creature “is” a cow, and it is a cow for God and King David and you and me. God, the Prime Namer, has invited us into a world of shared symbols so that he may communicate with us, an invitation he did not extend to other zoological life.
So if we are to know God at all, it must be through what we already know. The psalmic declaration that the heavens proclaim God’s glory nightly presupposes the familiarity of the heavens. Mustard seed growth of the kingdom Jesus taught has as a prerequisite the knowledge of mustard seed size. To receive the good news of Christ, one must first be able to understand any news. Every explanation given in the Bible of who God is is a symbol tethering the qualities of known objects to invisible realities. Understanding God at all requires two feet planted firmly in the Welt if we have any chance of knowing God in our Umwelt.
Biblical authors, as sign-givers and namers, chose familiar symbols that would most clearly reveal the truth of the unseen God to our minds and aid us in grasping cosmically large spiritual concepts. And being the good biblical inerrantists that we are, we believe that the Holy Spirit aided these writers in their symbol choices. God gave us baptism as a symbol to demonstrate with physical objects the eternal substance of our spiritual death and resurrection in Christ. Something actually happened to our spirits in the heavenly realm, something that sounded something like an old man being crucified and buried (Romans 6). There really was a transfer of a dead spirit from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of Beloved (Colossians 1). This did not happen digitally; it was not a fantasy football draft trade – something happened to your spirit. We cannot conceive the true reality of the situation, only dimly glimpse it through the sacrament of water baptism named for us.
The Medium Is The Message
The symbolic is an attempt to understand one reality through the medium of another, and spiritual truth is revealed through the symbolic medium of creation. All symbols are communicated between sign users via physical processes and materials. A writer arranges letters into words and orders them to convey thoughts to a reader. As the reader decodes the symbols, the concept the writer had in mind will be recreated in their Umwelt through the medium of matter – paper and ink, silicon and light, etc. A painter communicates through the medium of canvas, acrylics, and brush. Composers translate emotional realitis into orchestral scores.
Mediums carry a message of their own.
In the 1960s, communications specialist Marshal Mcluen wrote a prescient essay entitled “The Medium Is The Message”, drawing attention to a bourgeoning aspect of mass media through radio and television that wasn’t being discussed. His thesis is in the title: the actual message is more to be found in the medium used for communication rather than the substance of the message itself. McLuhan could not know how devastating his observations were, dying in 1980 when we still only had television with a handful of channels.
As described above, all communication must come through a symbolic medium. McLuhan’s observation was that the medium of communication is, in a way, a message all on its own. Take the lightbulb. Before its invention, candles or kerosene lamps would have to be burned if one wanted to be productive after sundown. This was expensive and the light quality was poor. Maybe you could write a sonnet or play chess or fiddle a bit, but nothing that required focused, prolonged, attention. Circadian rhythms dictated the patterns and productivity. The electric light bulb changed all of this. One could simulate daytime all the time and continue the day’s work well into the night. Not only this, but the types of things that could be accomplished under electric light drove technological advances. No one is doing brain surgery by candlelight. These technological innovations made possible by the lightbulb are also “messages” from the medium of the electric light.
Now, a light bulb has no explicit message; it is pure medium. But what is the implicit message the medium communicates? The message of the lightbulb is that there is no pattern or limit to the day, productive hours can be stretched into the night; it doesn’t matter what he is doing, he is doing it around the clock and with a precision unattainable by candlelight. The messages of light bulb, in a way, could be descriptive of the modern man himself, coming to maturity in the Enlightenment: innovating, pursuing the sensical over the pensive, perpetual existence and progress (candles burn down, light bulbs do not), time mastery, etc – one could speculate ad infinitum. The message in the medium is a restless one.
Here is McLuhan himself on the subject
“The medium that carries the message content plays a role in how it is perceived. For the “message” of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs. Let us return to the electric light. Whether the light is being used for brain surgery or night baseball is a matter of indifference. It could be argued that these activities are in some way the “content” of the electric light, since they could not exist without the electric light. This fact merely underlines the point that “the medium is the message” because it is the medium that shapes and controls the scale
and form of human association and action.Marshall McLuhan, The Medium Is The Message
I leave it to you to explore on your own the messages of mediums like the internet, cellular phones, and social media, as I will likely begin to rant and spittle.
How does the message of grape juice versus wine affect the message of the New Covenant? To be clear, I am not saying the medium of the cup is more important than the message it signifies. Both wine and juice are symbols and a symbol cannot be greater than its master. Marriages are more important than wedding rings.
But the medium does carry a message- it always does. God graciously shared that message buried in the wine medium in the mysterious and complex bouquets revealed throughout Israel’s history. What is the message of grape juice? What does the medium of grape juice mean? And what does the decision to switch to grape juice signify? It is not merely a convenient alternative afforded by modern technology. Everything means something. As members of the human race, as living symbols, we know this in our bones.
Thought Butter 