What is the Meaning of Religious Symbols?
On divine representations
[The following is a condensed version of a lecture I gave at Edinburgh on the theologian Paul Tillich, primarily on his conception of religious symbols. The slice of commentary below includes familiar features of the religious experience, intended to (hopefully) spark further thought on the nature of symbols.]
A line of thought in Paul Tillich’s anthology is chiefly focused on the meaning and utilization of religious symbols. Symbols have a powerful mode of being in the world. Symbols, generally, are a language in themselves—they have the capacity to express ideas and communicate amongst the masses or individually to one person. And, like the common forms of oral and written language, can indicate their contained messages in a variety of terms. Ultimately, Tillich asserts that a relation to religious symbols serves as a bridge to that liminal space between reality and the divine, which can then morph into one divine reality. Understanding this means of symbolic language, he argues, is of great importance to theological and philosophical projects.
Religious symbols in particular are representative of ideologies because they presuppose characteristics upon their interpretation and use. This can be contrasted with discursive symbols which is a label relegated to those of logical content—mere signs (like in mathematics) which purport their function and/or rules that have been agreed upon. But the meaning of religious representative symbols has an effect much greater than to simply convey their purposiveness. Tillich provides a taxonomy of what these symbols ultimately do, which aids the inherent question of his thinking: How might the justification of religious symbols be related to their meaning?
With a proven great force behind religious iconography, the justification for the perseverance of religious symbols throughout history will be easily discernible, according to Tillich. For instance, a lacking ability for symbols of this nature is the means to create itself. In other words, the fate of a symbol is decided on by those who create and employ it. At the ground level, symbols are justified because they are inevitable, because us mortals have insufficient means to talk about God. And since God “grounds our being”, it is only natural to discuss theological matters symbolically.
This component of religious symbols ascribes them with great influence, or power. There are two other characteristics (out of Tillich’s six) which are pertinent on the point of authority. The first is the idea that symbols point to something beyond themselves. The fulcrum of Christian symbols would undoubtedly be the Cross of Christ, which can be seen to reference back in time to the moment of the crucifixion, but also to abstract ideas as well, such as sacrifice. The symbol of the cross, in a way, holds these, and many more, references in its embodied image.
Working in tandem with the former characteristic is another—which is that symbols of this kind are a cognitive portal to other dimensions of thought. An opening to a mindset, or as Tillich puts it, “to the layer of reality with intrinsic meaning and perhaps aesthetic import”. Once again, notice the ascribed power and significance of this feature. This would be an escape from the mundane and into the divine reality. Symbols can be a reminder of something deeper, a connection with the noumenal realm intertwined with material existence. But as the existence of this domain is commonly either lost or forgotten, religious symbols can serve as the means to access it and elevate the human spirit. This would explain why religious individuals or seekers carry around, wear, or mark their appearance in some way with the symbols of their faith.
Tillich asks at this junction: (a) How do we know when that a certain transcendence has been reached? We also might ask: (b) How do we know that a symbol is at least partially responsible for a transformative religious experience?
Tillich responds with some approaches that can map onto one’s interaction with a divine presence. As to the first (a) question above, we can know if someone reports the following:
Phenomenological contact with “the holy” transcends the subject-object structure of existence. A disregard of Cartesianism. An individual will typically report the temporary loss of the ego.
Ontological contact, on the other hand, does not identify or associate the experience with a being, but rather attempts to situate oneself in the material world with an acknowledgement of mortality, but trying to eclipse it altogether, perhaps as a matter of ultimate concern.
Tillich says that these two modes of contact corroborate one another in terms of lived experience. Ultimately, either descriptive account is a matter of the referent of religious symbols. The landing spot, as it were, for any subject is an experience that can place themselves in relation to a heightened sense of “quality of being”. Returning to the second (b) question—on the matter of how we know a symbol is part of the equation here—Tillich is able to provide an explanation that ties everything together.
He argues that a prime characteristic regarding symbols themselves is validity. Tillich defines the validity of a religious symbol by means of the word “authenticity”. A helpful object for reference here would be a mirror. If an accurate religious experience is undergone that matches the expressed depiction of the symbol in question, then its validity is strong.
Another characteristic is the truth of the symbol—truth is used in a different manner than normal here. The truth of a religious symbol is measured by how effectively it can generate meaningful contact with something external to itself. Truth, therefore, is enforced in whether or not a symbol can springboard one into a different variety of experience. This is defined as the negative quality by Tillich, in which the symbol destroys itself upon impact with a subject and instead directly leads to the referent, the things for which it is meant to represent. This is a vital component to have since the control of the symbol must always be outside itself. Idolatry, when a symbol or image is worshiped to a cultish extent and the real object of worship is cloaked from view, is to be avoided at all costs. We can infer this might sometimes occur when the validity of a symbol is not as strong as it once was or has been corroded by a change in culture or attitude (the Swastika is the commonly used example here).
A few lingering points remain. Tillich clearly is concerned with understanding the language of symbols and their role in understanding religious life. His anatomy, as it were, of the religious symbol seems to suggest that the heartbeat of a religious ideology is inextricably linked with its chosen symbol. Consider the following remark:
“With the end of the power of its symbols a religious group comes to its own end.”
This statement broaches many queries, for instance:
How exactly does the power of a religious symbol begin to wane?
Could its meaning ever be resurrected? Or does something new take its place?
If the symbol does keep giving its religion the oxygen to survive, does that keep the meaning of its referent inflexible? Unable to evolve?
Religious symbols hold such power, such influence, because they are one of the only means of self-expression for religions. This insight leads to one of Tillich’s main ideas which is that all religious language must be understood symbolically. Without symbolic representations, religions would be left with other lackluster ways of communication, but imagery is one that can remain permanent and transcend time and generations and the fabric of our given reality, both of which can be said to be the aims of religion itself.