Symbols

Symbols, symbolism (Gk., sumbolon, ‘sign, token, pledge’; sumballein, ‘cast together’). The representation in visible form of ideas, beliefs, actions, persons, events, etc., frequently (in the religious case) of transcendent realities, which bring the observer into connection and participation. So pervasive is the human use of symbols that E. Cassirer (An Essay on Man, 1944) called the human species animal symbolicum. Although it might seem obvious to define a symbol as that which stands for something which it represents (as a flag might be said to ‘stand for’ the country which it represents), in fact a symbol involves far more complex conditions of meaning—to be seen not least in the fact that symbols frequently stand for themselves, especially in the religious case (see R. Wagner, Symbols that Stand for Themselves, 1986): the symbolic actions of the Hebrew prophets, for example, do not stand for (i.e. summarize in advance) a future event, but rather bring the reality of that event into being in the present. Beyond that, symbols may be non-referential and of effect in creating community and meaning (see A. P. Cohen, The Symbolic Construction of Community, 1985).

Since religions in that way are often evocative in their use of language, it is not surprising that the religious use of symbols can be paralleled in the turn to symbolism in arts and literature at the end of the 19th cent. The Symbolists were a loose association of artists and writers who turned strongly against the realist (and referential) ambitions of, for example, the Pre-Raphaelites or the neo-Impressionists, or of such writers as Flaubert and Zola. The importance of decoration in the symbolist sense is profoundly important in religious symbolism, though largely overlooked: there is an aesthetic satisfaction no matter what other purposes are being served. Most accounts of religious symbolism look at their function, especially as codes. An early meaning of sumbolon in Christianity is that of creed, where the function of symbols in compressing (Gk., sumballein, ‘to throw together’) meaning and making it publicly available is emphasized. As C. S. Peirce realized, humans use different kinds of signs and symbols, each bearing some of the characteristics of the others. As a consequence of his work, the study of symbolism is firmly embedded in semiotics (Gk., sēma, ‘a sign’). Peirce drew a distinction between three types of sign: icon, index, and symbol. An icon is a sign containing some of the qualities associated with the thing signified (e.g. maps and diagrams); an index is a sign which is in a dynamic relation with the thing signified and calls attention to what is signified (e.g. the column of mercury in a thermometer measuring temperature and indicating health or illness); a symbol is a conventional sign with an agreed connotation. Symbols are economies of statement and feeling which conserve successful accounts of context (success being measured crudely by persistence) and which evoke coherence by their power to unite immense diversities of human being and experience. But equally they set forward new opportunities of exegesis and action. See also FEMININE SYMBOLS AND RELIGION; ICONOGRAPHY.