Models of Revelation 14

We’re still in Ch 9, on Dulles’s idea of “symbolic mediation.” Dulles argues that revelation occurs primarily in symbols – special kinds of signs that become deeply embedded in Tradition, that carry multiple, powerful layers of meaning, and that ultimately become definitive for that Tradition. I have agreed with much of what Dulles is arguing here about how symbols work in Tradition and in carrying the content of revelation symbolically. But I have argued in rebuttal that the primary (as in original and bedrock) form of revelation needs to be something more than a symbol. The Tradition cannot take a single, coherent direction only from a multi-valent symbol. I have suggested that historical fact, direct propositional revelation, direct ritual or liturgical revelation, and symbolic revelation all coincide to establish the baseline of meaning, from which further symbols take their meanings. The two most critical of these nexus are Exodus, and the Incarnation and Passion of Christ.

Having seen how his symbols work in reference to the propositional model, he works through the other four in the same way. I believe my rejoinder holds up in each case: symbols cannot define themselves, ultimately; something more must be given to be definitive, to establish the Tradition.

In reference to the historical model, Dulles takes the historical events themselves as symbols. “Just as a literary text discloses to the literate reader a meaning which is really there, so a revelatory sign-event, to the religiously disposed observer, can convey a divine meaning that truly belongs to the event” (p. 146). Dulles briefly addresses the two problems of subjectivity – that is, maintaining a fixed meaning in the sign-event if it can’t be accurately expressed propositionally, but only narratively – and of distinguishing in history special divine causation (an “act of God”), and therefore dealing with miracles.

In reference to the experiential model, the symbols must mediate the experience of divine presence, and shape the revealed meaning of that presence. “[T]he experience of grace cannot be rightly interpreted, or recognized for what it is, without the help of symbols derived from the known world through sensory experience” (149). The mystical experience also emphasizes the “gap” between symbol and divine reality.

In reference to the dialectical model, the Word itself is taken as the predominant symbol. There is a risk here of taking Christ only as “a” symbol, rather than as unique Savior. Here, Dulles must in fact take my position on his argument, to avoid this: “The word, as the sign [broad sense, not narrow “symbol”] which articulates meaning, is a necessary complement to revelation through any other kind of symbol. The grosser symbolism of nature, deed, or artifact [including ritual], potent though it may be, is too ambiguous to be the sole mediator of revealed religion. The symbol becomes revelation only when interpreted…. For public revelation, moreover, there must be external words, capable of being heard or seen. Such attesting words are necessarily symbolic, for otherwise they could not be conducive to a salvific union with the divine.” (p. 152).

Dulles and I would seem to disagree on the priority of this last sentence. For him, as I understand his argument, the symbols are primary, and the words are human words being used as further, derived symbols to reveal divine truth. I would argue in contrast that the Word, the Logos, is primary to the use of words as symbols.

Finally, in reference to the new consciousness model, symbols do shape and affect our experience, but Dulles insists on the objectiveness of the symbols’ meaning. He also distinguishes (for the first time, here) between primary symbols that carry objective revealed meaning, and “mutable secondary symbols” (153-4; he those symbols such as those in art or liturgy – though he doesn’t here, as I wish he had, note that some of those liturgical symbols are in fact primary) which are more flexible over time.

At this point in my analysis of his argument, I add a second objection. In his desire to retrieve what he sees as the benefits of the different models, he does not distinguish adequately between the giving of the symbol, and our reception and response to it.

The giving of the symbol (if revelation is indeed in the form of symbols) must be accompanied with defining, irreducible propositional, historical, and probably liturgical elements, just like I have argued in reference to Exodus and the Incarnation and Passion. But, the giving of the symbols does not first and foremost involve our inner experience, dialectical submission, or conversion (“new awareness”). These are not the form of revelation, but our response to revelation. What is true in these models is true about our reception of revelation, not about revelation per se. Dulles does yeoman work to show the continuity between 1 and 2 as giving revelation, and 3, 4, and 5 as receiving it. My insistence on the primacy of a Logical nexus of word, sign, and act helps us to separate out these two modes from each other.

Models of Revelation - Excursus on Faith and Reason

One of the greatest strengths of the "traditional" view of theology (Patristic and Scholastic) is how the category of knowing which is "faith" is intrinsically related to the category of knowing which is "reason." This is the gist of the famous line that theology means "faith seeking understanding." All truth leads to Truth, therefore, and Truth must necessarily be one and universal.

These ideas about truth, knowledge, and so forth are not merely unprovable assumptions, for which other (equally valid because equally unprovable) assumptions might be substituted. Rather, they rest on a long tradition of observation, analysis, testing of hypothesis, and synthesis. They are proven, at least at the level of plausibility and self-coherence. They have stood the test of time (despite the contempt that modernity's irrationality holds them in). They are, in effect, conclusions of "natural theology."

Take, for example, the problem of defining "life" in "living" objects, as opposed to non-living objects. Reason tells us that the stuff is the same - the same elements of hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen, merely arranged differently here than there. Reason tells us, however, that there is clearly something different between living and non-living things. If you've ever seen a person or an animal die, you know that the difference is clearly visible, but not clearly quantifiable. Metaphors like "the light in the eyes" must be employed. In fact, reason tells us that the difference between living and non-living is not really a question of the arrangement of stuff (atoms, molecules) at all. It's something different.

In other words, experience, observation, and reason clearly "prove" the existence of something non-material. Its effects are observable; it itself is not directly observable. In terms of living objects, this non-material element can be called "soul." It expresses the vitality, motion, and ultimately rationality of different kinds of living things. But it can never be reduced only to material properties.

Coming at the problem from the angle of faith works essentially the same, but in reverse. The same observations about the material world, and the visible effects of the spiritual world therein, describe different kinds of relationships with God. Here "soul" is not a property or set of properties related to the observable differences in categories of objects, but defining spiritual realities that separate those same categories of objects in how that relate to God.

But these two aspects of the idea of "soul," from reason and from faith, are not to be seen as unrelated to each other. Together, they tell us more about "soul" than simply the juxtaposition of the two ways of knowing.

But for this to be true, that spiritual knowledge must be expressible in the form of a proposition (or more likely, a set of propositions). Even if the set of propositions is not complete in an absolute sense, it still must be relatively complete (relative to the extent of our ability to know at all), and accurate to the same extent. If this is not true, then "faith" knowledge is not related to "reason" knowledge, since the rules of logic (that is, propositional relationships) don't work there.

This is the heart of the propositional model in Dulles's schema. Of the five, only this model holds the intrinsic relationship of faith-knowledge and reason-knowledge; that is, that revelation is ultimately reasonable in itself. The historical model, and Dulles's theory of symbolic mediation, hold an extrinsic relationship between faith and reason. This can, in practice, be fairly close to the intrinsic relationship, but it's not really the same idea. At root, the existential, dialectic, and transcendent models all separate faith and reason from each other in modernist ways; this is why they are less successful at grasping revelation.

This is why I insisted in the previous post that there must be some non-ambiguous "rule" - an act, a word, or a symbol; or a combination of these, as in Exodus and the Passion - at the bedrock of revelation, prior to the mediation of the symbol(s). This "rule" must be expressible (to the extent of human knowing) as complete and accurate propositions. Even if the propositions are derived, and not taken as the primary content of the revelation itself, still the propositions are equal to the revelation in its relationship to the faith community: the propositions carry the revelation. I mean this concretely, not abstractly, because the propositions are not simply abstract, but concretely embedded in the liturgical life of the community (Passover and Mass, etc.). They are still explicit, however: they are acts, words, and symbols expressible as propositions. Therefore the meaning is not ambiguous and subject to change, and not derived from human sources, but given by God.

It is precisely in the knowing by both faith and reason that the certitude of revelation exceeds that of science (reason alone) or of individual inspiration (faith alone). It is precisely in the being carried by Tradition that the meaning remains stable and non-arbitrary. And it is precisely in the "faith seeking understanding" that we accept the invitation into God's own life, which is what revelation really is.

Models of Revelation 13

In the second half of Chapter 9, Dulles is testing three Christian symbols – light, the Cross, and the Eucharist – to see how they work in each of the five models he’s described. He quickly encounters some difficulties.

Propositional Model – “To theologians who view revelation as propositional, the symbolic approach seems to imperil the truth of revelation. The danger is not altogether imaginary” (141). In this counter-argument, a symbol’s absence of fixed meaning makes it unsuited for revealing objective, universal, unchanging Truth. Dulles cites one Gordon Clark on the example of the Cross (142), showing how the absence of fixed meaning denudes the Cross of the power to reveal. Dulles responds by noting how the symbol of the Cross needs to be re-expressed, through metaphor and simile, into propositions. These propositions “explicate” the symbol of the Cross in order to limit its ambiguity. “But the propositional explication, to the extent that it achieves literalness, leaves out things tacitly perceived through the symbol…” (143). However, Dulles again avoids the critical question of priority in meaning (in other words, of authority in interpretation of the symbol). Does the limitation of ambiguity by re-expressing into propositions, come before or after the symbol itself? In other words, do the limits inhere in the symbol, or must they be supplied? If the former, how is this a supernatural revelation? If the latter, whence do they come?

Dulles seems to argue for inherence: “Because of the cognitive content implicit in the originative symbols, revelatory symbolism is able not only to “give rise to thought” but also to shape the thought it arouses” (144). But then he equivocates: “Yet the influence travels in both directions. Doctrine enriches the meaning of symbols…. As the process of doctrinal development goes on, the Church tests new proposals through its grasp of the total symbol-system…” (144). He appeals to Tradition, in the form of “participation in the community of faith,” to limit the pliability of symbols’ meanings. “Interpreted against the background of the symbols and of Christian life, certain conceptual formulations can be put forward as bearing the authority of revelation” (145).

What he means, I think, is that the symbol is primary. In the ways in which the symbol is received by the community, its meaning becomes much more firmly fixed. Eventually, some of those meanings are clarified to the point of propositional formulation as dogma or doctrine. These formulations in turn operate on other symbols in the same limiting or specifying fashion, and can even become symbols themselves. The accumulation of symbols with fixed, received meanings by the community comprises Tradition.

The advantage of this argument is that it clearly relates the Christian community, in its origins, with its Jewish roots. Christianity begins, not in a vacuum, but within an existing revelatory tradition. However, I think Dulles makes a mistake, overstating the power of Tradition to define itself. His argument just pushes the problem of certainty and authority further backwards in time. If that ground cannot ultimately be found, then the peril to the truth of revelation remains. That is, if the tradition is built up in the very-distant past purely in reference to human culture (in this case, ancient Israel’s human culture) or human choices of possible meaning, can it be said with certainty, with the “authority of revelation,” that that tradition “got it right” with respect to its symbols? Why could they not have been (or now be) interpreted differently, even contradictorily?

Somewhere behind that tradition of traditions, I would argue, there must be a solid, unambiguous, revelation – either a proposition, or an event, or a symbol-with-only-one-possible-meaning – to provide the authority for tradition to accumulate upon.

Now, for ancient Israel, that was Exodus: the event as a whole, including as distinct items of revelation the propositional revelations – “I am who am;” the Ten Commandments; the terms of the Covenant with Moses – and the liturgical rituals of the Passover. These were not treated as primary symbols, but rather as secondary symbols. That is, their nature and usefulness as symbols derived from their unambiguous, divine, no-other-way-to-explain-it-as-it-actually-happened authority, and not the other way around. It’s only given this bedrock for the tradition, that other symbols can come to function in the manner Dulles describes here.

For Christians, the Passion-and-Resurrection of Christ functions in exactly the same way. The event, including its distinct propositional and liturgical revelations, is primary to all symbols. Christian symbols take it as their referent; it is definitive for the Tradition, and for the symbols in that Tradition. Only with this (now double) bedrock as primary revelation and authority, can other symbols (including the Cross) come to function in the way Dulles argues.

Models of Revelation 12

Dulles defines in Chapter 9 what he means by “symbolic communication” or “symbolic mediation.” First, he notes, revelation never occurs in an unmediated encounter with God. That encounter is always mediated – specifically, by symbols as “an externally perceived sign that works mysteriously on the human consciousness so as to suggest more than it can clearly describe or define. Revelatory symbols are those which express and mediate God’s self-communication” (p. 131).

“Symbol” here is a special kind of sign. Some signs only indicate something (as a shadow on a sundial); others represent something, usually by convention or tradition (as a written word stands for a set of sounds, which in turn stand for an agreed-upon meaning in a particular language). Symbols might indicate or represent, but what makes them symbols is that they evoke something beyond what can be indicated or represented. Their meaningfulness exceeds the indicated or represented meaning.

Because symbols evoke, their communication includes the response of the viewer. A national flag might only be a sign if we’re reading it in a catalogue, and have no emotional response to it. But it might be a powerful symbol, evoking a broad response of feelings and memories and expectations, when we see our own flag flying on some special occasion or place. “To enter the world of meaning opened up by the symbol we must give ourselves; we must be not detached observers but engaged participants” (133). Many kinds of things can be symbols: words, objects, persons, artifacts, dreams, rituals, myths, allegories, etc.

This definition faces two fundamental problems, of subjectivity, and of finitude. (1) If the symbol requires the participant to add his own experiences etc. in order to be meaningful, then how can symbols be (a) objective, and (b) universal? And (2), how can symbolic communication reveal to humans something beyond natural human experience? Where does that “supernatural” content come from, if the meaningfulness of the symbol depends so strongly on the human audience? Dulles sidesteps these problems to some extent: “To establish this, one would have to construct a theoretical argument based on the nature of revelation itself…. [Here,] I shall seek to propose an argument based on the parallelism between the properties of symbolic communication and of revelation. Four such properties may be singled out” (136).

First, symbolism gives participatory knowledge. A symbol is never a sheer object, but rather lures us into a newly-opening universe of meaning. Second, symbols transform the knower; the new meanings it opens change the one who participates in the symbolic communication. Third, that transformation is expressed as “consistent and committed action” (137). Fourth, symbols allow a kind of knowledge or awareness not available to discursive thought. They are a kind of mystery, both concealing and revealing in their evoking.

“These four qualities of symbolic knowledge make it apparent how symbol can be uniquely apt as a medium of revelation; for the qualities of revelation correspond, on a transcendent level, to those just noted…” (138). Just like symbols, revelation gives participatory awareness, transformation, commitment, and insight into unfathomable mysteries.

I do wish Dulles had given a more comprehensive answer here. Everything else he will say in the book depends on this point, that revelation takes place through symbolic mediations, using a variety of symbols according to the five models (propositions, history, inner experience, mystery, and new awareness). It seems plausible, but in making this point, he does not face squarely the problems of subjectivity and finitude. Instead, he goes around them by noting that symbols are like revelation. This is not sufficiently convincing, by itself. This becomes an enormous “IF…” statement, to which the remainder of the books is the “THEN…” which follows. But “IF NOT,” then his whole argument for symbolic mediation fails.

Dulles tries to buttress his assertion with three examples: light, the Cross, and the Eucharist (140-1). He “tests” these examples as mediating symbols in each of the five models. We’ll look at these carefully next week.