We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
Do you think symbols, say of God, truth, sin, and love, serve any purpose?
10 comments:
Their purpose for me is to shortcut something i.e. to deliver the original meaning (or some subset of it) faster.
Problem is, that you (almost?) always have a subset only...
Lukas,
Thanks. Helpful comment. I think you're right about the notion of subset. Why would subset be a problem?
Biggest problem for me is the symbol of God. Relates to "making an image of God" for me... The main problem with the latter is (in my opinion) that we reduce God to our small view of what G-d is or should be for us and adore this self-made G-d. As if it were us (cf. Romans 1) this G-d is not the real living God. In essence it is the subset we like or want.
But also for the other, we have the subset that pleases us... While the original is
Lukas,
Okay. I see. Making an image of God in the sense you mention would be a negater.
Maybe if we take symbol as a lived experience the seeks to communicate something about God because God has revealed it, we can view it more positively?
Baudrillard said somewhere, I believe, in Le crime parfait, that the real has been overcome by the image. In my imagination book, I pose the following question: Are there any originals left? Is finding an original today like searching for someone's grave in a graveyard with no tombstones - something like the search for the first aspirin or pair of Levi's?
Images sweep over us like pelting sheets of driving rain. We’re drenched in them. The high voltage danger of this saturated state is that it can begin to decimate and delimit our capacity to generate and craft a true imagination that produces and re-produces accurate images of self, other, the world, and God.
ups, the last part missed in my post...
While the original is so much better than our reception/subset we constructed.
Considering the image overcoming reality I fully agree. This is the problem. And I think it is a subset problem. At some point in time you will take the subset, that is a lived experience that seeks to communicate something about God because God has revealed it, and will no longer recognise, that it only was a subset. But you take it as the original. And then you can no longer imagine the original, since you already "know" how the original (=subset) is like...
Lukas,
True about images, but I think it is a question of accurate - truthful images that have a referent that we know something about in contrast to 'image is reality' - the thing in itself, in this case, God.
Back to symbol. I wonder, if in fact language is symbolic, which I assume it is, how can we find our way to the original beyond symbol, that is in some way for us embedded in language?
Nothing useful to add, except that it might be Simulation and Simulacra, although I'm sure he hits on the issue other places.
Thanks Joshua. It's probably there in SS too.
Hey Greg,
Jesus seems to get on to people a lot (in John's Gospel, at least) for being so enamored with symbols that they miss what they are signifying.
It would be like someone getting all excited about the L'Abri sign and never stepping inside of Bellevue or Farel House.
I think symbols are like the L'Abri sign: an arrow pointing to something else, of greater significance. They help us understand, act like clues, and refine our preconcieved notions about what they are signifying. So yes, I think they are useful/functional.
Just some thoughts...
--Valerie
Valerie,
Thanks. Good thoughts. Seems as if one of the points you make is that the symbol signifier is important to the symbol signified.
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