Theological Sign Or Religious Symbol?

THE GODDESS: THEOLOGICAL SIGN OR RELIGIOUS SYMBOL? LARRY D. SHINN It is nothing new to suggest to historians of religion that religious symbols are intended to function as more than signifiers of known realities. However, in what ways signs and symbols differ is a sub- ject worth occasional reflection so that unintended, truncated, or il- licit distinctions are corrected by the historical record itself. It might appear unusual to historians to discuss sign and symbol in the context of one segment of the current feminist theological movement that is influenced as much by social and political concerns as a field of study as it is by academic ones. Yet it is often that which appears to be a fad or sectarian excess at one moment in history that can become the grist for the historian's mill at another (could one in the first century have believed that the marginal, sectarian Essene com- munity would someday attract the inordinate attention it has been accorded among twentieth century biblical scholars?). In any case, both of these issues (namely, the importance of the religious sign/symbol distinction and the use of feminist goddess symbolism as a case in point) should be briefly addressed by way of introduc- tion. In the early part of this century, Carl Jung set out what he understood to be the clear distinction between sign and symbol. He said, "An expression that stands for a known thing always remains a mere sign and is never a symbol. It is quite impossible to create a living symbol, i.e., one that is pregnant with meaning, from known associates."1 Because Jung was primarily interested in symbols as the observable data of the unconscious (whether the individual's "personal unconscious" or the universally shared "collective unconscious"), he focused on the ability of symbols to point to hidden realities (e.g., a dream's four-armed cross as a symbol for psychic balance and unity).2 For Jung, a sign was merely an "abbreviated design" of a thing already known (e.g., a hand wave for a 176 greeting). A symbol represented a previously unrecognized psychological force seeking conscious expression. Writing about the Ndembu tribe in contemporary Africa, the an- thropologist Victor Turner took Jung's understanding of sign and symbol as his starting point as he spelled out the social significance of this distinction in the context of Ndembu ritual. Turner noted that symbols arc the smallest unit of ritual (i.e., objects, events, gestures, etc.) which can be understood only "in a time series in relation to other events; for symbols are essentially involved in social process. "3 Symbols are, therefore, condensed and unified presentations of social and moral meanings packaged in simple natural guises (e.g., milk tree = mother's milk = mother's love). Arguing against anthropological interpreters who say that symbols are "conscious, verbalized, indigenous interpretations" of impor- tant realities, Turner suggested instead that symbols have various "layers" of meaning-socially speaking.4 For Turner, signs are self explanatory while symbols must be interpreted not only in terms of the particular ritual in which they occur, but also in the context of 5 the total social symbol system.5 In his many writings on symbolism, Paul Ricoeur evidences a similar interest in distinghuishing between sign and symbol, although primarily in the linguistic and philosophical spheres. Recognizing that symbols are found most often in the expressions of poetry, dreams, and religion, Ricoeur stresses the "double inten- 6 tionality" of symbols.6 Signs and symbols share the common feature of a literal meaning. That is, symbols do "signify" or point to explicit meanings that are known. But what sets a symbol apart from a sign is its implicit meaning (what Ricoeur calls the "sym- bolic rneaning") which is only an "opaque glimpse" of the reality to which it points.' Ricoeur argues that a symbol is "food for thought" because "it yields its meaning in enigma and not through translation. "8 8 In sum, "the symbol in fact is the very movement of the primary meaning which makes us share the hidden meaning and thus assimilates us to the thing symbolized, without our being able to set hold of the similarity intellectually. "9 Symbols are "the language of the Sacred" because they both tell us something we can concep- tualize and yet point to an experienced reality that can be only par- tially known. .

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