What are the nature of symbols?

One of the defining and most distinctive features of Eastern Orthodoxy are the icons, religious works of art with a distinctive style that used to be common across all of Christendom. However, the theology underlying the veneration and use of icons is much more profound and far-reaching than one may initially assume. The first thing to establish that there is a deep and fundamentally flawed dialectic between “symbol” and reality which must be unraveled. This opposition is in part due to the use of the words symbol and symbolic being mainly confined to the arts where interpretation is primarily subjective. Thus symbols are written off as something arbitrary and subjective.

But symbols are not contained to the arts. Rather, they are the fundamental means by which we interact with the world because information is conveyed through symbols, namely words. The meaning of symbol is derived from the Greek (σύμβολον) symbolon from σύμ which means together and βάλλω meaning to throw or unite. As a whole, symbol means to throw together or unite the sign (or symbol) to what it signifies, granting it the power of referring to something outside of itself. We often forget that letters and words are symbols, regardless of language. Written Chinese is often labeled as heavily symbolic as it is a “pictographic” language, but in actuality every written language requires and uses symbols. The physical mark of a letter such as ‘A’ does not inherently contain the sound we ascribe it, which is why the English alphabet must be taught, so that the sound is “thrown” together with the symbol. In the same way, words, whether physically written/displayed via text or spoken via words convey meaning not inherent to the physical markings (in the case of written word) or frequencies (in the case of oral word) that characterize them. The words, which are ‘material’, house meaning, which are ‘immaterial’.

Secondly, the meaning and the name of something is closely tied to the ‘being’ of something. In some sense an object does not ‘exist’ until we give a name to it. Living without naming things is like trying to find your way in a forest at night with no source of light. In the dark nothing is distinguishable; there is only the all-encompassing umbra. This is best exemplified when a person is learning a new language. What is 變? You can probably discern that this is not an English word. Perhaps you are even able to tell that this is a Chinese word, but you do not know what it means, or what it is. Perhaps a more apt analogy is being in a forest with only the moonlight to guide you. 變 means change and the pinyin (the sound) is biàn, but I could have also said that it IS change or that is IS biàn. What I mean is what something means and what something is the point of synonymity. For example, when a kid encounters an animal he does not know the name of, or when a foreigner is trying to learn an English word and is pointing at something, you will very often hear them ask “What is this”, but you may also hear “What is this called?”, both meaning the same thing. So, there is an inseparable connection between words (a form of a symbol), meaning, and being.

I will now provide some diagrams to help visualize the nature of symbols. The linguistic symbol is best understood as that which unites heaven (abstract and immaterial) and earth (concrete and material) through meaning and words, respectively. Symbolism can also be represented as such, where the lower concrete examples express the higher principle, or the name of something.

Words are not the only things that are symbols. Numbers are as well! The 7 written here is no the same as 7 as a concept, or 7 as itself. 7 in itself is only ‘lowered’ into material form by representing it as the Arabic numeral 7, and through examples of 7 objects. Rather than separating itself from reality, the symbols participate in reality because they are the only means by which we understand reality. Science itself relies heavily on mathematical representations of the world, on numbers, figures graphs, and thus on symbols. The weatherman showing the forecast for a local area is only showing a symbol of the future forecast. Bill Nye showing charts of the rising sea levels is showing a symbol of sea level rise. Even g=9.81 m^2 is a symbol of gravity, but not gravity itself. In other words the object or idea that is being represented, is not the same as the symbol itself. These symbols used in science are taken for granted as the most ‘real’ and ‘empirical’, but upon closer analysis they too use symbols, supporting abstract principles with concrete facts. Neither the graphs, figures, or anything else can ever be divorced from the dependency on symbolism.

I do not mean to disparage science or the methods they use for using symbols, but rather call attention to the symbolic nature of scientific work (which is often accurate and effective at describing the material world), and how much ‘objectivity’ has been assigned to science, but not to other fields that utilize symbols. By now I hope to have established that reality manifests itself to humanity through symbols, principally by words and by numbers, and not through any other means in human consciousness. Thus, the binary of ‘symbolic’ and ‘reality’ is false, and even a spectrum between them is false. What something ‘represents’ is in some sense, what it ‘means’ and at the same time what it ‘is’.

Symbol≈Representation≈Meaning≈Being

The modern person believes that the symbol imposes a reality which is not present, but the true nature of the symbol is that it manifests what is typically hidden from us (for example the atomic representation of matter). Symbols are a bridge between higher level phenomena, and lower level phenomena or in other words, heaven and earth.

The Theology of Iconography

So, what are icons? The word for icon in Greek is εικών and is used in the Septuagint in which God says “Let us make man in our image (icon) and likeness”. They are ‘windows to heaven’, a visible manifestation of a spiritual reality. As we have established earlier, words are symbols. Icons too are symbols in the same way the Bible is, a representation of God’s revelation to man. The Eastern Orthodox even say that icons are written and not drawn. They serve as a practical way to instruct believers on the works of God, and of his Church, but beyond the practical and artistic matters, there is the theological aspect of icons. The icon affirms the incarnation of Christ, and from it, the new covenant, and the kingdom of heaven. In the OT, man could not make “any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth”, because “no man has ever seen or can see” God, who has nothing in common with the created order. God is uncircumscribed, unknowable, etc etc. There is none like God, so veneration of anything in the likeness of Him was forbidden. But then came Christ, who is the perfect and ‘express image’ of God, depicted in flesh, and blood. Icons of Christ declare God’s magnificent condescension to the material world, in the same way stories and testimonies of Christ do because they both depict the same subject. Icons of saints declare the saving grace of God which transforms men from merely the image of God, to the likeness of God, which is characterized by holiness, love, humility, and all other virtues, and because the men and women depicted are themselves also images of God (or Christ to be exact).

1. Christ is THE image of God, and shares in the essence of God (co-essential or ὁμοούσιον)
2. An icon of Christ is an image of the image of God.
3. An icon of a saint is an image of an image of Christ (who is the image of God)

The icon of Christ shares the name of Christ, in the same way a cross shares the name of the cross upon which Christ was crucified. Tying it back to the first part on symbols, this is akin to a blue shirt being a symbol/icon of blue. One would say about a blue shirt “This is blue” because it corresponds to the prototype of blue that I have in mind. In a similar manner, when people ask questions of the identity of an icon they will ask “Who is that?”, and someone may respond with “That is X”. Christ is the ‘express image’ of God, but he is also God. The difference in this analogy is that Christ is co-essential with the Father, while icons are not co-essential with those who are depicted. Not only do icons share the name, but also the glory of the prototype. It is communicated to the image as St. Theodore the Stylite says “as a reflection shares the brightness of the light”. What do I mean by, sharing in the glory of the prototype? Let’s use the example of memorabilia or photos of loved ones, and how we treat them as if it were the person themselves (kissing a photo is the best model of such behavior). In the same way, the Eastern Orthodox Church venerates icons as to show glory and love for the depicted, namely Christ, the Theotokos, the heavenly hosts, the apostles, the Fathers, and all the saints.

At times, the Church is accused by Muslims and sometimes other Christians for venerating matter, but this is a misunderstanding of the nature of symbols and of icons. Holy texts too are symbols of God. Indeed, the Nicene Creed is sometimes called the Symbol of Faith because it refers to God. Materially, a Bible is a collection of pages, divided into several dozen books with many words typically in the form of ink or pixels on a screen. When one ascribes utmost importance to it, one venerates the Bible. Furthermore, the veneration is not to the matter that composes the book, to the black ink and the white pages, but to that which is described by those pages and words: God. Likewise, veneration of the icon is not veneration of the ink, the wood, or whatever other material is used in the icon, but the veneration of that which is being represented.

The opposite is also true where the destruction of symbols is not directed at what the symbol is made of materially, but what is being represented which is not present in the symbol. The atheist or Muslim burning a Bible knows that the destruction of the book is to show hate toward Christ and to Christians. This is the same reason that revolutionary groups perform flag burnings, or effigies of political leaders. The disfigurement and destruction of the symbol is to dishonor the prototype.

On the state of Christian symbols in Modernity

By now I hope I have managed to explain the nature symbols, and of their connection to icons. I also hope that you have noticed that I use the words sign, image, icon, representation, and symbol almost interchangeably. This third and last section will be on the state of Christian symbols in the modern day.

In Greek diabolic (διαβάλλω) would be etymologically the antonym of symbolic because it means to tear apart, or to divide. If there is a unity that is established through symbols, then there is a disunity caused by the diabolic subversion and destruction of symbols. By destruction I do not simply mean a physical action toward symbols found in our daily lives, like those I mentioned in the paragraph prior. I mean destruction in the tearing apart of the symbol from the prototype. In other words, changing what the symbol points or refers to. Some obvious examples of the appropriation of traditionally Christian symbols are that of the pentagram, which originally symbolized the 5 wounds of Christ but now is linked to occultism, or the rainbow, which was a sign of God’s promise to never flood Earth again ie God’s love and mercy, and is now a flag for LGBT pride and activism. Subversion of symbols is the disintegration of daily of life, once full of symbols of God, to something mundane and apart from God.

If Christ transforms the world to make everything holy and sacred, to imbue the world with light and meaning by revealing the true nature of Creation as something blessed by God, it is Satan who seeks to strip the world of its sacramental nature, to make all things SECULAR, and divorced from God. Where these was once a plethora of symbols of God, they are now either neutered, or inverted. Life itself was once a symbol of God, for the Holy Spirit is the giver of Life, but now is perceived to be meaningless, or even as something undesirable, leading people to be suicidal or anti-natalist.

Even time is symbolic of God, with certain days of the day, the week, and the year that is pointed to God. Though every hour and second of the day should be dedicated to Him, there are times especially oriented toward God. In America, what has happened to Sunday, the Lord’s day, to Easter, the glorious celebration of Christ’s Resurrection and victory over death, to Christmas, the celebration of Christ’ Incarnation? For many in the West, all these symbols are completely without significance and meaning, and what little remains does not refer to God. Even for Christians in the West, these days have begun to lose significance, to turn into just another day, dissolving into homogeneity with the rest of the year. Even worse, these days have been inverted, or degraded to symbolize something lower or even opposed to God. Christmas is now a secular holiday, becoming a nice day off work, and an excuse to spend money on one’s loved ones. The Christmas songs on the radio talk about the joy, happiness and warmth of the season, but make no reference to the Giver of such gifts. To celebrate Christmas for the sake of celebrating a holiday, and not for the gift of the Christ, is this not in the fullest sense of the word diabolic?

Of the worst offenses to Christian symbols is that of man. The naturalist and the materialist have stripped man of Christ, and have left him naked. Imago Dei cannot hold if there is no God, and the explanation for the origins of man from the scientific consensus have lowered him into the animal kingdom, relegating him from the crown of Creation, to a hairless self-important monkey. This again is the degeneration of the connection between man and God to the point of complete severance. The icon is broken, and man is no longer made in the image of God, but something else. Without God, the highest that an individual can represent are things like ‘justice’, ‘power’, ‘wealth’, ‘intellect’, ‘sexual appeal’. The Supreme Court justices. Are they not icons of justice? The president. Is he not a symbol of American power, and of worldly power? The CEO. Is he not a symbol of wealth? The Hollywood stars. Are they not icons of sex appeal? All these may present man as more than he is materially, but not what he is in truth, which is that he is made in image of God, or more precisely, of Christ.

So what exactly is man? Is he homo sapiens? Is he animated space dust? Is he a series of chemical reaction neatly contained in a husk of flesh? These are the materialist’s definition of man and at best paint a neutral picture of man, but something far more sinister is happening. Like words, symbols can change meaning over time, and can have multiple meanings depending on the context, and the principal symbol of note that has been perverted over time is that of man. Starting in the Industrial Revolution, he became nothing more than a body to be quickly spent by the factories, and the mines. Reduced to nothing more than an extension of the machine he operated or tool he used; man resembled not so much God as he did a cog in a machine. In the modern day, he continues to wear tattered clothes, primarily viewed as a worker bee during his 9 to 5, and during his off hours, a faceless consumer of mass-produced products intended for use by men who are supposed to be no less alike than the products they buy. But increasingly he is taking on new roles. In fact, man is now a symbol of tyranny, incompetence, lust, pride, and greed. Once he was torn from Gods veil, stripped of Christ, the world gave him new clothes. Even woman have changed. As the ‘second sex’ was thrown in to the workplace, and was told that liberation was to be found in material wealth, and that to be achieve such wealth she not only had to enter fields traditionally male-dominated, but also BE like a man to rise up. Instead of being subject to God, and to a husband, she is now a slave to her employer, to the GDP in the same way a man is. Such imitation of man erases the distinction between the sexes, and in doing so erases the unique and honored role of womanhood and femininity. To whom or what does the human race point? It is anything but Christ.

Even marriage, the mystical union of man and woman, a beautiful icon of Christ and the church has been reduced to nothing but a piece of paper granted by the government. Not only is it perceived to be as something worthless, it is something superfluous or even something to be avoided altogether. The culmination of marriage, when two flesh become one, another symbol of Christ uniting with us, has suffered an even greater dishonor, for it no longer points to God. It is almost like a ‘sacred’ place where we want His presence the least, as if Christ came only to sanctify a part of our lives, rather than the whole. Sex has become nothing more than mutual masturbation, a tool for self-pleasure, as if it were an activity akin to eating a meal, watching TV, or playing a game. But what does such inversion do? If, in the most intimate act of love we treat each other like nothing more than a tool for our consumption and pleasure, how will that affect how we treat each other in less physically intimate areas of our lives? Is our neighbor to be discarded after a single use, like a plastic bag? If we treat marriage as just another ritual that is overly traditional, unneeded, what does that say about the relationship between Christ and the Church, between the Bride and the Bridegroom?

Where does such inversion come from? From Hollywood, TV, media, books, etc. Where man does not venerate images of God, he will make for himself other images to venerate, and to consume. Of the most damaging to the symbol of man and woman, is porn. Pornography is the devil’s iconography. Unfortunately, it is the most powerful icon of the world, enslaving so many men and women, and even some of the faithful. Everyday, a temple of the Holy Spirit is defiled by the act of masturbation, and everyday our eyes lust after strange flesh, and in doing so commit adultery, if not to the betrayal to our spouse or loved one, to God. At such ease, frequency, and ‘quality’ with the technology of today, we watch the sickest and most depraved forms of fornication, a far cry from what union with Christ is like. The acts displayed are more akin to degradation of one sex or the other than one of a mutual outpouring of love. The images are etched into our souls, and form our image of man and of woman, changing the symbol of man and woman by changing the context in which we see them. Instead of pointing us to God, pornography points us back to ourselves, and our need to satisfy our ‘natural’ sexual appetites. If Eastern Orthodox icons instruct us on the lives of the saints and of Christ, what does pornography instruct us of? Remember we are icons of Christ, and if we honor the image (ourselves and our neighbors) we honor God. On the other hand, if we dishonor or disfigure the image, we do so to God as well. This is why Christ says, “What you have done to the least of them, you have done to me”; because we are icons of Christ, and to dishonor the icon is to dishonor the prototype.

To be Christian is to view the world through Christ, and to see things as they are revealed to us by Christ, and by doing so, restoring the world so that it is oriented toward God, the source of all things. In other words, Christian symbols reveal reality in the eyes of God, as they are in very Truth, for only God is Truth. The more we affirm the dialectic between symbol and reality, the more is capitulated to the prince of the world, and the more divorced everything becomes from God. Since Christ has revealed himself to us as the true icon of God by His divine condescension, bringing Life to the world, fulfilling and affirming Creation as “very good”, we too affirm it if we are to be Christians. Reality is experienced through symbols and if, one day, there are no more symbols that point to God, will we even remember Him? As Christians living in these times we must hold on to our symbols, and even reclaim those that have been stolen from us, else we further forget that all of life, and of Creation points to Christ.