Austin Farrer pointed out a distinction we must always keep in mind -- the
difference between _sense_ and _referent_. While the sense of a symbol
remains the same (the words "white house" always mean "white house"), it
can have numerous referents (The White House in Washington D.C.; the white
house across the street; the green house that belongs to Fred White; etc.).
"St. John's images do not mean anything you like; their sense can be
determined. But they still have an astonishing multiplicity of reference.
Otherwise, why write in images rather than in cold, factual prose? It has
been said that the purpose of scientific statement is the elimination of
ambiguity, and the purpose of symbol the inclusion of it. We write in
symbol when we wish our words to present, rather than analyze or prove,
their subject matter. (Not every subject matter; some can be more directly
presented without symbol.) Symbol endeavours, as it were. to _be_ that of
which it speaks, and imitates reality by the multiplicity of its
significance. Exact statement isolates a single aspect of fact: a
theologian, for example, endeavours to isolate the relation in which the
atoning death of Christ stands to the idea of forensic justice. But we who
believe that the atoning death took place, must see in it a fact related to
everything human or divine, with as many significances as there are things
to which it can be variously related. The mere physical appearance of that
death, to one who stood by then, would by no means express what the
Christian thinks it, in itself, to be. It took many years for the Cross to
gather around itself the force of a symbol in its own right. St. John
writes 'a Lamb standing as slaughtered' and significances of indefinite
scope and variety awake in the scripture-reading mind. There is a current
and exceedingly stupid doctrine that symbol evokes emotion, and exact prose
states reality. Nothing could be further from the truth: exact prose
abstracts from reality, symbol presents it. And for that very reason,
symbols have some of the many-sidedness of wild nature."
Revelation", Tyler, TX: Dominion, 1987
The Austin Farrer quotation is from
Farrer, Austin, "A rebirth of Images: The Making of St. John's Apocalypse"
London: Dacre Press, 1949; Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1970.
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William E. Hamilton, Jr., Ph.D.
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Rochester, MI 48306
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