The Living Fountain:
The Symbolism of Grace
J. Prescott Johnson
Copyright © 2003 by J. Prescott Johnson
Eric H. Johnson
1926-1995
For Eric
In Memoriam
And he said unto me, It is
done. I am the Alpha and Omega,
the beginning and the end. I
will give unto him that is
athirst of the fountain of the
water of life freely.
Rev. 21:6
Dust to the dust: but the pure spirit shall flow
Back to the burning fountain whence it came,
A portion of the Eternal, which must glow
Through time and change, unquenchably the same . . .
Shelly. Adonais
Contents
Preface Page i
Chapter 1 The Formation of Myth 1
2 The Symbolism of Science 24
3 The Symbolism of Grace 49
4 Existence and Significance:
History and Discontinuity 90
F. P. Leverett, ed. Lexicon of the Latin Language (Boston: Wilkins, Carter, & 1
Co., 1850-51), p. 877.
2Henry George Liddell & Robert Scott, Greek-English Lexicon, abridged, 24th ed.
(New York: Hinds, Hayden & Eldridge, Inc., 1901), p. 663.
i
Preface
The term symbol is the Latin symbolus, symbolum, and the Greek sumbolon
(sb:$@8@<), which mean sign or token. The Latin term is a combination of the
preposition syn (together) and the noun bÇlus (throw). The Greek term derives
from the verb FL:$V88T (throw together), which, in turn, derives from the
preposition Fb< (sun – with, together) and the verb $V88T (ballÇ – throw).
The term symbol thus denotes a combining or a bringing together.
More precisely, a symbol is an element that is associated with another,
and different, element in order to disclose the meaning and import of the
latter element. Thus Leverett’s Latin Lexicon defines symbolum: “any mark or
sign by which one person gives another to understand anything, or which one
has agreed upon with anyone.”1 The Liddell & Scott Greek-English Lexicon
characterizes sumbolon as “a sign or mark to infer a thing by.”2
There are other signs that, in common with the symbol, stand for
something other than themselves. But they lack the generality of a symbol.
They are more limiting forms of representation. Thus an emblem is restricted
to pictorial representation. A type is limited to the function of
foreshadowing something or someone to come and thus serving as its symbol
until the reality appears.
Metaphor is quite distinct from the symbol. Like the symbol, it does,
indeed, involve two elements. But the base element does not function as the
means of opening up the meaning of the second factor in the equation. Rather,
the metaphor is a word or phrase denoting one kind of object in place of the
other so as to suggest a likeness or analogy between them, both being already
understood. The symbol, in contrast, is an indispensable medium that is
ii
necessary to the revealing of the meaning of that which is designated by the
symbol.
In clarifying the nature of the symbol, two important considerations
must be emphasized: (1) a symbol is a special kind of sign, and (2) the symbol
has an indispensable intuitive character.
(1) A symbol is a sign, but it is much more than a sign. A symbol has
the property of being more in intention than it has in existence. It points
beyond itself, means more than it is in itself. It is ideally selftranscendent.
This is brought out in the definition of symbol in the
dictionary: “something that stands for or suggests something else by reason of
relationship, association, convention, or accidental resemblance; esp: a
visible sign of something invisible.”
Symbols must be distinguished from natural signs. In the world of
nature one thing or happening can become a sign of another as soon as it is
bound to it by some natural relation, particularly that of cause and effect.
Smoke can become the sign of fire or thunder of lightning. But this kind of
sign is merely designatory. It does not express anything. A symbol is always
a significative sign.
Again, the symbol is not merely a signal. When the owner of a dog
speaks the dog’s name, the sound is a signal that the person is present and
the dog pricks up his ears and looks for its object. The signal does not
express or represent anything.
Finally, the symbol is not merely an associative stimulus. Cloudy
weather may because of its gloom occasion thoughts of death. A landscape seen
from the window of a train may occasion thoughts of childhood. But the cloudy
weather does not represent death, is not to be taken as a symbol of death.
The landscape is merely an associative stimulus, acting on the person by some
psychological association without representing or standing for anything.
iii
Harald Höffding, The Philosophy of Religion, tr. B. E. Meyer (London: 3
Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1914), p. 201.
(2) The symbol has an intuitive character. It is bound up with the
intuitive and cannot be separated from it. The following passage brings this
out:
In all symbolization, ideas taken from narrow although more intuitible
relations are used as expressions for relations which, on account of
their exaltedness and ideality, cannot be directly expressed.3
There are here two considerations that may be noted, although their
development must wait until later in this work. First, the intuitive
character of the symbol is absolutely necessary to the meaning and import of
the symbol. Thus it cannot be excised from the symbol. To do so is to
destroy the symbol itself. Second, the symbol is necessary to the elucidation
of the meaning of the reality symbolized. What this means is that the symbol,
with its intuitive material, must be retained, if any understanding of the
referend is to be accomplished. If we suppose that, once the symbol has been
employed, it can be eliminated and replaced by non-symbolic conceptual
knowledge, we are not only mistaken, but we lose the ideal insight that the
symbol provides. To press this point, in reference to the general import of
this work: the title, The Symbolism of Grace, indicates that it is from within
the symbolism that our understanding of Grace is obtained. If we were to use
the title, The Symbols of Grace, it might appear that we were advancing the
notion that once the symbol is employed we can move beyond the symbol and
achieve a purely intellectual and conceptual understanding of the significance
of Grace. But that is not the case, for Grace is that which because of its
“exaltedness and ideality, cannot be directly expressed.”
There is, however, a process of expanding the symbol, without replacing
the symbol. Expansion does, indeed, employ literal terms, in the sense of the
opposite of figurative. The language of the expansion is more abstract and
iv
4Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, tr. J. H. Bernard, 2nd ed., rev. (London:
Macmillan, 1914), B. 248-49.
Ibid., B. 250. 5
less metaphorical than the language of the symbol. But the expansion must
always be embedded in and refer to the language of the symbol, that is, it
must be confined to the ideal and universal relations that the symbol
expresses indirectly. In no sense can the language of expansion move beyond
the intuitive basis upon which the symbolism rests.
Kant has stated the nature of the rule of reflection that expansion
employs:
All intuitions which we supply to concepts a priori . . . are either
schmata or symbols of which the former contain direct, the latter
indirect, presentations of the concept. The former do this
demonstrably; the latter by means of an analogy (for which we avail
ourselves even of empirical intuitions) in which the judgment exercises
a double function; first applying the concept to the object of sensible
intuition, and then applying the mere rule of reflection made upon that
intuition to a quite different object of which the first is only a
symbol.4
The similarity between the symbol and the reality symbolized is not that
of a picture. Immediately following the passage just quoted, Kant gives an
illustration. A living body, he says, is a symbol of the state. Between the
two there is no similarity. “. . . but there is a similarity in the rules
according to which we reflect upon these two things and their causality. . .
.” In short, the symbol contains indirectly the concept of the referend and 5
the manner of reflecting on the two is what brings about the expansion of the
symbol and symbolic knowledge. This subject will be discussed in more detail
in the sequel.
We are aware of the fact that, when Christianity entered the world, it
faced alternative religious ideas and practices. The writer of the Hebrews
addressed the question of the superiority of Christianity over Judaism.
Christians today need not be reminded of this circumstance. But we may not be
v
so cognizant of the fact that Christianity, at its inception, faced a plethora
of Graeco-Roman religious mythic ideas and cultic practices.
This latter consideration is of special significance for this study.
The pagan religions did, without question, afford a sense of redemption for
the devotees of those religions. The mythic content and formulations of those
religions bear some resemblance to and continuity with the distinctly
Christian symbols. Here the further question is forced upon us, namely, is
there, despite this continuity, a radical discontinuity between the two
systems? If so, in what does that discontinuity consist? It is these
questions that Chapter 1, “The Formation of Myth,” addresses. The emphasis of
the Chapter is an exposition of the subject of pre-Christian myth. A more
detailed evaluation of the bearing of that mythic formation on Christianity
must await development in later chapters.
It is often supposed that modern formal and empirical sciences yield
literal knowledge, while religion as experience and conceptual formulation
lacks objective cognitive import. It does, it is argued, consist of rich
mythic content, but that content merely reflects certain conditions of
subjective valuations. This question is addressed in Chapter 2, “The
Symbolism of Science.” It is argued that science itself is symbolic and
therefore cannot become a basis for denying cognitive import to the
formulations of religious symbolism.
Chapter 3, “The Symbolism of Grace,” brings this study into the realm of
religious symbols. The Chapter builds on the theme of the previous chapters.
Attention will be given, again, to the nature of myth and the bearing of myth,
particularly pagan myth, on the symbols of religion. The argument of Chapter
2, “The Symbolism of Science,” has the consequence of establishing the general
identity of the two symbolic forms, i.e., science and religion. Yet
notwithstanding this consonance between the two symbolic forms, there is a
vast difference between the two symbolisms. That difference must be set
vi
forth. But, as we shall argue, this difference is yet commensurate with the
principle of symbolism as it pertains to religion. The symbols of religion
are cognitive. What may be termed the major and fundamental symbols of Grace
will then be brought forward, with special reference to their unique cognitive
significance.
The final chapter, “Existence and Significance: History and
Discontinuity,” sets forth, in a fuller respect than previously attempted, the
philosophical principle upon which the cognitive import of the symbolism of
Grace rests, and rests so as to quarantine those symbols from the charge that
they are but mythic formations akin in principle to constructs of myth and,
while having some subjective value, are valueless as cognitive of transcendent
and spiritual reality.
