Conventional and Covenantal Signs

In semiotics it is usual to think that a signifier is connected to a signified by social convention. The meanings of words depends on their usage by a community.

The Lord’s Supper may be considered as a word / sign. Let us take the bread and the wine as the signifiers and the body and blood of Jesus as the signified.

At least in part, the basis of the connection between the signified and the signifier in the Lord’s Supper is much clearer than is the case with most words and their meanings, where the development of the signification is opaque to most users.

The Supper may be analogous to a prominently and authoritatively coined neologism, or perhaps to the naming of a child, where the signifier and the signified are publicly established by someone competent to bring about the connection and duly documented.

Bread and wine were established as signifying the body and blood of Christ (in the ritual context of the Supper) by the Lord Jesus’ words of institution and his command that this should be done in memory of him by his disciples. The connection is conventional and social. Because of Jesus’ “public” and documented act, for the community that looks to him as its Lord, bread and wine in the Supper signify his body and blood. This meaning is reinforced by the regular usage of the church.

But a Calvinistic doctrine of the Supper does not merely think of the bread and wine as enacted words or simple symbols, connected to the body and blood of Jesus only by a convention that they should call to mind the body and blood of Christ.

In the Supper there is not only a conventional signification but a covenantal connection and union between the sign and the thing signified. Christ has covenanted to give us his body and blood spiritually when the bread and wine are received with faith. His Spirit works in faithful accordance with his promise so that as the bread and wine are given, so Christ is unfailingly offered to his people and received by them with gratitude.

Similarly in the case of the Bible, the words have their meaning by social convention and usage, as with other words. They are God’s words because he once spoke them. They are publicly documented as such. The church receives the words of Scripture as God’s words, recognises them as canonical and regularly repeats them in her liturgy. But the words of Scripture also come with God’s covenantal promise that by the Spirit they are his powerful and effective words to his church today.

Ultimately the word signs of the Bible signify Christ. But they do more than merely refer to him or communicate information about him: they genuinely communicate him to his people to be received by faith.