God's Words on God's Words

For anyone who might be interested (!) he's the first chapter (to be written) of the PhD I'm working on (which is intended to form chapter 2 of the final thesis). Entitled 'God's Words on God's Words: An outline and sketch of a standard Reformed Evangelical doctrine of scripture with developments from the philosophy of language and literary theory' (21 500 words). It summarises B. B. Warfield's doctrine of Scripture then summarises and evaluates the contribution that semiotics and speech act theory might make to a Reformed Evangelical doctrine of Scripture.

Words, Signs, Sacaraments, Ideas, Things

Here are a couple of quotations from Revd Dr Peter Leithart's blog that might make it into the Dissasertation:

William Perkins on figures of speech: “There is a certaine agreement and proportion of the externall things with the internall, and of the actions of one with the actions of the other: wherby it commeth to passe, that the signes, as it were certaine visible words incurring into the externall sense, do by a certaine proportionable resemblance draw a Christian minde to the consideration of the things signified, and to be applyed. This mutuall, and as I may say, sacramentall relation, is the cause of so many figurative speeches and Metonymies which are used.”

And:

"I have found Thomas’s explanation of the quadriga convincing. He argues that the multiple spiritual senses are not “located” in the words but in the things that the words name. One might say that for Thomas the words have a single, namely literal, sense; but the things they name are themselves signs, the “words” with which God writes history, and these things foreshadow later things."

Given Signs

An interesting observation and suggestion from Revd Dr Peter Leithart:

Many translators and interpreters of Augustine's de doctrina Christiana translate "signa data" as "conventional signs." But there's something to be said for taking the phrase literally (as some commentators do).

The difference between naturalia and data, Augustine says, is that the latter occur by the will of a sign-user while the former do not. Given this voluntarist emphasis, it makes sense to translate "signa data" not as "conventional signs" but "given signs."

This is a pleasant thought, since it brings linguistic exchange into the realm of gift-reception-return. To speak is to give; to hear is to receive; to speak back is to show gratitude.

Can ungrateful people carry on a conversation?

May the elements of the Lord's Supper not be thought of as at least partly conventional or given signs? Leithart's analysis of words suggests that it would be fitting to think of the Supper (which is after all a kind of visible word) as a gift sign, to be recieved with gratitude and calling for a response.

Semiotics Bibliography

Just in case its of any use or interest to anyone, here's a 3 page Word document bibliography about semiotics, structuralism, theology, scripture and the Lord's Supper.

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.

Implications of the Model Reader

According to Umberto Eco, texts assume, indicate and develop a “Model reader” who is required to cooperate with the text, if it is to be meaningful.

Similarly, Wolfgang Iser describes an ‘implied’ reader. The reader may be modified and transformed by the dynamic interaction between text and reader. The reader is active in the encounter with the text and it elicits responses from him, but he is also constrained by the text. An interpretive community will tend to share an understanding of what readings are legitimate.

We may apply these ideas to the Bible and to the Lord’s Supper (which as a visible word may be considered as a text). The Bible and the Supper indicate for whom they are. They call for and develop the responses their Author intends, if they are received rightly.

The very structure of the Supper, giving of bread and wine, for example, casts the “reader” as the empty-handed, hungry, humble, grateful recipient. He must receive God’s gift with faith and thanksgiving, in fellowship with all those who are called to the Supper.

Eco’s and Iser’s theories are discussed in Miles, Johnny E., Wise King – Royal Fool: Semiotics, Satire and Proverbs 1-9 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series (London / New York, T&T Clark, 2004), p23f.

Plagiarism

I've no idea if they're true, but as its exam and dissertation-handing-in season, some may be interested in these observations from Roland Barthes. He comments that the concept of plagarism was virtually unknown and hardly conceived of by the more collective medieval mind and is largely a product of modern, individualistic, monocular society.

Plagiarised from Hawkes, Structuralism and Semiotics p120 ish.

Of course, the good of medievals were much less concerned about consistency of spelling too: a way for them to express their individuality, perhaps?

The grammatical structure of the universe

Tzetan Todrov apparently calimed that:

Not only all languages, but all signifying systems conform to the same grammar. It is universal not only because it informs all the languages of the universe, but because it coincides with the structure of the universe itself.

Tzvetan Todorov, Grammaire du Decameron (The Hague, Mouton, 1969), p15 quoted in Hawkes, Structuralism and Semiotics, p96.

One who believes in a wise and "orderly" creator might have more reason to believe that than the atheist.

If it's true, then it seems plausible to me that we might see these deep universal structures especially clearly in the Bible and the sacraments since they are words and signs that the Creator God has given us. They may be central paradigmatic signs (even microcosms) that enable us to read something of the whole of creation declaring the glory of God to us and bearing the marks of having been made according to grand plans and purposes.

Hebrew time check?

I'm afraid my semester of Hebrew ("some islands of knowledge, but much is still sea") doesn't allow me to comment, but surely F de Saussure is wrong to say that:

Hebrew does not recognize even the fundamental distinctions between the past, present and future.

Course in General Linguistics pp116-117 quoted in Hawkes, Terence, Structuralism and Semiotics (London, Routledge, 1977), pp27-28

That seems kinda important to me. Maybe someone could explain it all to me and save me from the possibility of much sermon-silliness along the way?

The Great Code

Bible students, especially those sympathetic to interpretive maximalism, might enjoy:

Frye, Northrop, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature Collected Works of Northrop Frye Volume 19 edited by Alvin A. Lee (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2006) Originally published 1982. (And perhaps the subsequent Words with Power: Being a Second Study of “The Bible and Literature” (New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990)).

I only had a short time to flick through it in the library. Has anyone read it?

Frye was not a Bible scholar and I think maybe not a believer, certainly not a traditional evangelical. He taught English literature at university level and realised that to understand Blake, Shakespeare, Eliot - indeed, pretty much anything written in English - his students really needed to know the symbolic and imaginative world of the Bible.


The title is taken from Blake who said that: “The Old and New Testaments are the Great Code of Art” (p10).

The book is Frye's personal encounter with the English Bible, and its role in shaping the human imagination and western culture.

Frye speaks of an “imaginative literalism” (pxvii) and describes metaphorical, allegorical and descriptive conceptions of language. He sees “allegorical, or metonymic [language], characterized by monotheism and a sense that there is a divine force transcending nature, so that words get their meanings allegorically by reference to ideas in the divine mind;…” (pxxxvi).

The Bible contains elements of the metaphorical, allegorical and descriptive but for Frye it is best seen as oratorical rhetoric, metaphorical and poetic language being used with existential idioms, direct address and kerygma. It is above all a proclamation (pxxxvii). The imagery and narrative of the Bible forms a mythological universe (p5). There is, apparently, ladder of “polysemous (multilevelled) sense” (p8), whatever that is!

I smiled to read Frye's reflection that even some readers of good will “may feel that to attempt a fresh and firsthand look at the Bible is mere foolhardiness, and of course they may be right, but the years have brought me an elastic conscience and a tenure appointment.” (p17).

No doubt there is plenty of wierd and wonderful stuff in the book showing how the Bible has been misunderstood as well as understood, but it looked like there might be some great Jordanesque insights along the way about the meaning of watery trees, gardens, bread, wine and so on.

Here are the chapter headings: (You've got to love the fact that Frye's book shares the chiastic mirror structure he sees between Old and New Testaments).

PART ONE: The Order of Words

Ch 1: Language I

Ch 2: Myth I

Ch 3: Metaphor I

Ch 4: Typology I

PART TWO: The Order of Types

Ch 5: Typology II: Phases of Revelation

Ch 6: Metaphor II: Imagery

Ch 7: Myth II: Narrative

Ch 8: Language II: Rhetoric

Charles Sanders Peirce

The American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), the founder of American pragmatism or "pragmaticism", sounds like a pretty extraordinary fella.

Max H. Fisch said:

Who is the most original and the most versatile intellect that the Americas have so far produced?

The answer "Charles S. Peirce" is uncontested, because any second would be so far behind as not to be worth nominating. [He was] mathematician, astronomer, chemist, geodesist, surveyor, cartographer, metrologist, spectroscopist, engineer, inventor; psychologist, philologist, lexicographer, historian of science, mathematical economist, lifelong student of medicine; book reviewer, dramatist, actor, short story writer; phenomenologist, semiotician, logician, rhetorician and metaphysician.

(in Sebeok, The Play of Musement)

For Paul Weiss, writing in the Dictionary of American Biography for 1934, Peirce was "the most original and versatile of American philosophers and America's greatest logician".

Bertrand Russell said Peirce was "certainly the greatest American thinker ever."

Peirce’s collected papers are published (a little haphazardly, apparently) in 8 volumes and there is also a chronological publication project in 5 volumes so far. Pierce’s published works run to about 12,000 printed pages and his known unpublished manuscripts (about 1650) run to about 80,000 handwritten pages.

Currently, considerable interest is being taken in Peirce's ideas by researchers wholly outside the arena of academic philosophy. The interest comes from industry, business, technology, intelligence organizations, and the military; and it has resulted in the existence of a substantial number of agencies, institutes, businesses, and laboratories in which ongoing research into and development of Peircean concepts are being vigorously undertaken.

I’m wondering if any of this stuff is useful for understanding the words of Scripture as signs and the Lord’s Supper as a (word) sign.

I’ve plagarised most of this stuff from: Burch, Robert, "Charles Sanders Peirce", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2006 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = . http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/peirce/

Peircean Semiotics

What Peircean meant by "semeiotic" is almost totally different what has come to be called "semiotics," and which hales not so much from Peirce as from Saussure and Charles W. Morris…. Peircean semeiotic derives ultimately from the theory of signs of Duns Scotus and its later development by John of St. Thomas (John Poirot).

In Peirce's theory the sign relation is a triadic relation that is a special species of the genus: the representing relation. Whenever the representing relation has an instance, we find one thing (the "object") being represented by (or: in) another thing (the "representamen") to (or: in) a third thing (the "interpretant"); moreover, the object is represented by the representamen in such a way that the interpretant is thereby "determined" to be also a representamen of the object to yet another interpretant. That is to say, the interpretant stands in the representing relation to the same object represented by the original representamen, and thus represents it to yet another interpretant. Obviously, Peirce's complicated definition entails that we have an infinite sequence of representamens of an object whenever we have any one representamen of it.

If that’s confusing, this bit I really don’t get:

One set of distinctions among signs was introduced by Peirce in the early stages of his analysis. This distinction in this set turn on whether the particular instance of the sign relation is "degenerate" or "non-degenerate." The notion of "degeneracy" here is the standard mathematical notion, and as applied to sign theory non-degeneracy means simply that the triadic relation cannot be analyzed as a logical conjunction of any combination of dyadic relations and monadic relations. More exactly, a particular instance of the obtaining of the sign relation is degenerate if and only if the fact that a sign s means an object o to an interpretant i can be analyzed into a conjunction of facts of the form P(s) & Q(o) & R(i) & T(s,o) & U(o,i) & W(i,s) (where not all the conjuncts have to be present). Either an obtaining of the sign relation is non-degenerate, in which case it falls into one class; or it is degenerate in various possible ways (depending on which of the conjuncts are omitted and which retained), in which cases it falls into various other classes. Other distinctions regarding signs were introduceed later by Peirce. Some of them will be discussed very briefly in the following section of this article.

Signs are qualisigns, sinsigns, or legisigns, accordingly as they are mere qualities, individual events and states, or habits (or laws), respectively.

Signs are icons, indices (also called "semes"), or symbols (sometimes called "tokens"), accordingly as they derive their significance from resemblance to their objects, a real relation (for example, of causation) with their objects, or are connected only by convention to their objects, respectively.

Signs are rhematic signs (also called "sumisigns" and "rhemes"), dicisigns (also called "quasi-propositions"), or arguments (also called "suadisigns"), accordingly as they are predicational/relational in character, propositional in character, or argumentative in character.

Because the three trichotomies are orthogonal to each other, together they yield the abstract possibility that there are 27 distinct kinds of signs. Peirce argued, however, that 17 of these are logically impossible, so that finally only 10 kinds of signs are genuinely possible. In terms of these 10 kinds of signs, Peirce endeavored to construct a theory of all possible natural and conventional signs, whether simple or complex.

See further: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/peirce-semiotics/

Bibliography

Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 8 vols. Edited by Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss, and Arthur Burks (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1931-1958).

The Essential Peirce, 2 vols. Edited by Nathan Houser, Christian Kloesel, and the Peirce Edition Project (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana, 1992, 1998).

Writings of Charles S. Peirce: a Chronological Edition, Volume I 1857-1866, Volume II 1867-1871, Volume III 1872-1878, Volume IV 1879-1884, Volume V 1884-1886. Edited by the Peirce Edition Project (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana, 1982, 1984, 1986, 1989, 1993).

See also:

http://www.peirce.org/

Bible parole and Systematic Theology langue

I’m not sure if this is right or useful or interesting? The ideas probably aren’t new but we usually wouldn’t say it quite like this. Not sure there are any real gains! But for what its worth, and in case someone might say something helpful…

I’ve been trying to think about some of the ideas of semiotics (the study of signs, especially words as signs) might be applied to the doctrine of scripture.

One key semiotic concept is a distinction between langue (language as abstract system) and parole (language in use, utterances).

As I suggested here, Christians are claiming that human langue is used to make the inspired parole of scripture.

Some scholars such as George Lindbeck in The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age have been influential in suggesting that we think of doctrine in linguistic terms. Doctrine could be seen as the church’s grammar, its rule for speaking about God.

One might say that the canonical Scriptures properly come to constitute or effect a kind of langue, a normative, finite and bounded system which serves as a controlling doctrinal framework and presents an authoritative world-view which makes other theological speaking possible. The inspired scriptures are canonical parole, particular utterances authoritatively put to use by their first speakers and subsequently normative in all right reading and preaching of the bible. Every possible legitimate use of the bible, taken together, would amount to the abstracted langue which stands behind scripture and is implied by it, the sum of its interpretation and application, its systematic theology and world view. Just as a language system (langue) is not entirely accessible to the speakers of a language but is a conceptual matrix that shapes their speaking, so bible readers are unable to fully state all that the bible means and implies. A perfect and comprehensive systematic theology could never be written. The langue that stands behind scripture exists in the infinite mind of God and makes each individual parole of scripture possible, meaningful and coherent.

Thiselton notes that “Culler compares the double axes of langue and parole with the endless process of interaction between understanding and pre-understanding in the hermeneutical circle.” (New Horizons, p537)

In the relationship between langue and parole there is paradox which is suggestive of the hermeneutical circle or spiral in the formation of doctrine. Langue is made up of parole and determined by and does not exist in the world apart from particular utterances. But langue also pre-exists uses of it and makes parole possible. This is somewhat analogous to the relationship between the biblical text and systematic theology. The human interpreter of scripture inevitably brings to each parole of the bible his doctrinal system, his pre-understanding which seeks to approximate the langue of scripture, but this is also to be re-shaped by the parole of scripture, which alone are ultimately authoritative.

Deconstruction

Donald T. Williams is against it. He says:

deconstruction… is… the ultimate form of epistemological rebellion against the meaning structure built into the universe by God. It is hermeneutical lawlessness, the refusal of all restraint that is the essence of sin applied to texts.

from Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Dec 1998 available here.

In praise of Interlinear Bibles

Maybe there's some sort of comfort here for those of us who haven't really progressed beyond inter-linear Bibles:

For Benjamin, the optimal confrontation of source and target text takes the form of an interlinear version of the scriptures, ‘in which literalness and freedom are united’ (Benjamin, Illuminations, 1968:82). … In the space between the parallel lines of the two texts, the translation and its original are united in a ‘true langauge’ without the mediation of meaning (Benjamin 1968:77)…. Yet this space of the interlinear text is utopian and uninhabitable; it is a sacred space, untouchable (Derrida, The Ear of the Other,1985:115)…. For Benjamin, the literal, interlinear juxtaposition of texts reveals a ‘pure’ or ‘true’ language lying behind or within all actual languages… (1968:79)

Aichele, George, Sign, Text, Scripture: Semiotics and the Bible (Sheffield, Sheffield Academic Press, 1997) pp44-45

Is French such a rubbish language?

In arguing for the arbitrariness of words, the concepts they signify and the connection between the two, Jonathan Culler claims that:

The English concepts of a “wicked” man and of a “pet” have no real counterparts in French. (Culler, Jonathan, Ferdinand de Saussure (New York, Penguin, 1976) p13)

Is that really so?

No doubt Culler would just tell me how much it shows that I'm shaped by my language and culture but it seems to me that "wicked" and "pet" are pretty basic ideas. Are the Frenchies really that different from us that they have no morally depraved individuals and no domesticated animals they treat as members of the family?

Barthes Soundbites

Here are a few soundbites from Jonathan Culler’s Barthes: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2002):

In his inaugural lecture at College de France on forgetting and unlearning Barthes defined “Sapientia [wisdom]: no power, a little knowledge, a little wisdom, and as much flavour as possible” (Lecon, p46/478)

In 1971 Barthes claimed his historical position was “in the rearguard of the avant-garde” (Responses, p102)

“any biography is a novel that dare not speak its name” (Responses, p89)

In Lecon Barthes jokes that he hopes to make his Chair of Literary Semiology into a wheelchair, always on the move, “the wildcard [joker] of contemporary knowledge” (p38 / 474)

Or more seriously:

“the birth of the reader must be requited by the death of the Author” (Le Bruissement de la langue, p69/55)

literature (it would be better from now on to say writing), by refusing to assign a ‘secret’, an ultimate meaning, to the text (and to the world-as-text), liberates an activity we may call counter-theological, an activity that is truly revolutionary since to refuse to fix meanings is, the end, to refuse God and his hypostases – reason, science, law. (Le Bruissement de la langue, p68/53f)

We now know that a text is not a line of words releasing a Single “theological” meaning (the “message” of the Author-God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash. The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from innumerable sources of culture (Le Bruissement de la langue, p67; pp52-3)

Jesus the Sign of God

That link to the Leithart post I mentioned before worked for me today! He's drawing on Rhonda Wauhkonen discussion Nicholas of Lyra's "Hebraic" semiotics and hermeneutics in a 1992 article on Chaucer:

Jesus was also presented as the semeion (or the 'ot) [sign] of the New Covenant. As such, He assumed a peculiarly 'literary' role: being both the Sign and the Signified, the Revealer and the Revealed, He paralleled and surpassed in Himself the sign theory of the Hebrew Scriptures…. He brought together in Himself the 'ot (the sign), what it signifies, and the right reading of it. In effect, He became the Author, the Narrator, and the Participant in the 'Text' of the world and of Scripture." Hermeneutically as in every other way, "all things hold together" in Christ - sign, thing, author, text, reader.

The word is not the thing

One of the most basic principles of semiotics is that “the word is not the thing”, that is, that the verbal signifier is not the thing signified (see e.g. Chandler, Semiotics p64ff citing Korzybski 1933).

I wonder how this fits with an ancient Hebrew understanding of signification where the word “dabar” means word or thing.

Dr Leithart has some thoughts on his blog entitled Hebrew Hermeneutics (Thurs 29^th March) drawing on Rhonda Wauhkonen discussion of Nicholas of Lyra's "Hebraic" semiotics in a 1992 article on Chaucer contrasting Augustine's signum / res distinction. (Unfortunately I can’t get the continue reading or recent entries links to work).

According to Chandler, Foucault makes the big claim that “only in the early modern period did scholars come to see words and other signifiers as representations which were subject to conventions rather than copies (Foucault 1970). By the seventeenth century, clear distinctions were being made between representations (signifiers), ideas (signifieds) and things (referents).” (p71) I’m not sure I entirely follow or am persuaded by that, but anyway…

I wonder how historical developments in the understanding of signification might map onto understandings of what’s going on in the Lord’s Supper? Is transubstantiation maybe something to do with some larger cultural difficulty with distinguishing the signifier and the thing signified, with Zwingli over-reacting by separating signifier and signified? Or something like that?

Semiotics: an assessment

Paddy Whannel says that:

semiotics tells us things we already know in language we will never understand

Chandler, Daniel, Semiotics: The Basics (London, Routledge, 2002) p14 citing Seiter, 1992, 1

Daniel Chandler goes on to say:

At worst, what passes for ‘semiotic analysis’ is little more than a pretentious form of literary criticism applied beyond the bounds of literature and based merely on subjective interpretation and grand assertions. This kind of abuse has earned semiotics an unenviable reputation in some quarters as a last refuge for academic charlatans. (p207)

I hope semiotics has something more positive to offer and that my last 3 days in the library with it weren't entirely wasted!

World / Text / Sign / Sacrament

Sorry if I’m boring you on this subject, but here goes (again, perhaps):

Roland Barthes speaks of the world as a text: a system of signs that we read as meaningful.

Eastern Orthodox theologians speak of the world as a sacrament or sacramental.

Reformed theologians have spoken of the sacraments as words. Semiotics tells us that words are signs. May we call the sacraments texts, signifying systems, meaningful discourses, sermons (rather than isolated words)?

Could we also call the sacraments a world, a system, a social space, a microcosm, an epitome or re-making of a world or a renewal of the world?

Please do let me know if this is either gobbledygook or dangerous heresy, wont you?