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Symbols of the Sacred

In Symbols of the Sacred, a small but substantial book, Louis Dupré, Professor Emeritus at Yale University and a Roman Catholic believer, discusses in a learned way the signi cance of religious symbolism for the past as well as for our time. Basically an elaboration of the central chapters of his book The Other Dimension (1972), it is a collection of four texts. In the rst one, `Of Holy Signs', the author discusses the meaning of `symbol' as distinguished from `sign'. Symbols are signs, however, they do not, in contradistinction to signs, point to a signi ed, but they represent. As products of the imagination, they convey a wealth of meaning that supersedes that of concepts. Symbolism has a productive quality: instead of ordering reality it creates a new one. All this is particularly helpful for religious expression, for faith is the awareness of a non-objective, transcendent dimension which is dif cult to express. Dupré, furthermore, insists that all religious symbols must be rooted in language, as becomes apparent in sacred rites. Ritual acts follow rules and they reveal the deepmeaning ofman as homo ludens. But the act itself does not suf ce, it must be completed by the word. As a consequence, in the next chapter, `The Symbolism of Words', the problems of religious verbal expression are discussed, and the oddity of this kind of language. For Dupré, words are, for many reasons, symbols par excellence. Language establishes systems of meaning with an independent content; language yields rather varied meanings; language explicitly refers to reality; and therefore, it can also refer to meta-empirical reality. These characteristics together make language eminently apt for religious expression. The scopus and nature of religious language is now a hotly debated topic. Dupré opposes the interpretation of language as basically discursive. Moreover, he thinks, objective veri cation as a mark of the empirical world does not apply to a reality which is by nature nonempirical. We must conclude that religious language is possible. But not in the sense Wittgenstein and his followers propose, which argue for religious language as just revealing the outlook of the speaker, or his intention. Religious language cannot be reduced to its epistemic content, but neither is it an expression of intent. For the language of religion must be meaningful for its user, that means, it should refer to reality. On the other hand, this reality is a non-empirical one. Hence, the problem of religious language is not its inner consistency, but the question: Is it able to deal with a reality which transcends the world? Such language must be `thetic', positing a reality beyond the subjective experience of