Symbology? Surely the word you are looking for is symbolism

My last post focused on Saint Augustine’s perspective for approaching a translated work, and last week I commented on the analogies found in the Psalms.  Since both of these concepts (and indeed, even the posts) are symbolic in nature, I think it would be prudent to also examine Saint Augustine’s thoughts on the nature and purpose of symbols.  As I noted in my last post, Saint Augustine rightly believes that language is just a symbolic representation of human thought.  Thus, the words themselves are only important because they can help the individual understand the concept that is trying to be conveyed. 

Humans often give meaningless things symbolic purpose, and Saint Augustine does not have any major qualms with this.  For example, letters are simply marks that only contain meaning because we have an established system for interpreting them.  Thus, Saint Augustine believes that if we use these symbols to understand the important concepts (the nature of God, and one’s development of love and reverence for Him), then symbols can be an extremely helpful and beneficial thing (30).  However, Saint Augustine sees a potential problem if the importance of the symbol overrides the significance of the original abstraction that it is attempting to represent (74).  Rather, Saint Augustine believes we should know that, “Someone who attends to and worships a thing which is meaningful but remains unaware of its meaning is a slave to a sign.  But the person who...worships a useful sign...does not worship a thing which is only apparent and transitory but rather the thing to which all such things are to be related.  Such a person is spiritually free” (75).  Thus, we are to direct our attention to the symbolic understanding of God, but they symbols themselves are only important because they help us conceptualize the concepts behind His existence.  

This is a valid argument, and it is one that can be applied to more than just the study of God.   I feel that one should approach Saint Augustine’s work and the book of Psalms For with the mindset that it is not necessarily the words that are of paramount importance.  Really, the words are just a representation, often removed several times due to translation and copying errors, of ideas that were formed using difference conceptual frameworks.  If we can sort through the difficulties presented by this and get to the heart of the matter, the ideas that inspired these works and the subsequent interpretations and applications of the underlying concepts, I feel that much more can be gained from these older texts.  Similar to how Saint Augustine thought that symbols might be a better way to convey complex qualitative abstractions with symbols, perhaps the best way to approach these texts is by using our own conceptual frameworks (not that we have much or a choice) to explore the intriguing ideas and problems presented by both On Christian Teaching and the book of Psalms.  We are students at a private liberal arts college that encourages the development of critical thinking, and a large part of this so-called intellect supposedly relates to the interpretation of and expression of alternative perspectives.  Thus, we should be able to figure out the symbology of this work without much problem.