Light, Salt & Symbols

Religious symbols are powerful in a manner that evades much of the postmodern mind. Today, many of us consider ourselves so over it that we will not give much time to ourselves, let alone others or abstract knowledge. Our idea of truth, meaning and faith has become conditioned to last the duration of a social media post, the instance of a sign on the highway and the duration of loading a website. Being, as we are, so dependent on our technology and infrastructure, we have cheapened our lives by neglecting religious symbols and the use of our faculties of reason, imagination and love.

In the same way that Kendrick Lamar raps, “Take off the Wi-Fi… and what do you have?” in his 2022 song “N95,” I am inviting us to ponder a fresher idea of today that places the fundamental focus on making the best of who we are without technology. To this end, I will write and quote extensively from the Gospel of Matthew and Willard Van Orman Quine’s “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” (1951).

Today, daily life has come to resemble a rush that is difficult to get a grip on. After waking up, the morning unfolds, and if one is like most in the country, a phone is checked. The continual onslaught on our minds by media is a daily Niagara Falls, but the water there in New York State only reaches a rate of about 70 miles per hour. The Internet, cable TV and radio–all are radio waves–travel nearly light speed, that is, 186,282 miles per hour: more than 2,500 times 70.

It has gotten more difficult to hold onto things. What would have accomplished that in each of us is now under targeted assault by advertising conglomerates, news corporations and social media companies that compete for our time and attention. Now more than ever, it is important to pray for guidance while many are focused on influencing you for their own ends: narrative, affiliate links and quarterly reports. Just to live in society today requires the daily defense of one’s own personal sovereignty, as we are co-opted by media messages, seeking to hook us on subscriptions, prescriptions and corporate products.

Awash in media, making a statement must use what is already present for better ends. We still want to pronounce something new, but we inevitably utilize clichés. Deciding to do something becomes, “Just do it,” and so on. The collectivization of our individual striving by corporate status cheapens the individual self. Despite this, I have faith that we are each incredibly important, special and loved.

I have been expected to go along with a people and a society that clearly has no idea what it is doing. Rather than playing along, I build my house on the rock of Jesus, pointing to the freedom He offers and the victory He shares with all those who follow him and whom He has chosen.

The world being in darkness is not new. Jesus, speaking to crowds, said, “I am the light of the world” and “You are the light of the world” (John 8:12; Matthew 5:14). The light of the world is not an engineering marvel nor a manmade construction. It is not a lamp, nor is it a lightbulb. It is not a fire, nor an oven. The light of the world is not a TV, even if its screen could brighten a living room. The light of the world is not an iPhone, even with its colorful Retina display. None of that is, or ever can be, the light of the world. Only you and Jesus are the light of the world, burning bright and showing the glory of God by your communion with Him. You are the light of the world, victorious with our Father now and forever through the sacrificial atonement of the blood of Christ (Revelation 12:11). You are the light of the world, living in complete authority over the enemy (Luke 10:19).

In the same message, Jesus describes us differently, but the same, as “the salt of the earth,” important for the enriching and preserving of creation, but with an important caveat: “But if the salt has lost its saltiness, it is then good for nothing, but to be cast out and trodden under the foot of men” (Matthew 5:13). As Christians, we are called to change the setting we enter into. We are not called to blend in, but to transform it for the glory of our Father. The salt of the earth and the light of the world cannot be hid. Jesus explains, “Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house” (Matthew 5:15). Jesus describes the natural reason for light and its activity. A fire does not burn in darkness. This is also a strict condemnation of all occultism, from its meaning, that is, to be hidden. Jesus encourages each of us, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). First, we are to seek the righteousness and glory of our Father (Matthew 6:33).

This is a high calling and requires cultivation. Online circles today describe a crisis of meaning, but it seems more likely that we have forgotten how to believe. Rather than participate in the mythopoetics of life, many want to be Pharisees and discuss it. Being the light and salt of the world is a concrete, intimate calling that requires devotion. Light and salt are powerful symbols of the purpose of Christian living. But what is in a symbol? Think about how frequently we encounter them: crosses at our church and in our homes, paths as journeys, rivers as pulling processes. Symbols are landmarks in a network of meaning, the posits, in the work of W.V.O. Quine, that render sense experience intelligible.

The snake in the Garden of Eden, then, represents a real snake, albeit, one with legs. To a non-Christian, and even for many scholars like Moises Maimonides, this may be a difficult claim. But I will elaborate on what I mean with help from W.V.O. Quine’s “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” (1951).

Towards the end of his paper, after describing the synthetic nature of analytic claims (i.e., they are individual and social historical constructions, unable to be strictly justified on the basis of definition, interchangeability and meaning), he writes a claim that will still shock those who work in the foundation of knowledge.

As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ultimately, for predicting future experience in the light of past experience. Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries — not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer… But in point of epistemological footing the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conception only as cultural posits… Physical objects, small and large, are not the only posits. Forces are another example; and indeed we are told nowadays that the boundary between energy and matter is obsolete. Moreover, the abstract entities which are the substance of mathematics — ultimately classes and classes of classes and so on up — are another posit in the same spirit. Epistemologically these are myths on the same footing with physical objects and gods, neither better nor worse except for differences in the degree to which they expedite our dealings with sense experiences… The myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior to most in that it has proved more efficacious than other myths as a device for working a manageable structure into the flux of experience.

This passage is impressive. It is the analytic demolition of commonsense meaning, science, philosophy, and the rest of culture pursued by fellow analytic, G.E. Moore (Proof of an External World, 1939). Quine’s argument posits, at least, that matter, energy, a table and Zeus are epistemologically equal posits of sense experience. A posit is something positioned to explain, refer or describe what a datum or series of data of sense experience is. In Quine’s view, again, shocking to hear from the par excellence analytic philosopher, any sort of posit is epistemologically equally permissible in describing “the flux of experience.” This is a principled argument about epistemological justification: our posits remain posits, even if we see, measure or model them.

This argument is deep, freeing us from conceiving that that which is only physical exists.

In the “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” Quine opened Pandora’s Box. Western science, philosophy, truth-seeking and justification are back at the Oracle of Delphi, granting that if the oracle speaks rightly, then she is divinely inspired by Apollo. If we are back at the oracle, then we are also back at the resurrection of Christ, the parting of the Red Sea and the legged snake in the Garden of Eden.

The standard of verification for posits, then, is their ability to explain the flux of experience. How may experience be a flux, though? The idea that the world around us is changing continually is ancient, dating in the Western tradition to the ideas of Heraclitus, who said, “One cannot step in the same river twice.” However, there is a river I visit near my home. It has streamed through its valley reliably, and even if I visit with years between, somehow, it is still streaming through.

This describes a main distinction in spiritual and philosophical orientation. One perspective argues that everything is changing, with its derivations forming currents of relativism. Another perspective begins the other way, pronouncing that everything has been the same from the beginning. For the one that claims that everything is changing, they must consider whether their claim itself changes: that is, whether everything could not change. To be logically self-consistent, it must. Then, everything is changing, so everything does not change. That is the final answer, because that does not contradict itself.

I care for the Logos, the rational ordering principle of the universe, the Word spoken by God at creation and the incarnation of God as man. I care for the Logos. I will not see Him crucified again.

If a posit is able to explain reality, then it is as justifiable as any other posit. Quine enables the separating of the so-called “magma” of Cornelius Castoriadis on accord of its practicality. Religious symbols are the deepest posits ever conceived, the growths from the seedbed of past human experience. Our ignorance and eradication of this reality occurs at our peril.

As a Christian, I am called to be the salt and light of the world. What Jesus said, in His parables, is all true, even if He uses metaphor, analogy and symbol. Further, His manner of speaking is on an equal epistemic status as the latest physics papers, according to W.V.O. Quine.

May God bless you and keep you.