I’ll get to polysemosity right away. But first think of this. Those of us who identify with the traditions of the Protestant Reformation are generally more comfortable, spiritually, with sounds rather than with sights. Think about two of our traditional theological heroes: Martin Luther, great champion of the Word of God, and Johann Sebastian Bach, great champion of sacred music. More generally, think of the architectural prominence in many historic Protestant churches of the pulpit and the pipe organ: as with Memorial Church at Harvard, for example, where I sometimes go for concerts. Words and music – that’s surely the major historic Protestant symbolic métier.
To invoke some traditional terminology here, in order to set this matter in clearer relief: we Protestants generally have thought of what we see when we worship, in contrast to what we hear, as what some of our historic theologians called adiaphora, which, in the language of the people in the pews, means: you can take it or leave it. Historically, Protestant sensibilities have been shaped much more by sound than by sight.
That has changed in recent decades, of course, under the influence of the movement for liturgical renewal, which flourished during the second half of the Twentieth Century. The east wall of the building in which I worship, for example, University Lutheran Church, Cambridge, Massachusetts, is often fully covered by a vast and strikingly designed dossal that wondrously shows forth themes from the history of our salvation. Still, I take it, hearing, both by Word and by Sacrament (for historic Lutheran teaching the Sacrament is the “visible Word”), is the spiritual sensibility with which Protestants overall still are generally most comfortable. Call this the spiritual triumph of polyphony. Thus Luther once could comment that “the ear is the primary organ of the Christian” and also refer to the church building, on occasion, as a – “mouth house.”
But consider polysemosity along side of polyphony, the visual as well as the aural. To this end, I will here plunge you deeply into the rich symbolic world of twelfth century Europe, as a kind of reflective baptism by fire. I will quote the distinguished medieval historian, M. D. Chenu, talking about theological symbolism in Europe during that era. Ponder his intense exposition, which, I believe, mirrors the intense theological symbolism that he’s discussing and which could leave you in a state of spiritual awe, if not shock. Chenu writes:
The most constant and not least disconcerting characteristic of the symbol [as we encounter it in the life of the twelfth century church] was its polysemousness. So essential a characteristic was this that to construct its meaning for the sake of conceptual clarity would have been to sterilize it, to kill its vitality. By nature, the symbol was seen as ambiguous. Fire warms, casts light, purifies, burns, regenerates, consumes; it symbolized the Holy Spirit or [human sin] as well. The bread of the Eucharist realized simultaneously the manna of the desert, the Jewish Passover rite, the last supper of Christ, the heavenly banquet, not to speak of natural nourishment. Moreover, each of the things it symbolized was in turn symbolic of yet other elements laden with significance. Jerusalem, historic city of the Jews, was the state of innocence of Adam; it was the church, the mystical city; it was the Christian soul, the triumphant church as a whole, and individual beatitude…. The breasts of the spouse in the Song of Songs…. signified chastity and humility; they were the arms of love with which the Virgin held Christ, God, and [humanity]; they were flesh and spirit…. The Woman of the Apocalypse, chapter twelve, was at the same time Eve, the people of Israel, the Virgin, the church; here the polysemous symbol drew upon a profound mystical coherence in the economy of salvation: Israelite motherhood found its highest expression in Mary, since all parenthood in Israel envisaged the begetting of the Messiah; and Mary in turn was the germinal cell of the church, which as mother continued to beget Christ upon earth.*
Imbued with this kind of polysemosity, might we not then be well instructed to expand the Protestant sensibility that we’ve inherited and think of the eyes as well as the ears as primary organs of Christians: and, in particular, imagine the building in which we worship Sundays as an eye-house as well as a mouth-house?
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*M.-D. Chenu, Nature, Man, and Society in the Twelfth Century: Essays on New Theological Perspectives in the Latin West (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1968), pp. 136ff.
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