Symbols, Deconstruction, and Your Neighbor’s Face

This week’s newsletter is a short pit-stop along the way in my series with

Daniel L. Bacon

on reconstructing faith. It will be relevant for part 2 of my Reconstructing from Weakness, but it is also relevant for everyday life.

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Of the many topics that I have studied in my ongoing reading of John’s Gospel, symbol is probably in the top three of what I study the most.

But I fear I have already lost you. My interest in symbols and symbolism is not just about John. It’s about reality. I am learning from the Spirit through the testimony of John that reality is symbolic. But we by and large fail to appreciate this reality.

Here’s the TL;DR: Your neighbor’s face is a symbol. Faces aren’t meant to be interpreted. Faces are for communion. The same goes for symbols generally.

Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel on Unsplash

Symbolic Faces

Iain McGilchrist summarizes how the brain hemispheres approach language differently:

“In the left hemisphere’s world words are seen as arbitrary signs: in the right hemisphere’s world they are seen as to some extent fused with the aspect of reality they represent.”¹

We can put the distinction like this: signs represent, while symbols mediate. With the left brain’s preference for representation, the sign is substituted for the thing it signifies. That is, “signs are substituted for experience.”² In contrast, the right hemisphere views the world symbolically, whereby words “are seen as to some extent fused with the aspect of reality they represent.”

Here is Sandra Schneiders with some real-world examples:

“The task of the symbol is to take that which, by nature, is spiritual or transcendent, and therefore sensibly unavailable in itself, intersubjectively available by giving it a “body,” a sensible form. The human body, in which the person becomes available, is perhaps our best example of symbol in the strong sense. Speech is the symbolization of inner experience. Art symbolizes the beautiful. The church is the symbolic presence of Christ in the world...Jesus is the symbol of God, and the Gospel itself the symbol of Jesus. In short, a symbol does not stand for something. It is the “something,” available in sensible expression. Therefore, it is the locus, the place, of revelation and encounter, whether human or divine.”³

If you have a parent or a sibling or a child or a spouse—in other words, if you are human—you know this. Take love and safety. As an experience, such emotions can’t be held or smelt or tasted, nor even seen or heard, at least not directly. The human face and voice symbolize the inner spiritual reality of love. We can see this through research in Polyvagal theory:

“the brainstem area regulating the autonomic state that supports feelings of safety also regulates the muscles of the face and head that we use for ingestion, social communication, and signaling [or better, symbolizing] that we can be trusted and are safe to approach. For example, the intonation of voice reflects our autonomic state. If we are calm and our heart rate is slow and rhythmically variable, our voice is prosodic.⁴ The intonation of voice reflected in prosody is the product of vagal pathways regulating laryngeal and pharyngeal muscles. When we are frightened or angry our voice loses prosody, and our heart rate is fast and loses rhythmic variability. Feeling safe, by being in a calm autonomic state, provides access to efficiently use the social engagement system and to convey the feelings of safety to another. This is universally observed as a mother calms her infant with melodic vocalizations, gentle reassuring gestures, and warm facial expressions.”

Symbolic Language

Words and language are symbols, too. Or at least, language can be used symbolically.

Symbols require more interpretation than signs. That is, there is an inherent depth of meaning, because they mediate the real which they represent, just as a prosodic voice mediates the depth of safety a parent provides for a child.

But it is all too tempting to take the left brain’s approach and focus on signs. We interpret the sign and move on. Once one arrives at the destination signified in a downcast face, a long ugghhhhh, followed by “I forgot your birthday,” interpretation is closed. No more meaning to glean (but certainly more meaning to give back!).

In contrast, symbols invite questions which lead to surprising answers which produce better questions, and, voila, dialogue. As Paul Ricour put it, “The symbol gives rise to thought.”⁵

Symbolic Deconstruction

“Signs have a single, fixed meaning, whereas symbols are by definition multivalent, capable of more than one meaning, their referent unable to be fixed in as precise or logical a way.”⁶

This distinction is, I think, helpful regarding discussions about deconstruction. I’m almost halfway through The Deconstruction of Christianity by Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett⁷, and it provides a clear illustration of the left-brain semiotic/sign approach. They nail down deconstruction to a fixed, determinate meaning:

“Faith deconstruction is a postmodern process of rethinking your faith without regarding Scripture as a standard.”

If others use “deconstruction” in a different way, eg as a crisis of faith guided by Scripture, they are wrong and not actually deconstructing. The point here isn’t to debate definitions but to point out the temptation to debate definitions caused by the authors’ focus on a single 1:1 meaning of “deconstruction.” They treat it like a sign, which one can follow, travel to the destination, and then move on (and in their case, move on to thoroughly warn against and critique deconstruction).

But what if deconstruction is a symbol? What if we viewed “deconstruction” through Sandra Schneider’s explanation of symbol as “(1) a sensible reality (2) which renders present to and (3) involves a person subjectively in (4) a transforming experience (5) of a transcendent mystery”?⁸

Regardless of it’s (alleged) 20th century roots in the philosophy of Jacques Derrida, Christian faith deconstruction is a without a doubt a reality that is much bigger than a slippery slope from critiquing doctrine leading to full-blown apostasy. How Schneiders explains symbols fits quite well with the image of deconstruction:

“The symbol, unlike the sign, is not an objective communication of information. Rather, it reveals by involving the person in a subject to-subject relationship with the transcendent. This characteristic of the symbol has two implications. First, unlike the sign, which designates the known by means of an unambiguous one-to-one correspondence (the exit sign means only one thing), the symbol leads a person into the unknown by rendering present the mystery of the transcendent, which is essentially many-faceted. Because the symbol involves a one-to-many relationship, it resists translation or explanation. The question “What does this symbol stand for?” shows that the questioner takes the symbol for a sign. The symbol not only does not “stand for” anything, it cannot be reduced to signifying one thing only. Second, the symbol does not give objective information; it initiates one into an experience that is open-ended…A symbol cannot be explained because it is not simply an appeal to the intellect but a locus of experience.”⁹

I believe Jesus’ temple cleansing and statement “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it up in three days” (2:19) are symbols of deconstruction. I believe we can and should approach “deconstruction” itself as a symbol, not a sign. If deconstruction is a symbol, that means it is a tangible image of an immaterial reality, something to be experienced and not merely understood.

What if “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it up in three days” is not only a once-for-all action of the Son but also a recurring action of the Spirit throughout history? And what if “deconstruction” is a succinct symbolic doorway into taking part in that action?

To return to a more everyday example, what if you looked at your neighbor’s face as a symbol? And what would be different about your communication and relationship if you related symbolically, along the lines of Schneiders’ quote above re: symbol as a “locus of experience” that “cannot be reduced to signifying one thing only”?

2 Corinthians 4:6

For God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of God’s glory in the face of Jesus Christ.

1. Iain McGilchrist, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 185.

2. McGilchrist, Matter with Things, 187.

3. Sandra Schneiders, Written that You May Believe: Encountering Jesus in the Fourth Gospel, 70.

4. Etymologically, prosody comes from Greek prosōidia “song sung to music” (https://www.etymonline.com/word/prosody).

5. Paul Ricour, The Symbolism of Evil, 348.

6. Dorothy Lee, Flesh and Glory: Symbolism, Gender and Theology In The Gospel of John, 16.

7. Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett, The Deconstruction of Christianity: What It Is, Why It’s Destructive, and How to Respond (Tyndale Elevate, 2024).

8. Schneiders, Written, 66.

9. Schneiders, Written, 67-68.