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Symbols As Teachers
By John M. Mulder

"The Reformation shattered the synthesis of art and Christianity, and undermined the Christian confidence in symbols world as reliable ways of embodying or stating Christian truth.... Gradually world however, Protestants began to appreciate what they, had so deliberately, and consistently, rejected.... The undermining of the iconoclastic tradition in Protestantism and the recover world of the power of symbolism can be seen in a case study, of American Presbyterian."

THE Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century brought a profound transformation of Christianity in the West, and among its most far-reaching implications was a revolution in the way a portion of the Christian church communicated its faith. For centuries, in a largely illiterate population, the church "spoke" of the grace of God largely through the medium of images and symbols. The central act of Christian worship-the mass-was conducted in a language unintelligible to virtually the entire congregation, and its power lay more in the visual imagery and symbolism of sacrificial love than its verbal persuasiveness of divine grace. What was true for the eucharist was equally true for the entire sacramental system of the late medieval church. The sacraments were the symbolic world of religious meaning, and the church became deeply dependent upon art and symbolism to portray and proclaim the majesty and mystery of divine grace.

Equally important, the physical space in which people worshiped became the arena for teaching through imagery what few people could understand through verbal instruction. It requires, somewhat ironically perhaps, an act of imagination for us in the latter part of the twentieth century to reconstruct this preliterate world of Christian faith and culture, but it is certainly true that for nearly fifteen hundred years the

John M. Mulder is President and Professor of Historical Theology at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Formerly Assistant Editor of THEOLOGY TODAY, he now serves on its Editorial Council. He is author of Woodrow Wilson: The Years of Preparation (1978). general editor of the Library, of Living Faith (1983), editor, with Hugh T. Kerr. of Conversions (1983). and, with John F. Wilson, of Religion and American History (1978). This article is based on the work of a task force commissioned to develop a new seal for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and Dr. Mulder served as its chairperson. in June, that church's General Assembly approved the sea] discussed in this article.

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Christian church taught more people about the Bible and the Christian life through symbolism and imager), than through books and words.

The Reformation shattered the synthesis of art and Christianity and undermined the Christian confidence in symbols as reliable ways of embodying or stating Christian truth. The destructive impulse within Protestantism was based on the affirmation of the basic and primary authority of Scripture and the subordination of both tradition and experience to the revelation of God's Word in the Bible. Protestants sought to recover the "purity" of the New Testament church, and in doing so they attempted to remove the centuries of "corruption" which they perceived in late medieval Catholicism. In turning to the Bible and especially in their interpretation of the Ten Commandments' injunction to revere God alone and not to make graven images, the Protestant mind became fascinated with words rather than symbols. At its worst, the Protestant movement became vehemently and violently iconoclastic, sometimes destroying much of the beauty of Christian art in its wake.

The invention of the printing press and the translation of the Bible into the language of the people spurred the growth of literacy in the West, particularly among Protestant peoples, and encouraged the modern preoccupation world with education. As historian Lawrence Stone has suggested, the final result was a dramatic turn in European society as it shifted from a culture of imagery to a culture or words.¹

I

The implications of this religious revolution, of course, were mixed. In worship, Protestants elevated the reading of Scripture and the sermon to a preeminent position, and the centrality of preaching, particularly in the Reformed wing of the Protestant church, remains a consistent characteristic of Protestant worship in the twentieth century. The sermon relied on the power of words and verbal imagery to teach people and to convey the gospel, and the centrality of Scripture affected Protestantism's understanding of its educational task-ranging from catechetical instruction and devotional literature to the establishment of Sunday schools.

One can also argue that the dependence upon the analysis of Scripture and verbal communication was intimately connected with the rise of democratic political movements in their ability to win allegiance through oral and moral suasion and with the modern scientific examination of nature and its resultant technology. Correspondingly, what was lost was the centuries-old tradition within Christianity which relied upon art and the imagination to comprehend the biblical message. As people of the book, Protestants became obsessed with the Word and with words and at its worst their obsession became woodenly literalistic, robbing Christianity of both mystery and beauty.

¹ Lawrence Stone, The Causes of the English Revolution, 1529-1642 (New York: Harper and Row, 1972).

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It was this Protestant and largely Reformed tradition which played such an influential role in shaping American society and culture during the colonial period, and its impact can still be seen in the austere and simple style of colonial Protestant churches, ranging from the meeting houses of New England to the only slightly more elegant architecture of Anglican churches in the South. The evangelical revivals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries exacerbated the Protestant dependence upon the words of the Bible and the words of the preacher. Protestants hotly contested the place and propriety of music and hymns in worship, until music triumphed in all but a few groups seeking to recover the primitive "purity" of early Christianity. It finally took Horace Bushnell, often hailed as the father of Christian education in America, to remind his fellow Protestants that even words contained a symbolic element. To drain language of its symbolic content, he argued, destroyed its capacity to communicate meaning and truth. His admonition struck a discordant note in mid-nineteenth century America, lost amidst the cacophony of words from the pulpit and the political stump.

Gradually, however, Protestants began to appreciate what they had so deliberately and consistently rejected. During the late nineteenth and earl), twentieth centuries, various movements emerged to reform and reshape the Protestant understanding of the power of imagery and symbolism in the Christian faith. One example can be seen in the neo-Gothic revival, and large urban churches were built that owed their aesthetic inspiration more to the late middle ages than the ethos of an industrial society. Church historians such as Philip Schaff created controversy by insisting on the continuity of Protestantism with the Catholic tradition. Some denominations, such as the Presbyterians, began to develop suggested orders of worship, litanies, and prayers to replace the unstructured chaos and anarchy of evangelical worship services.

II

The undermining of the iconoclastic tradition in Protestantism and the recovery of the power of symbolism can be seen in a case study of American Presbyterians. During the 1890s, southern Presbyterians cautiously moved toward developing a seal for the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. Created b), Dr. R. P. Kerr, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Richmond, Va., and Dr. Walter W. Moore, a church historian teaching at Union Theological Seminary in Virginia, the seal was designed for the Executive Committee of Publication and adopted for its use in 1891. Although it was widely used for decades, the pervasive distrust of symbolism prevented its being approved as the formal seal of the PC US until 1956. (See figure 1.) At virtually the same time, northern Presbyterians developed their own seal for the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. It is not clear who was primarily responsible for the design, but in 1892 the General Assembly adopted a recommendation making the symbol the official seal of the church. (See figure 2.)

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The seal of the United Presbyterian Church of North America apparently dates from a later period, and its origins are unclear. The seal simply appeared in the Minutes of the General Assembly in 1933-with no indication of whether it was adopted or its meaning. (See figure 3.) When the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. united with the United Presbyterian Church of North America in 1958 to form the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., the new church commissioned the designer and well-known church architect Harold E. Wagoner of Philadelphia to develop a new seal which was adopted by the General Assembly in 1959. (See figure 4.)

In 1983, the two major branches of American Presbyterians-the United Presbyterian Church and the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.-"reunited" after 122 years of division, caused by the Civil War and perpetuated by years of theological, ecclesiastical, and sociological differences. A seal was created by the artist and designer James Avery for the "reuniting" General Assembly meeting in Atlanta, and the Assembly approved the seal as an interim seal until a task force recommended that seal or a new seal for the newly-formed Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). (See figure 5.)

These seals, spanning more than ninety years of American Presbyterian history, are noteworthy, in their gradual and even halting move away from the iconoclastic roots of the Reformed tradition, but they also demonstrate the ethos and theology of their respective denominations. The earliest Presbyterian uses of symbolism are virtually literalistic in their aesthetics. If the Calvinist concern for the authority of Scripture was to be emphasized, then a Bible appeared. Similarly, with the exception of the seal of the Presbyterian Church of North America and the seal of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S., the seals tend to be highly verbal-"saying" a great deal through excessive and explicit imagery, rather than using symbols to suggest or evoke Christian ideas. Perhaps most striking is the absence or lack of prominence of the cross in all but the most recent seals, which underscores the Reformed suspicion of any, symbolism that might be too suggestive of the Roman Catholic tradition.

III

The task force established by the General Assembly of the PC(USA) ² was given a broad but ambiguous mandate-to study the interim seal of

² In addition to the author, the other members of the task force were: Nancy Chinn, an artist in San Anselmo, Calif.: the Rev. Calvin W. Didier. pastor of the House of Hope Presbyterian Church. St. Paul. Nfinn.; Dr. Theodore A. Gill, theologian and aestheticist at John Jav College, City University of New York; Lucille Hair, organist and choir director at University Presbyterian Church. Baton Rouge. La.: Wynn McGregor, a worship leader and Christian educator from Corpus Christi, Texas; the Rev. Neil Severance, vice president and dean of students at the Rhode Island School of Design; and Dr. Leo F. Twiggs, professor of art at South Carolina State College, Orangeburg. S.C. Assisting the task force was the Rev. Mary B. McNamara. staff associate or the General Assembly Council of the Presbyterian Church (USA).

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the church and to recommend a seal for adoption by the General Assembly. In some respects, the possibility of a committee evaluating and creating a seal seems faintly ludicrous. Committees are known for their capacity to make camels out of horses, and the prospect of producing a work of art from a committee appeared mutually contradictory. The task force was inundated with suggestions about what should be included or excluded from the seal. There was also inevitable grousing about the cost and propriety of such an effort when the church had more pressing mission priorities; the iconoclastic ghost in a new guise. At times, the cross-currents of opinion provided their own comic relief. Some felt the dove in the interim seal was too fat and looked like a pigeon; others described it as too thin. Some charged that the use of the Latin phrase, "Ecclesia Reformata Semper Reformanda," was elitist. Others pointed out that it contradicted the Reformation insistence on the vernacular. Still others conducted a lively debate about the translation of the phrase itself. One woman even wrote to say that the interim seal could not be rendered in needle-point and enclosed her effort as proof. She was right.

The task force finally rejected the interim seat or adaptations of it. Then, using comments and suggestions from many Presbyterians, the task force developed a list of criteria of both qualities and substance which it wanted incorporated into the new design. The discussions about those criteria were intense, for the members of the task force gradually confronted the relative novelty of symbolism in the Reformed tradition and the challenge of using symbols creatively to communicate the Christian faith. The group self-consciously attempted to develop a seal that had educational potential, one whose qualities and symbolism would not be exhausted at first glance. The task force also realized that the seal would be or might become a mini-confession-a brief statement of Presbyterian identity, faith, and mission.

But the task force also recognized that the iconoclastic impulse in the Protestant tradition was also a resource. The dominant philosophy of design and symbolism today is simpficity-that less is more or that more is communicated by stating less. A willingness to accept the iconoclasm of the past opened the task force to designs that would simultaneously be classic and contemporary. These conclusions were not this clear or explicit when the group began its work, but they placed an important role in shaping the course of its deliberations and the nature of the final design.

The seal, the task force believed, should maintain continuity with historic symbols in the Reformed tradition and the larger Christian tradition. It should be easily understood and graphically flexible, capable of being used in color as well as black and white, capable of being reduced to a very small image as well as expanded for use on a large scale. The task force rejected the use of any mottoes, believing that the design should not be dependent upon words for its statement and its meaning. The design should have an emotive, evocative character,

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Fig. 1	Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig 4	Fig. 5

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Fig. 6

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suggesting the vitality of the mission of the church. and yet it should be more formal than informal in nature and have a "structural" feeling. The seal should be timeless and should avoid temporary theological thernes. Finally, in what was undoubtedly more of a hope than a realizable goal, the task force stated that the seal "should not be divisive" for the church.

Equally important, the task force decided on certain basic symbols and images which should be included. The cross was immediately, though not without debate, identified as the single most important image because of its centrality throughout the history of the church and its currency as the most ecumenical of Christian symbols. The task force also felt that the Trinity should be represented, as well as the relationship between the Holy Spirit and the Word. Because of the frequency 'in which names or fire appeared in earlier seals and because of the multifaceted meaning of fire in the Christian tradition, flames were stipulated as essential ingredients in the new design. The task force also hoped to find some way of symbolizing the representative form of Presbyterian church government and the importance of covenant as a theological idea, but it was skeptical that any symbol could be found to embody these ideas.

IV

The task force invited more than thirty designers to apply for the task of creating the new seal, and eighteen expressed interest. After a grueling session, the task force finally agreed on three who were interviewed. Malcolm Grear, one of America's preeminent graphic designers, was selected. He is professor of graphic design at the Rhode Island School of Design as "ell as president of his own company, Malcolm Grear Associates. His firm handles all the graphic design for the Guggenheim Museum, and he designed the symbol of the Metropolitan Opera in New York. the seal of the U.S. Department of Health Ind Human Resources, as well as design projects for many corporations and non-profit institutions. His consultant on the project was Dr. Martha Gregor Goethals, a distinguished designer and art historian who also teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design. Trained in theology and art at Yale, M.I.T. and Harvard, she assisted Grear and his associates, as well as the task force, in exploring the depth and range of possible Christian symbolism that might be used in the new seal.

The result of their efforts is, I believe, a powerful symbolic statement of the Presbyterian Church's heritage, identity, and mission. (See figure 6.) The image includes, in contemporary form, several classic Christian emblems. But it also provides room For individual imagination and interpretation. Archibald MacLeish once observed that "a poem should not mean/ But be." and that is equally true of all works of art, including this symbol. However, at the risk of violating MacLeish's principle of aesthetics, let me suggest the variety of images that might be seen in the seal and its breadth of meaning.

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V

The basic symbolic motifs are the cross, Scripture, the dove, and flames. ³ The dominant structure and symbolic element in the design is the cross, representing the incarnate love of God in Jesus Christ, his passion, and his resurrection. The designers started with a Celtic cross, without the orb, as the basic outline for the cross, and it is striking that the final design is very similar to a Tau cross, the oldest form of the cross in the Christian tradition. As the designers experimented with the basic lines and shapes of the cross, the contour of an open book began to emerge In the horizontal section, and the two center lines of the cross became the representation of an open book. This integration of the horizontal dimensions of the cross with the book motif highlights the role of Scripture in the Reformed tradition.

The slightly-flared shape of the Celtic cross also enabled the designers to transform the uppermost part of the cross into a descending dove, symbolic of the Holy Spirit. The dove is graphically connected to the symbol of Scripture, thus emphasizing the role of the Spirit in both inspiring and interpreting Scripture in the life of the church. Beneath the image of the book can also be seen the suggestion of a lectern or pulpit, thus capturing the importance of preaching in the history of Presbyterian worship.

Integrated into the lower part of the design are names which form I an implied triangle, a traditional symbol of the Trinity. The names themselves convey a double meaning. They may be interpreted as a symbol of revelation In the Old Testament when God spoke to Moses from the burning bush, but they are also symbols of Pentecost and the birth of the church.

If one pushes the symbolism of the triangle still further. it might also evoke the nature of Presbyterian government with its concern for balance and order, dividing power between ministers of the Word and lay people and between different governing bodies. Such a conception of church polity was directly linked to covenant theology, and the triangle can therefore be interpreted on a number of levels, symbolizing the Trinity, Presbyterian polity, and the idea of the covenant.

Studying the design at length yields other possible symbols. In the shape of the descending dove, the body of the bird might also be the shape of a fish, all early Christian sign for Christ, recalling his ministry to those who hunger. Interestingly, one of Grear's associates who drew hundreds of renditions of the dove did not notice the fish for several months. The overall character of the design has reminded some of the calligraphy of ancient Hebrew and Greek manuscripts. Others have identified a baptismal font or a communion chalice in the curved segment of the line which forms the spine of the book and links with the

³ For some of the explication of the seal's symbolism. I am indebted it) the other members of the task force and to Gregory Goethals.

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central vertical line of the lower part of the cross. The half-circle in the center of the cross, intersecting with the peak of the suggested triangle, also evokes Paul's description of creation "groaning in travail," anticipating the final victory of God in Christ.

The use of white or blank space in the design conveys vitality of life, freedom, and the urgency of the mission of the church. This "throbbing" quality, as Grear described it, is particularly true when the seal is rendered in gold, blue, and red (the official colors), or when the entire seal appears in a dark or rich solid color. The open quality to the cross and the use of white space attempt to capture the spirit of the Calvinist tradition which sees the church as reformed and yet continually being reformed and renewed by God. The "structural" and vital quality of the design strives to represent the creative balance and tension between those forces of "order" and "ardor" which have characterized the history of Presbyterians in the United States.

One of the serendipitous characteristics of the seal is the three-fold quality of the cross. The designers were unaware that the formation of the Presbyterian Church (USA) was the product of the union of three Presbyterian communions-the UPCNA, the PCUSA, and the PCUS-over 25 years. This three-way union brought together thousands of Presbyterians with diversity in theology, worship, and social attitudes. The pluralism of the church and its triadic unity are both captured in the graphic design, and it recalls John Calvin's commentary on Paul that "the union ought to be such that we form one body and one soul."

VI

Only time will tell how well Presbyterians and others respond to the new seal of the Presbyterian Church (USA), but it is clear that at least this portion of Protestantism has taken a step toward reclaiming the powerful tradition of symbolism in the Christian church. The new seal is an aesthetic improvement over previous seals in its educational qualities and power. What intrigued the members of the task force was the multiple layers of meaning and interpretation that the symbol evoked. Rather than making its statement literally and explicitly, the new seal invites the observer into raising questions and proposing answers to central questions of Christian faith and life. In short, this new seal is educational in its ability to open an inquiry, rather than making a literal statement.

That is part of genius of art and education, for they offer the human mind and the human spirit new opportunities for seeing and understanding reality and the mystery of human life in God's light. By reclaiming symbolism as a significant educational resource, the church will enrich its proclamation of the meaning of the Christian faith. This reclamation is one particularly suited for our contemporary culture which increasingly grasps the significance of symbols as a form of communication and

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education. Ironically, the church's ability to communicate and educate through images and symbols has been largely surrendered to the economic sphere. Attempts such as the Presbyterian Church's new seal may be a partial means of recovering symbolism, mystery, and beauty in the church's worship and educational ministry.