Alexander Schmemann Symbolism

The understandings of “symbol” variously propounded by Alexander Schmemann, Karl Rahner, and Louis-Marie Chauvet have many points of commonality, though occasionally these are expressed so differently it seems they disagree. At other times, their wording is similar, but their meaning appears not to be. Schmemann and Chauvet cover much of the same ground. Both bemoan the common usage of symbol that makes it synonymous with ‘unreal.’ Chauvet tells us how “the liturgy has paid a heavy price for such a semantic drift…In the end one is left with liturgies literally in-significant in which everything or nearly everything is ‘fake’” (Chauvet, 72). Schmemann notes that similar shifts have happened with other words, namely images and mysteries, and

This is why it is what it represents. Obviously, it is not ‘really’ but ‘symbolically’ what it represents, precisely because the function of the symbol is to represent the real, therefore to place it at a distance in order to present it, to make it present under a new mode.”
Schmemann may quibble over his wording if not the ideas behind them. As already established, he thinks “represent” is too weak a word, and likely, the idea of presenting something “under a new mode” would seem overly reminiscent of the discussions of “form” and “matter” associated not only with the medieval scholastics, but with the “Western captivity” of Orthodox theology that he denounces. Differing personal agendas, whether of distancing oneself from scholastic tendencies or of striving to display continuity with it, do not necessarily speak to the agreement of ideas. And here it does seem that the ideas of Chauvet and Schmemann are generally compatible, even if they exist with some

Rahner seems to see the encounter with an interpreter as secondary in the characterization of a symbol. Rather, symbolism arises because things “necessarily express themselves themselves in order to attain their own nature” (Rahner, 224). Rahner understands symbols to be self-expression or manifestation, not unlike Schmemann who insisted that “the whole of A expresses, communicates, reveals, manifests the “reality” of B” (Schmemann, 141). Rahner’s contribution though is that this expression/manifestation is primarily an intra-symbol phenomenon. As he puts it “one reality renders another present (primarily for itself and only secondarily for others)” (Rahner, 225). This self-expression that is a symbol is “the way in which it communicates itself to itself” (Rahner, 230). Another being outside itself is not a necessary part of the equation, because the first being produces its own external, the Symbol. However, Rahner does echo Schmemann’s comment regarding knowledge through participation. He writes, “the symbol is the reality in which another attains knowledge of a being,” (Rahner, 230) whether this ‘another’ is the source of the symbol or truly another. This is likewise similar to Chauvet’s insistence that all knowledge is mediated through language, or symbols, since he holds that the symbol “is in some way the original language of human beings”