The truth of broken symbols
By: Robert Cummings Neville.
Series: SUNY series in religious studies
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Albany
Language: eng
Number of pages: 320
Subjects: Symbolism
Description: This book provides a cross-cultural analysis of how religious symbols function from a theological and philosophical perspective. Showing how religious symbols can be true in various qualified senses, Neville presents a theory of religious symbolism in the American pragmatic tradition extending and elaborating Tillich's claim that religious symbols participate in the divine realities to which they refer and yet must be broken in order not to be idolatrous or demonic.

The Truth of Broken Symbols offers a theory of religious symbolism treating reference, meaning, and interpretation, and discussing different functions of religious symbols in theological, practical, and devotional contexts. It shows that religious symbols are to be properly understood as true or false and that symbol-systems such as myths, theologies, or liturgical symbols are to be used to engage divine realities while internally exhibiting semiotic structures of reference, meaning, and interpretation.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 273-294) and index.