Meanings of words

Last week, the prof in BT501 drew on the board a little diagram to help explain how to think about the meaning of words. He said that exegetical fallacies often come from assuming that words have constant meaning across time and culture, that somehow the meaning is permanently tied to the letters written, the syllables spoken.

(a couple of easy examples clarify this: what idea did the word 'gay' convey 200 years ago vs today? what does the word 'solicitor' mean in England vs in the USA?)

He said that the letters written and syllables spoken are the SYMBOLS which represent the word. But SYMBOLS are helpless without mental activity, which is what's necessary to link a word to a CONCEPT.

If I say "chair", and you think about "chair", you have a picture in your head of a chair. That's the mental activity of attaching a CONCEPT to the SYMBOL.

Now, of course your picture of a chair will likely be different than mine. I may think of an Eames chair - you may think of a rocking chair or a recliner. To get us thinking about the same chair, we need a REFERENT, an external experience to which we can link the CONCEPT, and thus narrow it to a specific chair.

This takes the CONCEPT out of our heads and places it in reality - a reality that we can share, because we have a common REFERENT.

The triangle looks like this:

SYMBOL

(written, spoken)

/                                   \

/                                      \

/                                         \

/                  W O R D               \

/                                                \

/                                                   \

/                                                      \

REFERENT -------------------------- CONCEPT

(external experience)                             (mental activity)

Some people (like me) tend to live on the left side of the triangle, wanting to experience something to ascertain its real meaning, to connect that meaning to my senses in order to know it.

Others tend to live on the right side, perfectly content to think about things and let that be enough, with no real need to experience the thing to know it, nor any need to link their meaning to another's.

But when it comes to Biblical interpretation, the top of the triangle is where some people stop. Too bad.

I think that both fulness and balance in meaning comes from the tension between the REFERENT and the CONCEPT, between the experiential and the rational.  This is how we really come to know meaning.  We get out of our heads and go experience that which we know!  But we also think about the implications of that experience, and filter it.

The rational and the experiential.  Together.  Helping each other know things fully.  :)  Isn't that how it should be?