Dualism versus triadic semiology

Introduction post 5 of 10

Good morning! Today’s post from the book series’s introduction focuses on the difference between dualism—the stuff of two party representational government and one-party rule—and triadic thought, which honors the interpretant as a meaning-maker through dialectic practice. Covenants and even God as Trinity exemplify this “triadicity.” To access the other posts that make up the introduction to Political Devotions, click its subtitle’s post number: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10.

Photo by Suhyeon Choi on Unsplash

My imagined conversation between a political theorist and a theologian—Hannah Arendt and N.T. Wright in yesterday’s devotional—is perhaps a marquee dialectic in a book series titled Political Devotions. But the series explores many other dialectics. The concepts in conversation are often conjoined in the titles of devotional series such as “Creation and Exile,” “Entitlement and Entailment,” and “Guilt and Shame.” I’ve tried to make these conversations dialectic, not dualistic. That is, I don’t seek to flatten public discourse by reducing meaning to a choice between two alternatives—“creation or exile,” for instance. Instead, I’ve tried to put the concepts in relationship to build meaning.

Dualistic or dyadic thought, the stuff of two-party representational government as well as one-party rule, implies that meanings, and truth itself, are fixed elements. However, triadic thought—the acknowledgment that an interpretant is required to mediate between a symbol (say, a word or phrase) and what it represents—implies that meanings are relational.¹ Triadic thought is democratic thought, thought that involves dialectic practice. Dialectic practice in communities of interpretation generate meaning, and those meanings generate further meaning as the dialectic practice continues. To object that triadic meaning is relative is to disregard the objectivity generated by the covenants that hold triadic communities together.

This triadic semiology (semiology is the study of signs) comes up in some of our devotional series, so I thought it best to introduce the political and religious possibilities of triadic thought here. Two examples may suffice.

The first example involves John Dickinson, who moved in the Quaker’s triadic constitutional tradition. Dickinson was usually a political outsider—he is known as a “forgotten Founding Father”—because he didn’t fit in with either end of the narrow, dualistic spectrum defined by our nation’s first political parties. Before and during the American Revolution, he didn’t fit in as a Whig or as a Tory. After the Revolution, he didn’t fit in as a Federalist or as a Republican. His nonconformity in this regard has confused even most scholars, according to history professor Jane E. Calvert.² She argues that Dickinson didn’t fit in because of his adherence to “Quaker Constitutionalism,” a system unfathomable to dualistic thought. Quaker Constitutionalism is comprehensible, though, as a triadic approach to governing:

The Quaker theory is a mode of constitutional interpretation that values original intent and requires written codification of them, but recognizes that a paper constitution is merely an expression of the founding ideals of liberty, unity, and peace. The constitution is a representation of the polity itself, which is a living entity. The theory therefore presumes the need for evolution in a constant process of realizing the founding ideals. The people individually and collectively assume their imperfections while striving for perfection.³

Quaker constitutionalism, then, like strict constructionism, values the sign (in this case, the written constitution) and what it signifies (in this case, “the founding ideals of liberty, unity, and peace”). But unlike strict constructionists, the Quakers who developed this constitutional theory believed in the central role of the interpretant, “the polity itself, which is a living entity.” In this triadic approach, meaning isn’t fixed but evolves “in a constant process of realizing the founding ideals.”⁴

A second example of triadicity may be God himself—God as Trinity, as triadic. In semiotic terms, the Holy Spirit, as the interpretant, mediates as love between the Son (the image of the Father) and the Father (whom the Son represents).⁵

In a sense, these two examples are one: a constitution is a covenant, and the Trinity may be thought of as a covenant. Like any grant covenant cut in the ancient Near East, the Trinity is a chosen kinship in which the relationships are as vital as the “persons.” The three persons are one, meaning that they are separated only as far as it takes for them to be drawn together in love.

Triadic thought makes such a concept of the Trinity as actionable on earth as it is in heaven. For instance, American philosopher Josiah Royce described the church’s calling to operate as a “Community of Interpretation,” and in doing so he focused on the essential role of the interpretant.⁶ Royce coined the phrases “the Beloved Community” and “the Community of Interpretation” to define the church in relational and semiotic terms, respectively, as an avatar of the Trinity. Royce defines the church in relational and semiotic terms much as Paul defines the church in religious and political terms as an avatar of God, who gave Jesus “as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.”⁷ Both Royce and Paul describe the church, the “Community of Interpretation,” as having no walls and no ceiling.

If theologian Marcus J. Borg is correct—if our image of God determines our politics⁸ —then we might do well to meditate on the Trinity and to keep at our political devotions.

This is the fifth of ten posts that make up the series’s introduction. Click here to read the next one.

1. Berthoff, Sense of Learning, 3; Berthoff, “Recognition, Representation, and Revision,” 36. As Berthoff puts it, “. . . meanings are not elements but relationships.” Berthoff, 36. Walter Benjamin says much the same thing, distinguishing between a thing’s “mental being” and its “linguistic being”: “Language therefore communicates the particular linguistic being of things, but their mental being only insofar as this is directly included in their linguistic being, insofar as it is capable of being communicated.” Benjamin, “On Language as Such,” 316. In other words, meaning is dependent on language, which is a collective construct.

2. Calvert, Quaker Constitutionalism, 202-3.

3. Calvert, 10-11.

4. The original intent approach to constitutional interpretation, championed by the Quakers and later by Lincoln, is not the same as the strict construction approach. See gen. Jaffa, Storm over the Constitution.

5. Regarding Jesus as the image of the Father, see John 14:8-9; 2 Corinthians 4:4; Colossians 1:4-5. Regarding the Trinity as a triadic understanding of God, see gen. Robinson, God and the World of Signs.

6. “And, if, in ideal, we aim to conceive the divine nature, how better can we conceive it than in the form of the Community of Interpretation, and above all in the form of the Interpreter, who interprets all to all, and each individual to the world, and the world of spirits to each individual.” Royce, The Problem of Christianity, 315-19.

7. “And He [God] put all things in subjection under His [Jesus’s] feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.”—Ephesians 1:22-23 NNAS.

8. “Tell me your image of God, and I will tell you your politics.” Borg is quoted in Korten, Change the Story, 14.