Folia Theologica 21. (2010)
Barbour Hugh O.Praem.: The Cosmology of Catholic Communications: Postmodern Kerygma? A Reflection by a Disciple of SS. Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas
162 Hugh BARBOUR it cannot reject them or avoid the symbolic order without self- destruction. Thus it can begin anew to find the order both of nature and revelation with something on the order of St. Anselm's proof from mere human reflection of the being of God, a proof, by the way, not entirely rejected by St. Thomas as possible for an intellect simply as an intellect, independent of the senses. This is the state of postmodern men and women who find in the midst of a media culture their desire for the knowledge and vision of God. Fifth: The conversion of the intelligence to the symbol, or the fundamental hermeneutic principle (La conversion de l'intelligence au symbole ou le principe herméneutique fondamental): The intellect, then, recognizing itself as constituted by signs, accepts the revelation of the symbol and thus rediscovers extra-mental being and faith in reason's acceptance of revelation, of theophany, especially in the liturgy which is a complex of theophanic symbols. This is the discovery of the transcendent referent which validates all the elements of the semantic triangle, now restored, between referent, meaning, and sign. This stage of development may characterize the European program of Pope Benedict. The mind discovers that "it is not the world which saves the symbol, but the symbol which saves the world." That is, the real referents of human symbolic and conceptual thought are themselves and in the human mind symbols of a great order of causes, extending from God through the angelic hierarchies to the sensible cosmos. We are no longer in the rationalist world of autonomous substances, nor in the nominalist world of mere signs and names, we have arrived back at the beginning in full possession of a world made by God as a revelation of His power and love, meant to be shared by his intelligent creation. This is a somewhat personalized summary of the work of Jean Borella, one which I commend to your attention. His recovery through the metaphysically transcendent referent of the semantic triad, in its quaternity, resembles by the way, Marshall McLuhan's tetrad of communications, whereby the media first enhance, then overthrow, then retrieve and reverse the meanings of things, but that is another lecture for another time. The Catholic who works in the media of communications can help accomplish in human "logoi" and human hearts, the submission to the revelation of the Most High God which is implied in the preaching and diffusion of the symbols whereby the Gospel is proclaimed. In this way he can restore contemporary men to their lost intelligible cosmos, and
