Andrew Meredith’s Reviews > Rites of the New Humanity: Essays on Sacramental Theology > Status Update

Roughly, in Augustine's theology, signs are a category of things that point beyond themselves to other things that they signify. There are "natural signs" that unintentionally speak of other things (e.g., footprints or unintentional facial expressions) and then there are "given signs" that are intentionally communicated to confer meaning (like a beacon or language). Our souls are dependent upon both in order to interact with creation and share themselves with other souls.

In order to successful communicate (exchange signs), there must not only be a tangible transmission, but there must also be enough of a shared socio-cultural field (a covenantal pact) of understanding between the giver and the recipient. Without which, the exchange of signs would be meaningless, or perhaps even counterproductive. For this Augustine uses the example of the word "Beta" which means "B" in Greek, but is the word for "Beets" (the vegetable) in Latin.

Compounding the issues involved in the exchange, every aspect of our being is contaminated by sin, so that even when we do successfully communicate, it is often in league with demons to propagate evil. The ruination of social life stems from the ruination of signification, and "the city of man" (opposed to the city of God) rests on this pact of falsehood forged by our first father with the Devil.

Salvation, then, must be social in Augustine's system, for it must restore the signifying systems, making them conducive to uncorrupt exchange and a just community.

Herein lies the loci that grind the gears of Augustine's formulations. Again the signs themselves are not the res (the things) in his system, they are merely empty vessels pointing to the things. Thus all communicative signs point beyond themselves to something deeper. On this trajectory, signs themselves are a material crutch that need to be overcome in order to have the real thing.

But, (here's the problem), if the New Covenant saves by taking us away from the signa toward the res, then it also takes us away from communal life, from the intermingling of souls, from the semiotic processes of human culture, and "salvation" itself begins to look a lot like being liberated from embodied creatureliness altogether into some kind of isolated, individualistic, disembodied, a-semiotic experience of the divine. In other words, salvation here can NOT be social (as Augustine earlier concluded that it must be), it can be only individual. Notably, Augustine does not draw this conclusion, but one can almost hear the internal gears grinding.