Wait! Jesus?
Wait—aren’t we talking about Jesus? A mediator between God and man, bridging the impossible ontological divide? One who was here but for a moment, then departed—leaving behind the one thing essential: a living symbol of transcendence, suspended between time and eternity, body and spirit. A physical man, now no more, resurrected into a glorified, spiritual form. Jesus: the Man-God, the incarnate revelation of the invisible. Is He not this symbol?
Yes—if we understand that He is not merely a Person, nor merely an idea, but the fusion of both: the reality of a person and the reality of meaning, made one in the divine event of revelation.
A person, even Christ, is not self-authenticating merely by being. Transcendence must reveal itself, and the proof of such revelation is not in the mere existence of a figure but in the credentials that accompany him—his authority, his knowledge, his truth. What we hold of Christ in our minds is just an idea unless it is formed by divine influence. The Holy Spirit is that influence, and only when the spiritual activity of the human soul aligns with the Spirit’s testimony is faith born. Even this alignment is not credited to us—for even the will to believe belongs to God.
In human consciousness, a person is an idea. And that idea, if it is to mean anything in relation to God, must be confirmed not by sentiment or projection but by transcendent knowledge. It is not the person of Jesus, per se, nor the abstract idea of God, but the revelatory meaning of that person—his moral and historical significance—that constitutes his authority as the true mediator. If this person should depart, what remains is that symbol: the fusion of divine meaning and human form.
Perhaps, then, we are not looking for a positive symbol, something the world already affirms, but a negative one—negative not in value, but in origin: not arising from the world or its categories, not from any construct of flesh or reason. This symbol is negatively immanent: present within the world, yet clearly not from it.
Such a symbol would answer the metaphysical stalemate that has plagued both philosophy and theology for centuries—since at least the Enlightenment. One side insists on internal, subjective truth; the other demands external, objective evidence. One rejects conservative appeals to historical proofs; the other dismisses liberal appeals to experience. Each offers half a truth and, in doing so, becomes a problem searching for its opposite as solution.
What is truly needed—yet never acknowledged—is a single, historical phenomenon that fulfills both demands at once: a symbol that is as transcendently real as it is ideally authoritative. Not liberalism. Not conservatism. Not internalism or externalism. But a third thing that subsumes them all: a divine disclosure so total in its informational and moral weight that it compels both reason and conscience by the same token.
Such a symbol would be capable of bearing the full weight of God to faith. It would become the very criterion by which human consciousness is judged. It would overwhelm the soul—not as a Person to be worshiped instead of knowledge, but as the source of knowledge that makes worship rational and moral. It would place us before the Beatific Vision, not merely at the end of life, but in the moral moment of truth where all symbols collapse into a single act of revelatory convergence.
Why, then, is the most obvious solution—the only one capable of reconciling all theological paradoxes—the one most consistently ignored? Because to name it is to implicate ourselves. Because this symbol, if it exists, can be nothing other than fulfilled messianic prophecy. And to discuss that is to speak of divine knowledge as the awakening and governing power of faith itself—an epistemology of revelation few dare take seriously.
To treat that knowledge lightly is to place oneself outside its saving reach.
Jesus: God and the Image of God
We resist calling Jesus a symbol of God because we fear it reduces him to a mere token—a human construct with no divine weight. But that reaction arises from a flawed view of symbolism as entirely man-made. We must broaden our definition. A symbol is not only a manufactured tool for communication. At its deepest level, it is the event of meaning, the fusion of appearance and content, the occurrence of revelation itself.
From God’s perspective, there is no distinction between symbol and meaning. His revelation is identical with its significance. Only when man enters the equation—man, whose consciousness is contingent and symbolic by nature—does the concept of a symbol become necessary for communication. In that relationship, the symbol becomes a point of contact between divine reality and human perception, enabling moral choice: to accept or reject the fundamental truth it carries.
God’s world is not symbolic—it simply is. But man’s world is symbolic by necessity. Thus, when God invades our world through the person of Christ, He creates a new kind of symbol: one that is God Himself in a form perceptible and intelligible to man. In this form, Jesus is the Word made flesh. When He acts, He creates further symbols—miracles, teachings, parables—that become tokens of God’s essence and purpose from various angles, all transcending mere human meaning.
If we refuse to understand Christ as a symbol in this divine sense, we will inevitably drift into idolatrous forms of religion—religions built around personal projections, untethered from revelation. Without the divine symbol, we are left with only our ideas of God—and these always lead us astray.
Man as Symbol
Man, too, is a symbol. He carries within himself the capacity for two opposing symbolic realities: one righteous, one sinful. But without exposure to divine meaning, the symbol of righteousness in man is dormant, and the symbol of sin remains unactivated. What God sees as righteousness or sin is not first about actions, but about the relation of the spirit to His truth.
Righteousness is not moralism. Sin is not merely bad behavior. These are only physical righteousness and unrighteousness, insufficient to display the spiritual reality God requires. What activates true morality is contact with the divine symbol—the revelatory knowledge of Christ.
This is the moment when the superficial is either confirmed or condemned. Before this contact, man is virtually sinful—not fully manifesting his spiritual alienation, but poised in it. After this contact, man becomes virtually righteous—not by performance, but by correspondence with the symbol of divine knowledge. He is now covered by that symbol—not just forgiven, but reoriented toward the substance it represents.
One man is imputed sin because his superficial morality masks a fundamental disregard for truth. Another is imputed righteousness because his superficial imperfection is overcome by the momentary but decisive exposure to the divine symbol which now stands for his entire inner state.
This imputed righteousness is not a doctrinal artifact. It is a miracle of knowledge—a divine instantiation that sets the soul on a lifelong path toward increasing correspondence with God’s meaning. It is not merely a heavenly bookkeeping transaction. It is a living invitation to grow in the knowledge that first gave it birth.
Let us not reduce “imputation” to a legal fiction. Let us see it as a revelatory miracle—a moment of symbolic contact with God’s truth that remakes the soul, not just its standing
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