Theology and Semiotics

Theology inevitably operates within some kind of general account of human being in the world. The semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), which has its roots in Augustine and medieval scholasticism, can provide such an account. Peirce’s triadic doctrine of signs moves beyond both myth and metaphysics and provides a way for theology to again speak God. It allows us see the divine-human Person of Jesus Christ the Sign, and so speak the God who, in Bonhoeffer’s pointed Trinitarian formula, places us without God in the world: “Before God and with God, we live without God.” In other words, faith in the Sign means that the Spirit teaches us to live as mere creatures, in freedom and responsibility, precisely because we are incorporated into the very life of the Triune God.