"But the point of Burke's work, and the significance of his
achievement, is not that he points out that religion and language
affect each other, for this has been said before, but that he proceeds
to demonstrate how this is so by reference to a specific symbolic
context. After a discussion 'On Words and The Word,' he analysess
verbal action in St. Augustine's Confessions. He then discusses the
first three chapters of Genesis, and ends with a brilliant and profound
'Prologue in Heaven,' an imaginary dialogue between the Lord and Satan
in which he proposes that we begin our study of human motives with
complex theories of transcendence,' rather than with terminologies
developed in the use of simplified laboratory equipment.
. . . Burke now feels, after some forty years of search, that he has
created a model of the symbolic act which breaks through the rigidities
of the 'sacred-secular' dichotomy, and at the same time shows us how we
get from secular and sacred realms of action over the bridge of
language.
