[220] Christianity many symbols ^awhich were important in Roman Catholicism ^bhave lost their power, are not alive any more, have lost their truth---I only refer to by far the most important one, the Holy Virgin: it has lost its validity for Protestants; it is no adequate expression of Protestant Christianity, and the question which is asked often by our Episcopalian friends is whether it cannot be revived. Now I am NOT in the position to say yes or no to this question: I don't KNOW whether in the Protestant world a revival of such a symbol is possible. I would say it is not in principle IMpossible, especially if it is taken definitively as a symbol and not as an empirical truth, or, even less, a historical truth, which would produce an immensity of absurdities. But if it is taken as a SYMBOL, I am not so sure that it is forever out of Protestant possibilities. I don't BELIEVE it, I myself feel not like it, but nevertheless l am not dogmatic enough simply to say No. In any case, FOR THE TIME BEING they have lost their power, and there is one possibility that they will never gain it again, in that historical continuity in which they once have died. If we look from this point of view at the history of faith^c, including our own period, then the criterion of the truth of faith^d is ITS BEING ALIVE---THE SYMBOLS^e BEING ALIVE. This certainly is not an exact criterion in any scientific sense, but we can call it a pragmatic criterion, one which we can easily apply to the past---we KNOW the symbols which have no power any more over anybody today, or of us today---we know the stream of obviously dead symbols. But it is more difficult to apply such a criterion of being alive, to presentday criteria, because it is