The trope of misunderstanding within the Fourth Gospel of John emerges from the diegetic characters’ misunderstanding of Jesus’ highly metaphorical language, causing an epistemic gap between the literal, albeit mistaken understanding of Jesus’ words, and their metaphorical, often transcendental import. This epistemic gap is significant within the theology of the Gospel, for the encounter between the characters and Jesus serves as a paradigm mirroring the encounter between the reader and the ‘Word’, the logos, ostensibly the divine Gospel itself. The inability to understand the Word of God, the Gospel, is akin to an inability to understand Jesus’ divine revelation, for Jesus is “the Word became flesh” (English Standard Version, John 1.14). The theological importance of understanding the Word is further underscored by the triplicate opening of John 1.1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” which alludes to the creation narrative of Genesis 1.1: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” The syntactical association between the two sentences indicates the consubstantiality of the Word as God, emphasising the divine nature of the Gospel as a revelation of Jesus himself.
The encounter between the reader and the Gospel, however, thrusts the reader into an uncertain epistemic position; for while the reader is vouchsafed a higher degree of understanding than the diegetic characters, the Gospel constantly reminds the reader of his own incomplete understanding. The disclosure of Jesus’ divine identity in the Prologue of John “provides firm footing for the reader’s reconstruction of hidden meanings and reception of suppressed signals” (Culpepper 168) within Jesus’ metaphorical language, allowing the reader to become “[an ‘insider’] who understand[s] the elusive implication of Jesus’ revelatory discourses” (164) while recognising the folly of those who take Jesus’ words literally. Paradoxically, Jesus’ divine proclamation of egō eimi or “I am” in John 18.5 and 8.58—an inscrutable proclamation Frank Kermode remarks as “characteristically veiled in ordinary language usage” (453)—alongside the dense metaphors of the seven ‘I am’ statements interpose a “divine plenitude” (Schneiders 50) of meaning between the reader and Jesus, necessarily limiting the reader’s understanding of Jesus’ divine self-revelation through the Gospel. The epistemic gulf created thus seems to deny the reader of real communion with Jesus through the Word, and the reader is compelled to take an absurd position if reconciliation cannot be achieved between limited and complete understanding.
A reconciliatory measure, however, can be found within the rich symbolism of the Gospel. As Culpepper argues, “symbols … often span the gap between knowledge, or sensible reality, and mystery,” (183) for a symbol “bears some inherent analogical relationship to that which it symboli[ses].” Symbols concretise the abstract, curbing the otherwise infinite semiosis that is generated from signs and metaphors employed in the Gospel, signs and metaphors that merely “arbitrarily stand for or point to something other than themselves” (182). Symbols thus serve the purpose of bridging the epistemic gap, and as they develop within the Gospel’s narrative, they elicit an epistemic progression in which the reader partakes, edifying the reader’s understanding of the transcendental A plethora of symbols are used within the Gospel, but for the purposes of this essay we shall begin with an exploration of the symbolic use of water. The use of the symbol of water within John cannot be abstracted from the context within which it is placed, for its particular appearance within several chapters is key in creating an epistemic progression that mirrors the narrative’s advancement. The appearance of water in subsequent chapters often informs the use of water in previous chapters, creating an interlocking resonance of meaning that further enhances the progression the reader engages in by observing the symbolic use of water.
Water in the Gospel of John is a symbolic instantiation of the Holy Spirit. In John 1, John the Baptist, who “bapti[ses] with water,” anticipates the coming of Jesus, he who “bapti[ses] with the Holy Spirit” (1.33, emphases mine)—physical water is directly conflated with the Spirit. Prima facie, this association between the physical and the transcendental is not immediately intuitive. Indeed, the distinction between “earthly” and “heavenly” things is the dual axes on which most of the misunderstandings in John turn upon, a distinction Jesus himself demarcates in John 3.12. It is only apt, then, that the symbol of water seeks to bridge both, and a thorough exploration of water in the Gospel will allow us to reach the understanding of water as the Holy Spirit in the Gospel narrative.
In John 2, the symbolism of water is couched within the first Sign Jesus performs at the Wedding at Cana. At the wedding, water is drawn from six jars used “for the Jewish rites of purification,” recalling the purifying rites of baptism in John 1, before water is transformed by Jesus into wine (2.6-9). The thaumaturgical transformation of water into wine anticipates further transformation of water, a transformation Jesus himself shall initiate. John 3 is highly evocative in its enhancement of the water symbols employed in John 1 and 2. In John 3, Nicodemus fails to understand when Jesus tells him: “unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (3.5, emphases mine), in which the juxtaposition of water and Spirit is enhanced by their conflation in John 1. Furthermore, John the Baptist’s baptising at “Aenon near Salim, because water was plentiful” (3.24, emphasis mine) was followed by a “discussion … over purification” (3.26, emphasis mine), which prompts John the Baptist to exalt Jesus as “the one who has the bride is the bridegroom” (3:29). These verses recall the bridegroom in John 2:10 who was praised for having “kept the good wine until now” (2:11)—Jesus is directly conceived as the generous bridegroom who provides in abundance (“they filled [the jars] up to the brim” [2.7]) and, returning to John 3, is anticipated as one who “gives the Spirit without measure” (3:34). John 1-3 thus provides a telling example of how the imbrication of the symbol of water in several chapters creates a surfeit of meaning within the symbol that communicates an expressive relationship between water and Spirit.
Following John 1-3, John 4 heralds a clear epistemic shift from the material use of water to the use of water-as-Spirit in the encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan Woman. Jesus requests a drink from her (4.1), but the woman’s initial reluctance prompts Jesus to declare his divine origin: “If you knew … who it is that is saying to you ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water” (4.10). The narrative adopts ‘living water’ as a clear metaphor for the Spirit, as adduced by John 1-3. More significantly, the woman’s role as provider of material drink is divested as Jesus becomes the provider of ‘living water’, becoming “a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (4.14) and moving the symbolism of water away from its literal understanding. This epistemic shift is catalysed further in John 4.11, where the woman mistakes Jesus’ ‘living water’ for running water, and ironically asks Jesus if he is “greater than our father Jacob” (4.11-12). The Samaritan Woman is ironised in the encounter for her literal understanding of water and her ignorance of Jesus’ identity, an irony only realised by the reader because of the information hitherto vouchsafed. The reader is therefore advised against interpreting the use of water literally lest he should fall victim to the Gospel’s incisive irony. However, the Samaritan Woman’s subsequent request for living water (4.15) displays a positive understanding of Jesus’ words that contrasts against Nicodemus’ failure to comprehend in John 3. The Gospel thus presents two consecutive characters whereby the former has progressed beyond the latter, reflecting the reader’s epistemic progression in the symbolism of water. This is marked more concretely as the “woman left her water jar” (4.28) behind, ostensibly for Jesus’ ‘living water’. For the astute reader, the water jar also completes the six water jars in John 2.6, whereby the theologically significant number of seven reinforces the ‘divine plenitude’ of Spirit conveyed by the symbolism of water. This shift is further augmented in John 5, in which the healing water of Bethesda is shown to be ineffectual for the sick man who had waited futilely for “one to put [him] into the pool when the water [was] stirred up” (5.7). Healing is instead vested within the provider of living water, who heals the sick man instantaneously (5.8-9) once again in a second thaumaturgical Sign.
The symbolism of water as the Holy Spirit is brought full circle in John 7.37-9, where Jesus proclaims himself as provider (“If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink” [7.37]), as transformer of those who understand his divine nature (“Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water” [7.38]) and where water is explicitly clarified by the narrator as the Holy Spirit (“Now this [Jesus] said about the Spirit” [7.39]). The attainment of this symbolic understanding by the reader allows the Gospel to transit into a less symbolic and metaphorical style within John 18-19, arguably because the reader now necessarily derives understanding from the literal mention of water. John 19.28-9 exemplifies this: in Jesus’ dying moments, the provider of living water requests for a drink (“I thirst” [19.28]), echoing his earlier request for a drink from the Samaritan Woman, and the provider of good wine in John 2 is now given “sour wine” (19.29); but upon his death the paltry material is glorified and transcends into the “blood and water” (19:34) that flows from Jesus’ side. This “blood and water” is an abundance of the promised Spirit given so that “whoever drinks of the water that [Jesus gives] him will never be thirsty again” (4.14). Indeed, Jesus’ death consummates the reader’s understanding of water as the symbolic instantiation of the Holy Spirit.
Despite the rich layers of meaning already present in the symbol of water, it is itself imbricated within the master symbol, the logos of the Gospel itself. Just as the symbol of water finds its counterpart in the Holy Spirit, in the Prologue the Gospel self-consciously qualifies itself as consubstantial with the divine—“the Word was God” (1.1)—and thus becomes also the “literal symbol of Jesus, that is, the ‘place’ of our encounter with [Jesus] and through him with God” (Schneiders 36). The conscious participation of the Gospel in Jesus’ divine revelation (or self-revelation) is evinced in its self-referential declaration that the book is “written so that you may believe” (20.31), a belief ostensibly established through an encounter in the Gospel with Jesus himself.
The reader’s understanding of the Word as the master symbol for Jesus is, however arguably contingent on an understanding of its secondary symbols, as exemplified in John 15.3: “Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you” (emphasis mine). ‘Clean’ evokes the purification rites of baptism and its medium, water, which is now the Holy Spirit, bestowed through the Word. The text of the Gospel thus gains a performative function as only Jesus himself “bapti[s]es with the Holy Spirit” (1.33): Jesus provides the Spirit to the reader, for the words ‘water’, instantiations of the Spirit, is ‘given’ by the Word, the Gospel, itself an instantiation of Jesus himself. It is a baptism via the Word, anticipated by Jesus’ declaration that “I will no longer speak to you in figures of speech but will tell you plainly about the Father” (16.25). As the logos made incarnate begins “speaking plainly” (16.29) so does the literal logos speak plainly; by instantiating Jesus’ own promissory words for the provision of the Spirit in John 14.16 and 16.7 the Gospel ostensibly proffers a baptism directly to the reader, inducting the reader as one “born of the water and Spirit” (3.5). An understanding of the symbols employed within the text itself thus allows for an even greater progression by the reader towards an understanding of the Gospel-as-symbol, through which the divine is directly revealed to the reader.
The Gospel is therefore the locus of Jesus’ divine revelation to the reader; as, again in self-reference, Jesus commands the Gospel’s own creation: “I have said these things to you [so] that … you may remember that I told them to you” (16.4). The Gospel is thus a divine gift bestowed to posterity, as Jesus himself proleptically declares: “I have given them the words … and they have received them” (17.8). The progression the reader makes in understanding the Gospel through its use of symbolism is hence really “the progressive entrance of the [reader] into the life of Jesus,” (Schneiders 52) a progression consciously tailored by the Gospel, ostensibly Jesus himself. To read the Gospel then is to feel the immediacy of Jesus’ divine presence, as palpable as the diegetic characters’ interaction with Jesus; and while the reader may not witness the Signs Jesus performs intradiegetically, Jesus assures the reader that they are equally privileged, for “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (20.29).
Therefore, the epistemic progression embedded within the symbolism of water in turn elevates our understanding of the Gospel as a symbol, one that allows Jesus’ direct revelation. As these symbols’ “meaning is gradually built up over the course of the narrative … by the end, they are charged with an astounding depth of meaning,” (Schneider 27) bridging the epistemic gulf between the reader and Jesus. As the Gospel itself becomes the symbolic locus for Jesus’ divine revelation, the reader moves towards ever closer communion with Jesus, for “every time we reread [the] text we change our relationship with it, precisely because we have been formed by our previous reading” (12).
Works Cited
Culpepper, R. Alan. Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel: A Study in Literary Design. Philadelphia: Fortress
Press, 1987. Print
English Standard Version. Bible Gateway. Web. 20 Apr. 2015.
Kermode, Frank. “John”. The Literary Guide to the Bible. Ed. Robert Alter and Frank Kermode.
Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1987. 440-466 Print.
Schneiders, Sarah M. Written That You May Believe: Encountering Jesus in the Fourth Gospel. New York:
The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2003. Print
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