In Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious, Jacques Lacan overturns the centrality of the signified in structural linguistics, and posits that there is only a signifier that refers back to another signifier in an endless signifying chain that never arrives at a signified (150). Lacan asserts that this deferral of meaning illuminates texts as signifying chains that circulate over a lack, or absent centre (150). Meanwhile, Erich Auerbach implies in Odysseus’ Scar that the Bible’s “suggestive influence of the unexpressed” rewards interpretation (23). Connecting this with R. Alan Culpepper’s idea that the gospel of John embodies a “profound sacramentalism,” I repurpose Lacan’s poststructuralist tenets to examine the richly-layered network of signifiers that orientate the reader’s relation to God rather than to pedantically indict John as a hollow text circulating over a lack (Culpepper 201). I argue that John evades an absent centre by situating God as the originary signified from which the whole chain of signification originates. Identifying “the Word” of the prologue as a signifier, I trace the interactions between it and the other signifiers to posit that the gospel illustrates a linguistic totality, in which all signifiers refer back to God (English Standard Version Bible, John 1.1). With God as its transcendent signified, the intricate symbolic links within the signifying chain continuously delineate the reader’s engagement with John relative to its centre. Given this, I conclude that even a misunderstanding by the reader would allow him or her to identify with a textual position relative to God in the field of “the Word” (John 1.1).
The prologue elucidates from the outset the priority of God as the centre from which all originates, and John reinforces that this origination is as much linguistic as it is cosmogenetic: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” (John 1.1). The reference to the beginning mirrors the opening of Genesis, which details the creation of the entire physical universe by God (Genesis 1.1). This suggests that the evangelist is building on God’s position as Creator, and reprioritising it in a linguistic vein. The dynamic repetition of “the Word” through chiasmus delineates it as an iteration, or reformulation of what is taken to be the beginning in the Bible (John 1.1). This incursion into the deeper meaning of the Bible is situated within similarities to Genesis like a composite image so that their differences rise to the surface. It is imperative to note that this repositioning hinges on the signifier “the beginning”; a beginning of the physical universe in Genesis, and a linguistic beginning in John. What remains constant is the structuring of a temporal order around God (Genesis 1.1; John 1.1). The chiastic structure of the opening lines then criss-crosses to situate God as the beginning by emplacing “the Word” in the beginning then returning it to God (John 1.1). Invoking Lacan might compel views of God as an absent centre, but the suggestion that “the Word” may both issue from and be God strengthens his omnipresent and transcendent priority (John 1.1). It also orientates how interpretation of the signifying chain consistently points to God; language, words, and “the Word” all originate from Him (John 1.1). The collocation of these signifiers over this centre inspires continuous engagement with the text in order to situate or access God. The dynamism of “the beginning” in relation to God as prior also reinforces the multifaceted nature of the signifiers in John (Genesis 1.1; John 1.1). This supports Auerbach’s contention that the sublime and the everyday are basically inseparable, and accounts for the ‘open-ended’ nature of the text (Auerbach 23). While having a transcendent centre, John, in an Auerbachian sense, often leaves the links between the prosaic and the spiritual implicit, pushing the reader to plumb the polysemy of the Word and trace it back to God in a constant process of revisioning, as this essay will later expand upon.
As demonstrated above, language is integral to John at a granular level. Through language, the fourth gospel prioritises what is implicit in Genesis. In Genesis, God speaks the world into being. He pronounces “[let there be light] and there was light,” (Genesis 1.3). Language is, therefore, dynamic and generative in the Bible. It is then illuminating to consider how the opening lines are followed by, “[he] was in the beginning with God,” (John 1.2). Not only does the prologue illustrate the priority of God and his Word, it also subtly introduces and enfolds Jesus within this relationship to the originary signified. The evangelist then elaborates that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” (John 1.2;14). This shows that “the Word” itself, amongst the other signifiers, straddles both the literal and the sublime, orientating the polysemy abundant in John – “the Word” could refer to God’s language, but it is also conflated with Jesus’ existence and appearance on earth (John 1.1). In both aspects, “the Word” is generative; just as it creates the physical world in Genesis, Jesus’ incarnation as the Word begets a spiritual rebirth of his people (Genesis 1.1; John 1.1). As both the speech acts in Genesis and Jesus’ appearance as “the Word” in John form the first degrees of separation from God – in the sense that they seem to take on discrete articulable forms separate from the formless plenitude of God’s omnipresence; it does mean that they are antiseptically and wholly separated from God – they also form the closest parts of the earthly realm in relation to God (John 1.1). If they are to be understood as signifiers in the signifying chain, as they rightly are, they function as what Lacan would call the “closest constitutive encroachments of the signifier up to the” originary signified that is God (Lacan 153).
As a signifier, the personification of the word can be seen as an attempt to distinguish it from other signifiers such as the signs, or purely visual proof of Jesus’ miracles (John 1.1; 2.11). “The Word”, however, is not an ordinary signifier that simply refers back or defers meaning elsewhere (John 1.1). It is the key that turns and frames the characters’, and more so, the reader’s engagement with God as the originary signified. These signifiers then reinforce “the Word”, or the priority of Jesus in the characters’ – and the readers’ – spiritual birth, and acceptance into the “Father’s house” (John 2.16). The primacy of Jesus as “the Word” in allowing the reader to access God is most potently embodied here: “If you knew me, you would know my Father also,” (John 1.1;8.19). Keeping in mind Jesus’ position as the closest encroachment up to the originary signified, the verse can be taken to crystallise the kind of logical relationship that undergirds the Johannine gospel – to know God, one has to know Jesus (Lacan 153). This knowledge of Jesus must be derived from an engagement with the signifiers that refer back to him, of which his signs are especially important (John 2.11).
When reading the signs in John and the literal misunderstandings they produce, one locates the inseparability of the prosaic and the spiritual, as posited by Auerbach and Culpepper. The striking polysemy of the signifiers sees the evangelist extending the literal senses of the words into a spiritual connection to Jesus as “The Word” (John 1.1). In witnessing Jesus turn water into wine, the master of the feast comments that “[everyone] serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now,” (John 2.10). The deeper, polysemous facet of the signifier “wine”, and its spiritual connection to “the Word” is not explicitly stated but it can be interpreted as a misunderstanding (John 2.10). The master of the feast assumes that it is proof of Jesus’ shrewdness, and links Jesus’ foreknowledge to a sense of expert hospitality. However, the reader may construe Jesus’ foreknowledge as his awareness of the final act of his crucifixion; the transformation of water into wine symbolising the redemption of sinful mortal lives through the shedding of Jesus’ blood. Moreover, this resonates with the visceral visual imagery of Jesus’ body being pierced to spill blood and water upon his death (John 2.9-11; 19.34). This emphasises how a sublime proximity to God and his plan is stitched into the prosaic, often literally understood signifiers, or visual signs that refer back to Jesus as “the Word” (John 1.1). Not only does this fusing of the quotidian and spiritual reveal the indelible interconnectedness of “the Word” and the rest of the signifying chain, it also highlights that these are structured in successive encroachments up to the originary signified (Lacan 153).
While the text tends not to explicitly reveal the symbolic links between the prosaic and the spiritual, it does surface the tension between the two. In the water to wine episode, the tension between the master of feast’s idea of foreknowledge and the contrasted foreknowledge of the reader – or Jesus himself – allows the reader, regardless of a misreading, to consistently measure and temper his or her relation to God in the fourth gospel. Sandra M. Schneiders observes that the text mocks and discredits the victims of misunderstandings to prime the reader and leave him or her vulnerable to revelation (30-32). Extending this, it can be surmised that the evangelist’s portrayal of the characters’ misunderstandings as failures allows the reader to think critically about the subtle but virtuosic linguistic play in John, and temper his or her textual position. Such linguistic play is manifest in Jesus’ cryptic remark, “everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever” (John 8:34-5), which runs into numerous valences. On the surface, the literal class-inflected relationship of the itinerant and disenfranchised slave to the house is evoked by Jesus’ maxim-like pronouncement. This is collocated with not only a hierarchical familial relationship between Father, Son and the slaves, or people steeped in sin, but also Jesus’ higher purpose in begetting the spiritual birth and redemption of his people. Also raised is a crucial temporal dimension that unites God as beginning, and His relation to “the Word” as everlasting (John 1.1). The literal notion of bondage, through interpretation, can be figured within God as the beginning, and the descent of “the Word” so that his people may be born of the Spirit (John 3.8). As Lacan posits, the signifier incessantly slides between its different valences (154). However, these possible valences are apprehended by readers in relation to the originary signified. Therefore, reading John is not merely premised on securing a transmission between the evangelist and the reader. Even after the reader achieves a “linguistic triumph” in tracing the signifiers back to the originary centre, he or she is continuously involved in the process of identification in relation to God. The reader continues to mediate his or her understanding of John through the polysemy of the ordinary signifiers that extend to “the Word” or Jesus, and tempers his or her relation to the transcendent centre that is God (John 1.1).
In this essay, I used Lacanian poststructuralism to elaborate how God is depicted as the omnipresent beginning. Furthermore, I showed how “the Word” and its conflation with Jesus is integral in framing the reader’s engagement with God as the originary signified (John 1.1). In exploring how the rest of the signifying chain refers back to “the Word” and continuously allows readers to revise their relationship to God, I analysed John as an especially multifaceted and dynamic gospel. Despite the literal misunderstandings in the text, and any misreading on the part of the reader, the intricate polysemy of John’s signifying chain allows for a multiplicity of meanings alongside a deeper incursion into their significance relative to God.
Works Cited
Auerbach, Erich. “Odysseus’ Scar.” Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature.
Princeton University Press, 2003, pp. 3-23.
Culpepper, R. Alan. Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel. Fortress Publishing, 1983.
Lacan, Jacques. “Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious.” Écrits: A Selection. Translated by
Alan Sheridan, Tavistock Publications, 1980, pp. 146-178.
Schneiders, Sandra M. “The Fourth Gospel as Text.” Written That You May Believe:
Encountering Jesus in the Fourth Gospel. Crossroad Publishing, 2003.
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (ESV). Good News Publishers, 2008.