Symbolic Interactionism in the Gospel according to John

A Contextual Study on the Symbolism of Water

Mligo

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781630872557
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Religione

Symbolic interactionism is a social-scientific perspective that seeks to describe how human beings create meaning with one another in their daily lives. Since the world is populated by symbols that characterize all interactions among living beings, this book explores the importance of symbols and symbolic interaction while moving beyond the social sciences to theological studies. By examining the way symbolic interaction is portrayed among characters in the Gospel according to John in the "water narratives," this book argues that the Bible is a symbol that is itself full of symbols whose meanings are worthy of our study. Hence, the interaction of characters in the Gospel of John and the whole Bible, along with the symbols they use in their interactions, demonstrates that symbolism is directly linked to human life because symbols are major means of communication, and without symbols, human beings are in chaos.

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The Importance of Perspective

Reality and the Question of Truth

Why use a perspective in presenting the existing reality? And what is reality so far? As David Trace maintains, “Reality is what we name our best interpretation. Truth is the reality we know through our best interpretations. Reality is constituted, not created or simply found, through the interpretations that have earned the right to be called relatively adequate or true.” And what does it imply saying that reality is “constituted, not created”? This assertion most likely means that “Reality is neither out there nor in here. Reality is constituted by the interaction between a text, whether book or world, and a questioning interpreter.”1 If the above understanding of reality holds any grain of truth, this means no reality can be grasped outside the interaction between the text and the interpreter.

One response to the question regarding the use of a perspective to understand reality is that reality is vast and not easy to grasp; though, in most cases, it is taken for granted by “ordinary members of society.”2 The same reality can be grasped in a very different way in everyday life. Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann write: “Every day life presents itself as a reality interpreted by men and subjectively meaningful to them as a coherent world.”3 Grasping reality is wrestling with the question of truth. The question of truth has bothered people in all times and ages. What is truth, and what is not? It is possible to hear people trying to judge something depending on how they see it. For them, and their judgment, that is their truth. In this case, truth is not universal. It is contextual and most likely individual.

This means what is seen as true to one person is not necessarily true to another, even between identical twins! Moreover, there is no single meaning of a thing, even a very small object we see with our naked eyes. Since truth or reality is not universal, and is very much dependent upon one’s way of looking at things, we can simply say that truth is truth only from a particular angle and not necessarily from another angle. The angle through which we understand reality is what we can call perspective. A perspective, which is both contextual and individual, can be shared by people when they interact; and that perspective will tell us the way such people collectively view reality (truth). In this case, what is true is bound within a particular perspective, whether shared or individual.

Grasping Reality within a Particular Perspective

Why should we bind reality in a particular perspective and not understand it as a whole? As I said above, reality is so vast that it cannot be easily or wholly grasped. As the sociologist Joel M. Charon puts it: “Human beings always see reality through perspectives.”4 Perspectives act to us as “angles of vision” through which we see reality (or truth) around us.5 In this case, perspectives have significant functions in our understanding of reality.

Charon lists some of the functions of perspectives in our endeavor to understand reality when he writes, “Perspectives force us to pull out certain stimuli from our environment and to totally ignore other stimuli. Perspectives force us to make sense of those stimuli in one way rather than another. Perspectives sensitize the individual to see parts of the reality, they desensitize the individual to other parts, and they guide the individual to make sense of the reality to which he or she is sensitized.”6 Charon then concludes: “Seen in this light, a perspective is an absolutely basic part of everyone’s existence, and it acts as a filter through which everything around us is perceived and interpreted. There is no possible way that the individual can encounter reality ‘in the raw,’ directly, as it really is, for whatever is seen can be only part of the real situation.”7 In this case, we can conclude that a perspective can be known by several names: an angle of vision, an eyeglass, an individual or group’s point of view, a sensitizer, or an individual or group’s line of argument. Each of these names illuminate to us the way truth, as a stimuli from our own environments, can be grasped, filtered, and understood.

Components of a Perspective

Perspectives are made of words that make the understanding of a particular reality possible. It is a “set of interrelated words” that make it possible to understand a certain “physical reality.”8 It is a “conceptual framework,” whereby concepts are interwoven to make some assumptions about what is physically seen for the purpose of trying to understand it. In this case, as Charon puts it, the understanding of reality in a particular situation depends greatly on the types of words (concepts) used in order to understand it.9

Words used in understanding reality form sets of ideas, sets of assumptions, and sets of values that influence our perceptions and actions. They influence what we see and the way we interpret what we see. They can also influence the way we behave in various situations. A person cannot have only one perspective in every situation. There is the possibility of having several perspectives in every situation. For example, at school I am a student; at home I am a father; at the pastors’ conference I am a pastor; in the group of scholars I am an academic. I endeavor to take a perspective depending on the situation I find myself in without necessarily mixing these perspectives. This is what it means for a perspective to be contextual or situational in nature.

Charon writes thus: perspectives “are our ‘eyeglasses’ we put on to see.”10 Being an eyeglass, each perspective contributes to the understanding of reality, not understanding the whole reality but just part of it. Someone’s perspective is not something permanent; it is something eligible to change. Whenever the perspective changes it means a development of a new reality. When a person goes to school he or she acquires the perspective of a student. When a person completes schooling and is elected a leader of the community, his or her perspective changes. The perspective changes from that of a student to that of an employee. In that case, the change indicates a new reality, a new truth. Why does the truth change? The truth changes because the person secures new interactions that open up new possibilities of understanding the world around him or her.11

Perspectives are Asymmetrical and Subject to Change

I also remember the way my perspect...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword - Lechion Peter Kimilike
• Introduction
• Chapter One: The Importance of Perspective
• Chapter Two: The Perspective of Symbolic Interactionism
• Chapter Three: Erving Goffman and Dramaturgy
• Chapter Four: Interactionism and Symbolism of Water in the Gospel of John
• Chapter Five: Conclusion
• Bibliography