The formative and transformative power of symbol: Water in the Gospel of John and the 'Laozi'.

摘要

This dissertation analyzes and contrasts the formative and transformative meaning of the water symbol as used in the Gospel of John and the Laozi. It shows how symbol presumes, embodies, and reveals particular contextual and intentional meanings that shape and orient followers of the two traditions in their worldviews and in the various dimensions of their lives.; Symbols not only give rise to thoughts that shape and orient humans in the world, but also are influenced by certain personal and cultural assumptions and frames of reference. The interpretation of symbols requires the ability to contend with their multivalent dimensions or levels of meaning. The task of interpreters of symbols is to discover, promote, enhance, and inform by means of a creative interpretation of the meanings offered by the symbol. Therefore, any act of interpretation of religious symbol must provide not only information, but also orient the person in different contexts of human life: cultic, practical, ordinary, and extraordinary.; In John's gospel, water symbolizes Jesus, the divine Logos, who is the divine transformer of human existence. He is the Divine Agent who entered into the world as the Living Water to unseal the closed fountain of living water in the womb of humanity. Water symbolizes for John the necessity of the divine intervention in initiating the process of transforming wounded human nature through relationship with the Divine.; In the Laozi, water is the symbol of Dao. To be able to become one with Dao, one has to practice the characteristics symbolized by water, that is, emptiness, detachment of self and of selfish desires. Water is both the symbol of the nature of Dao, its characteristic, and the method of becoming one with it. It symbolizes here, however, the process of becoming one with Dao merely through human self-discipline to arrive at emptiness both of the self and emptiness of all desire.