I remember reading a story about a kid who discovered in his parents house a secret door to a forgotten way station on the undergroud railroad. I always thought it would be cool to find a secret door in my house. My Dad talked about making one of our own. But it wasn’t until I was in Highschool that he finally did for my little Sister. In her closet he built two shelves on hinges that would open and close to conceal a small little reading nook. It still there in my Parents house today. You wouldn’t be able to recongize the entry to that little nook on the outside. That’s what makes it a secret door.
In recent Sherlock Holmes, Holmes discovers just such a secret door at the scene one of the films murders. It’s the presence of a slight draft that catches his attention. Using a puff of powder he’s able to see it sucked back into the room beyond. The next step is for him to find the latch to open the door.
I bring up the imagery of secret doors because I think they’re a fitting illustration of the secret portals that comprise the Gospel of John. Reading John for the first time, nothing may appear out of the ordinary. It’s a simple story. Just the facts. But repeated readings may begin to call your attention to some odd detail. What does that little thing hold? What is about it that calls your attention to it?
Duality such as John exhibits is the soil in which his particular use of such literary devices as symbols, ambiguity, irony and allusions grow. Each of these literary devices functions on two levels:
A symbol is a tangible representation of intangible idea,
ambiguity is something which can be understood in either one of two ways,
irony is the contradiction between appearance and reality
and an allusion is an implicit reference to another context.
John use of these devices in some sense mirrors the divide and or God’s solution for it. Just as a symbol is a tangible representation of an intangible idea so Christ is the physical manifestation of God.# Through ambiguity John offers an evaluating challenge, revealing in the one interpreting it their inclination to either the world above or the world below. Irony causes those who know the higher truth to laugh at or pity those who are blinded by the mere earthly. Allusions teach us that there is another world outside our own.
