In the Gospel of St. John, What is meant by "the word was God"?

Are we to take this reference literally? I doubt it. Is St. John suggesting that God attends the (Lacanian) symbolic order? Or is it a way by St. John to explain to the reader (in the course of the account given in the Gospel) how the Word (to be read as "the Old Testament") relinquished its position as the embodiment of the divine being to Jesus Christ the man, who embodied the Lord through being man, and proved it through being crucified then resurrected?