Commentary on John 1 part 50/94

for it is likely that some, on account of this, have supposed that the bodies of men are called into sufferings for this very purpose, that in them the works of God might be made manifest;

it seems to me useful, with regard to this too, to say a few brief things, so as thereby to repel the harm from this quarter as well, and to allow no entrance to the reasonings that arise from error.

That God does not, then, bring the sins of parents upon their children if they are free from those parents' perversity, and that, moreover, the embodiment of the soul is not the result of prior sins of the soul, we have demonstrated.

For Christ marvellously did away with both, denying them, inasmuch as He both knows all things as God, or rather is Himself the Steward of our affairs and the Dispenser of what befits each, or rather is owed to each.

For in saying that the blind man did not sin, nor yet endured his blindness on that account, He declares it folly to think that the soul of man is chargeable with offences committed prior to the body;

and in saying expressly that neither did the parents sin, that a blind child might be born of them, He does away with the senseless supposition of the Jews.

Having therefore taught as much as it was necessary for the disciples to know, for the overthrow of the doctrines just now mentioned by us, and having granted them as much as it behoved to entrust to human knowledge, He is silent as to the rest, and no longer adds plainly the cause of the man's having been born blind—one accused of no prior offence—assigning to the divine nature alone, as its special prerogative, the knowledge and stewardship over all such matters.

And most skilfully again He turns the word of His answer to something else, and says: 'But that the works of God might be made manifest in him.'

Will someone then say: Does the Lord even now, in saying these things to us, lay down as doctrine that the bodies of men have suffering befall them for this cause and this alone, that the works of God might be made manifest in them? But it does not seem so to me at all; rather, to be so disposed and so minded is altogether discordant.

For it is not as laying down doctrine, as someone will suppose, that He says such things.

For that it has befallen some to be smitten because of their sins, we have often learned from the sacred writings.

'For if we judged ourselves, we should not be judged;'

'but being judged by the Lord, we are chastened, that we may not be condemned with the world.' So that upon those who have fallen sick and died, suffering has sometimes been brought through divine wrath.

Nay, our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, when He released the paralytic from his long sickness and marvellously showed him whole, said, 'Behold, you have been made whole;'

'sin no more, lest a worse thing befall you.' For it is as though it were possible and might come to pass that he should fall into worse things through sin, if he did not guard himself—having once escaped and been restored to safety by the grace that is from Him—that He says such things.

But perhaps in this case we shall grant that it has been well said;

yet as for those who from the very first times of their coming into being have suffered something of the things one would pray to be spared, and who have been born together with their diseases from the womb—what account one could fit to them, it is not easy to discern.

For we do not believe that the soul pre-exists, nor yet shall we suppose that it sinned before the body;

for how could that which has not yet been called into being sin? And there being no sin, nor any offence preceding the suffering, what pretext for the suffering shall we henceforth allege? But the things far exceeding us are altogether invisible to our understandings, and I for my part would advise the wise to decline even to wish to inquire into such matters at all, and before all others myself.

For we ought rather to ponder the things we have been commanded, and not to examine the deeper things, nor to seek out the harder ones, nor to attempt recklessly to dig up the things hidden away in the divine and unutterable counsel alone; but rather piously to allow God alone to know the things proper and peculiar to Himself, together with being disposed and truly believing that He, being the fountain of all righteousness, would never do anything, nor take any counsel, whether in matters concerning us or in those concerning all the rest of creation, save what should appear to Him fitting and does not depart from the words of true rectitude.

Since, then, it is not improbable that we should be thus disposed, I say that the Lord did not speak as one laying down doctrine when He said, 'That the works of God might be made manifest in him;'

but rather as drawing off the answer to what was being sought into another road, and leading it away from things too deep for us to more fitting matters;

for this very thing has somehow become customary with Him.

And that the account is true, hear again: when the holy disciples were once most inquisitively asking the things concerning the consummation of the age, and were trying to ascertain with no small precision the things concerning His second coming, and were rising to a measure much resembling that of men, He, more clearly withdrawing them from such questions, says: 'It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has set in His own authority;'

'but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judea.' You hear how He does not at all permit us to seek the things we least ought, but rather turns us aside to that which it was necessary to come to.

So here too, having clearly set forth that which they needed to learn, He passes over the rest in silence, knowing that the perfect knowledge of this belongs to Himself alone.

But lest, by keeping wholly silent, He should somehow invite them habitually to enquire again in future concerning the same matters, He skillfully frames, as it were under the form of a defence and as a kind of recompense owed to their questions, and says: 'But that the works of God should be made manifest in him.' This means, as expressed in another and simpler statement: The man was not born blind because of his own sins or those of his parents; but since it has once come to pass that he suffered this, it is possible that God should be glorified even in him.

For when, by the operation from above, he is found freed from the affliction that troubled and beset him, who will not marvel at the Physician? And who will not perceive in him the power of the One who healed him? This, I think, is the sense that underlies the passage before us; but let those who are intelligent be free to conceive things yet more perfect.

But if some think it fitting to be contentious, and say that on this account the man was born blind, namely that Christ might be glorified in him, we shall again reply to them: Was that man, then, O worthy sirs, the only one in all Judaea blind from birth at the time of our Saviour's coming, and no other at all? But I think that even against their will they will confess that it was surely very likely that the multitude of such persons in the whole country was not to be easily numbered.

How then did the display, or ambition for glory, of Christ come to be upon one man alone, or upon a small number? But I think that to insist at all upon these matters is quite superfluous.

Therefore, having thrust aside from the outset that view as utterly foolish, we shall declare what is true: that having revealed to us in the things sought as much as was needful to learn, He turns aside to another discourse, skillfully leading His own disciple away from enquiry into these matters.

'the works of Him who sent us, while it is day.'

'Night is coming, when no one can work.'

Behold, indeed, in these words, very clearly and gently, He all but rebukes His disciples besides, as having turned to something other than what was fitting, and having abandoned the highway, that well-trodden and passable road, and instead having ventured to walk a road in no way suited to them.

'For why,' He says, 'do you seek things which it is good to keep silent about? And why, leaving aside what befits the moment, do you press to learn things above human understanding? It is not the time for enquiry into these matters, but,' He says, 'for work and strenuous diligence.'

For I think we ought rather, laying aside enquiry into these things, to press on to accomplish what has been commanded by God, and since He has appointed us apostles, to fulfil the works of the apostleship.

But the Lord, weaving Himself in with those who were sent, and reckoning Himself among those who are bound to work, speaks in this way not at all as though He were with us, or as one of us of necessity subject in servile fashion to the will of Him who commands.

Rather, He was observing a certain figure of speech customary and common among us also.

For we are somehow accustomed, especially when the word is not stripped bare of what might strike the hearers, to bind ourselves together with them and to include ourselves along with them. Just as, for instance, the most wise Paul, speaking to the Corinthians as though about himself and Apollos, at the end added: 'These things, brethren, I have applied in a figure to myself and Apollos, that in us you might learn not to think beyond what is written.' 'While it is day, therefore,' He says, 'let us work the works of Him who sent us.'

'For night will come, when no one can work.'

And by 'day' in these words He names the time of the bodily life;

and by 'night,' the time spent in death.

For since day is apportioned to works, but night to idleness and sleep, on this account they say that the time of life, in which one must work good, is 'day'; but 'night' is the time spent in the sleep of death, in which it is not at all possible to do any work.

'For he that is dead is justified from sin,' according to the saying of Paul, being found no longer able to do anything outward, nor to transgress.

The divine Scripture indeed knows, yes knows, another meaning of the spiritual day, and a night no less other than this one.

But when each of the meanings is received at the fitting time, it displays an unerring contemplation of the things sought.

But to try forcibly to drag over to a spiritual interpretation that which is profitable in its literal sense, to things to which it does not pertain and at a time when it is not needful, is nothing other than simply to confound that which unfussily brings gain, and to muddy from great ignorance the thing that is directly useful.

'When I am in the world, I am the light of the world.'

For shall we then suppose that Christ is at some time not in the world at all, or, having been taken up to heaven after His resurrection from the dead, do we believe that He no longer dwells among those in this life? And yet, being true God, He fills and encompasses not only the heavens and what is beyond the firmament, but also our own inhabited world.

And just as in this world, dwelling among men with flesh, He was not absent from the heavens, so shall we be disposed, thinking rightly, that even if He should depart from the world on account of the flesh, He will nonetheless be present again to those in it, and His divine and ineffable nature will preside over all things, departing from none of the things that are, nor being absent from anything, but being everywhere present to all;

and filling this whole universe and that which is conceived as beyond it, yet being contained by itself alone.

What, then, is it that the Lord says in these words? It is consistent to consider it.

Having overturned the Jews' supposition as stale, and having shown them to be raving over rotten doctrines, and having counselled His own disciples that it rather befits them to love to work the things that seem good to God, and to hasten to unlearn the seeking after that which is beyond them; and having somehow struck them with dread, as though the time for works would slip past them while they accomplished nothing unless they made every effort to be willing to prove worthy—inasmuch as they are in this world with flesh—He takes Himself as an image of the matter.

'Since I have come to give light to those in need of light, I must also, to the eyes of the body—if they are sick with the accursed desolation of light—implant the light, especially whenever some of those who suffer draw near.'

We shall therefore take what has been said in a more literal way, and as in a simple discourse.

For that the Only-begotten is also a spiritual light, knowing how and able to illuminate not only the things in this world but also all the rest of the supra-cosmic creation, is not in doubt.

But fitting the sense drawn from what is spoken to the contemplation of the matters at hand, I think we shall be found doing something not implausible.

Having said these things, He spat on the ground and made clay from the spittle, and anointed the clay upon his eyes, and said to him: 'Go, wash in the pool of Siloam,' which is interpreted 'Sent.'

So he went and washed, and came seeing.

Having received the healing of this blind man as a type of the calling of the Gentiles, we shall again speak, summing up in brief the meaning of the mystery.

First, that passing by, and leaving behind the temple that was among the Jews, He sees the blind man; then to this we shall usefully add that also—namely, that without any entreaty, and with no one importuning Him, but rather by a self-willed and self-prompted inclination, the Saviour comes to the willing to heal the man, setting this too as a sign that no entreaty had come from the multitude of the Gentiles;

for all were in error.

Being God and good by nature, He came, self-summoned as it were, to have mercy upon them.

For how at all, or in what manner, could the numerous multitude of the Greeks, that is, of the Gentiles, have besought mercy from God, having their mind buried under incomparable ignorances, so as to be utterly unable to see the Enlightener? Just as, of course, the blind man who was healed did not know Jesus, but by mercy and loving-kindness gained what was beyond hope;

which was granted also to the Gentiles through Christ.

Moreover, the healing is accomplished on the sabbath, the sabbath being able in this to fulfil for us a type of the final season of the present age, in which the Saviour shone forth upon the Gentiles;

for the sabbath is the end of the week, and the Only-begotten sojourned and appeared to us all at the last hour, and in the final seasons of the age.

But it is worthy also for those truly astonished at the manner of the healing to say: 'How magnified are Thy works, O Lord! In wisdom hast Thou made them all.' For what reason, one might perhaps say, though able easily to set all things right by a word, does He mix clay from the spittle, and, having smeared the eyes of the sufferer, is seen also enjoining something rather laborious?

For 'Go, wash,' He says, 'in the pool of Siloam.'

But I think a certain deep meaning is buried in what has been said;

for the Saviour accomplishes nothing at random.

For He smears with the clay that which was lacking, adding it as though it had been faulty in the nature of the eye, and showing through this that He Himself was the One who formed us in the beginning, the Creator and Maker of the universe.

But the force of the matter has also a certain mystical meaning;

for what indeed do we say to this, or what have we considered to understand concerning it? Again we shall speak.

It was not otherwise possible for the Gentiles to repel the blindness that had come upon them, and to gaze upon the divine and holy light—that is, to receive the knowledge of the holy and consubstantial Trinity—unless they became partakers of His holy flesh, and washed away the sin that darkened them, and put off the authority of the devil, evidently through holy baptism.

But since the Saviour was engraving upon the blind man a premature type of the mystery, He fulfilled for the time being the power of the participation through the anointing with the spittle.

And as an image of holy baptism, He commands him to run and wash in Siloam, whose name the Evangelist, being exceedingly wise and Spirit-bearing, also necessarily interprets.

Knowing the Only-begotten God, who has visited and been sent from the Father, and that He Himself invisibly moves upon the waters of the holy pool, we wash ourselves with faith—not for the putting away of the filth of the flesh, according to what is written, but as though washing off a certain defilement and impurity from the eyes of the mind, that henceforth, being pure, we may with purity be strong to gaze upon the divine beauty.

In the same way, then, that we believe the body of Christ to be life-giving, since it is the temple and dwelling-place of the living God the Word, having all His energy, so we say that it is also the bestower of illumination;

for it is the body of the light that is by nature and in truth.

And just as, when He raised up the only son of the widow who had died, He was not content merely to command and say, 'Young man, I say to you, arise,' although accustomed to set right by a word all things whatsoever He willed, but He laid His hand also upon the bier, showing that His body too possesses the life-giving energy;

so here too He smears with the spittle, teaching that His body is the bestower of illumination even through the mere touch.

For it is the body of the true light, as we have said.

Then the blind man goes off with all speed, having washed, and without delay fulfils what was commanded, showing as it were in himself the ready obedience of the Gentiles, concerning whom it is written: 'The preparation of their heart Thine ear hath attended to.' Hard-hearted, then, are the wretched Jews, but wholly tender unto obedience—and by the very experience they are attested—are they of the Gentiles.

And straightway the man, having washed off his blindness together with the clay, has his sight opened, and returns seeing.

For it was not possible for it to come to pass otherwise than as seemed good to Christ.

Fair, therefore, is faith, which prepares the God-given grace to be strong in us; and to be of two minds is hurtful.

'For the double-minded man is unstable in all his ways,' as it is written, 'and shall receive from the Lord absolutely nothing.'

The neighbours, then, and those who had formerly seen him, that he was a beggar, said: 'Is not this he who sits and begs?' Another said: 'No, but he is like him.'

He himself said: 'I am he.'

It does not have unlaboured understanding in itself, but is scarcely honoured, being brought without over-curiosity into the minds of some.

For to try to examine minutely the things that are above mind and reason is not far from foolishness.

From this, I think, some even disbelieved—those who had formerly known the blind man that used to haunt the crossroads, but were now astounded, since they saw him unexpectedly distinguished by a bright eye.

They are divided into doubt on account of what had happened; and some, looking more accurately at the greatness of the matter, said that he was not even the same man, but only very like the one they knew.

For indeed it was truly not unlikely that some should be so affected in these matters as even to decline the truth itself, being thrust as it were by the greatness of the divine sign into an unwilling disbelief.

Others, however, among those more inclined to hesitation, leave their judgement in suspense; yet, honoring the marvel with reverence and fear, they say that this is indeed the very man himself.

But the man who had been healed straightway resolves the matter in question, bringing forward concerning himself a most weighty confession.

For no one would be ignorant of his own self, unless he were so grievously afflicted as to be talking nonsense.

And from every side it comes about that the wonder-worker is beheld in great things, seeing that, through the excess of his power, the marvel is disbelieved as beyond all expectation.

Therefore they said to him, 'How were your eyes opened?' Scarcely inclining to believe that this is the very man himself, whom they had known from the beginning, and setting aside their doubt about this, they ask how he had thrown off his blindness, and what was the manner of a thing beyond all hope.

For it is somehow always the habit of those who marvel to inquire more precisely, and to search out with curiosity the manner of the things done.

namely, that those who from the nations have turned back to become teachers to those of Israel, having escaped their ancient blindness and gained from our Savior Christ, through the Spirit, their enlightenment.

And that what has been said is true, the very facts themselves will cry aloud.

He answered, 'The man who is called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes, and said to me, Go, wash in Siloam.'

So having gone away and washed, I received my sight.

That the Savior is God by nature he still appears to be ignorant; for otherwise he would not have spoken so meanly concerning Him.

For he would not have spoken so meanly concerning Him.

But he seems somehow to think and reason about Him as about one of the saints, having gathered even this, as is likely, from some rather dim report that was circulating throughout all Jerusalem, since the talk about Him was noised abroad everywhere.

And besides, we see that it is not greatly a matter of eager concern to those who are maimed in body and struggling with unrelenting want, to occupy themselves with knowing about certain persons, since their unfeigned poverty consumes, as it were, the whole of their thought.

More simply, then, he calls Him a man, and sets forth the manner of the healing.

For it was fitting that, being persuaded by the greatness of the miracle, he should attribute to the wonder-worker a glory above human nature; yet, since the saints too are able to work marvels through God, this yields to the belief and somehow carries him along toward reckoning Him to be one of those.

And they said to him, 'Where is that man?' He says, 'I do not know.'

It is not out of a God-loving purpose that they seek Jesus; nor yet are they eager to learn where and with whom He was spending His time, that meeting Him they might ask for some of the things conducing to benefit; but, maimed in the eye of their understanding, and far more grievously than that man once was in the eye of his body, they are inflamed to a most unjust anger, and leap up like untamed beasts, supposing that a legal commandment had been dissolved by our Savior—I mean the one that ordains that nothing whatsoever is to be done on the Sabbath.

And they were maddened beyond measure, seeing that He had at all dared to touch clay, rubbing the earth with His finger, and moreover had directed that the man must wash this off on the Sabbath.

Wherefore also they belch forth the word that springs from anger and folly: 'Where is that man?'—not shrinking from speaking it shamelessly.

For to Him, to whom it was fitting that a rich glory should be owed, they attach the reproach that comes from belittlement.

And yet they ought to have marveled, if they were good and knew how to crown the power of God with fitting praises; but, thrust aside by immeasurable ill-will from what, I think, was just for them to think and do, they are turned to an ill-timed zeal, and, dishonestly considering that it was in some way fitting to speak in defense of the Law as though it were being wronged, they seek to accuse Jesus as having worked on the Sabbath and having done injustice to so admirable a commandment by healing the man.

For it is likely, no doubt, that they supposed God to be somewhat harsh and unmerciful on the Sabbath, and to be greatly displeased even if He should see saved the one made after His own image and likeness—the very one for whose sake the Sabbath also exists.

For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath, according to the word of the Savior.

They bring the man who was once blind to the Pharisees.

Now it was the Sabbath on the day when Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes.

They convey the man to the rulers, not that, learning what had happened concerning him, they might marvel;

for it was not likely that those who travailed with incomparable envy against our Savior Christ would ever be pleased at any of such things; but rather in order that they might make manifest, as they supposed, His transgression, and accuse Him as one who had done wrong, because He had made clay on the Sabbath.

For, spurning the wonder at the marvel, they lay hold of the matter as of a fault, presenting the man—on whom the marvel had been dared—as, so to speak, a proof of the things done; and at the same time they think they are accomplishing something conducive to their reputation for piety, as within Jewish customs, and are eager to carry a legal ordinance through to its end.

And the True One, teaching that the mind of those who love God must not be carried off elsewhere to any object, nor indeed suppose that there are any gods beside Him, but commanding to attend upon Him alone who is God in truth, and moreover to be exceedingly embittered against those who dare to counsel anything else contrary to this, speaks thus: 'But if your brother, of your father or of your mother, or your son or your daughter, or your wife who is in your bosom, or the friend who is equal to your own soul, should secretly entreat you, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, you shall not consent to him, nor shall you hearken to him, and your eye shall not spare him, and you shall not long for him, nor shall you shelter him;

you shall surely report the things concerning him. And the Jews again, looking only at the faults of others, and senselessly extending against everything what had been defined against a single matter, would bring those caught in certain things outside the Law before the rulers, thinking thereby also to honor the Lawgiver.

For this reason, I think, they sought Jesus, saying, 'Where is that man?'; and being nowhere able to find Him, they bring, as it were in second place, the one on whom the marvel had been accomplished, so that he might by his own voice, as with a seal, confirm that the Law had been dissolved in the things concerning him by the one who had healed on the Sabbath.

And that they were not moderately vexed because clay had been made on the Sabbath, the blessed Evangelist, making clear to us, fittingly points out the absurdity of the matter, adding: 'Now it was the Sabbath on the day when Jesus made the clay.'

Then the Pharisees also again asked him, 'How did you receive your sight?' They busily inquire into the manner of the healing, kindling within themselves, as it were, a hotter fire from their malice; and they inquire eagerly, though, as it seems to me, not being ignorant of the marvel.

For how is it not utterly foolish that those very men, who had come to them once bringing the blind man, should not at all have told the reason for bringing him? But, as though those things were not sufficient to accuse Christ, they compel even the man himself by his own voice to confess what had been done, believing that thereby the force of their slander would become more grievous.

For consider how they do not simply ask whether he has merely been healed, but rather they seek to hear how he received his sight;

and this was to hear, from men exceedingly eager, that 'He made clay, and anointed my eyes.'

For in this they senselessly supposed the whole transgression of the Law to lie; and, pretending that the ordinances from of old had been outraged, they were now devising that it was just to be indignant and that penalties must be exacted from the one who had grieved them.

But he said to them, 'He put clay upon my eyes, and I washed, and I see.'

For the man then maimed relates what had befallen him more simply, and, addressing men exceedingly malicious, he speaks as though celebrating the physician, so to say, in brief confessions;

for he is somehow struck with amazement at the very nature of the thing.

reflecting, as is likely, upon that very point—that by smearing on clay, an unaccustomed remedy, He accomplished for him, beyond expectation, the power of sight.

And it seems to me most graphically, and out of bitter thoughts, that he says, 'He made clay and anointed my eyes.'

For it is much as if one should suppose him to say: 'I know indeed that I am speaking into the ears of the envious, yet nevertheless I will not hide the truth.'

I will requite my benefactor with thanksgivings; I will be stronger than untimely silence;

I will honor the physician with confessions—Him who employed for me no over-elaborate manner of healing, who moved the matter with no iron and dissections, who prepared the benefit with no concoctions of drugs, who used no practiced method, but rather prevailed by strange devices.

He made clay and anointed my eyes, and I washed, and I see.

the power of the one who healed—I will not deny the grace;

for I now have what was long desired;