As they walk together, not far from the Jerusalem temple, Jesus and his disciples see a man blind from his birth, a beggar. So the disciples ask Jesus, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2). In other words, when was the sin committed that was punished with this disability? Underlying their question is a cultural attitude that a disability is a curse and that a person who has one should be ashamed and deserves to be discriminated against. This was certainly the attitude in the Greco-Roman world, where the disabled were forbidden from being priests because people believed the gods would be insulted by the service of a person so imperfect.1 Judaism sometimes had similar attitudes.2 The Pharisees in John 9 certainly do, as we shall see. But Jesus has a more positive perspective, and the man born blind in this chapter ably demonstrates that such a person can possess faith and virtues. John Chrysostom, who writes eloquently about the ethics of Scripture, draws out the implications of this chapter in his Commentary on Saint John the Apostle and Evangelist, homilies 56–59.3 This essay examines the views of disability expressed in John 9, guided by Chrysostom’s comments.
The disciples’ question “Who sinned?” raises difficult theological issues as well as expressing problematic cultural attitudes. Chrysostom’s comment is blunt: “The question was a mistake. For how could he have sinned before he was born? Or how, if his parents sinned, could he have been punished?”4 In other words, the disciples’ proposed alternatives are wrong, so Jesus rejects both of them. He replies, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned” (John 9:3a). Chrysostom draws the conclusion that, for the most part, disability is not caused by sin. He admits that sin can at times cause it because of what Jesus said to the paralytic in John 5:14: “See, you have been made well! Do not sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you.” But a disability from birth cannot be caused by the disabled person’s sin. As Chrysostom explains, this is because punishment belongs to the one who sinned, not to someone else, even one as close as a parent.5 Nor was the blind man’s soul alive and thus capable of sin in a preexistence of any kind before his birth. It is true that a few of the rabbis whose conversations are preserved in the Talmud believed in some kind of preexistence or reincarnation, though they probably lived in the fourth century or later.6 If such ideas already existed within Judaism in Jesus’s earthly lifetime, they could lie behind the disciples’ question. Yet their Rabbi rejects such opinions out of hand.
The Healing
Jesus states the following reason for the man’s blindness: “He was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him” (John 9:3b). However, this verse is not saying that every disabled person glorifies God by living with impairments. The Lord knows that he is about to accomplish a great work of God: “He spat on the ground and made mud from the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, saying to him, ‘Go, wash in the pool of Siloam.’ . . . Then he went and washed and came back able to see” (9:6–7). The man humbly accepts Jesus’s instructions. It may not be easy for him to find his way as he walks from the centrally located temple precincts to Siloam, at the edge of the city. He may first have to find somebody to guide him there, but he simply agrees and does it. He does not need a guide on the way back.
Later in the chapter, the healed man remarks, “Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind” (John 9:32). When Jesus uses mud and saliva in this healing, perhaps he follows current medical practice. But the Fourth Evangelist often wove profound symbolic meanings into his stories, and as Chrysostom explains, here Christ is doing on a small scale what God did according to Genesis 2:7, when he created humans from the earth:
Since they had heard that God made man by taking dust from the ground, it was for this reason that he also made clay in this way. In truth, if he said: “I am the One who took dust from the ground and fashioned mankind,” it would seem offensive to his hearers, while if this was demonstrated by a concrete example, it would no longer give offense in the future. . . . Indeed, it was no small glory for Him to be regarded as Creator of the world. For by this miracle the rest of His claims were also substantiated, and from the part the whole was likewise established. . . . Man is more honorable than all the rest of creation, and the eye is more honorable than the other parts of our body. Because of this He created [the blind man’s] vision, not out of nothing, but in the way he did.7
Healing a person blind from birth was indeed an act of creation, not simply a repair. Contemporary medical science knows more clearly how difficult it would be than was known in the first century. When a boy is born, he can only see far enough to behold his mother’s face when held in her arms. It will take several years of practice for him to learn to use his eyes, to make the connections among nerves and his brain that will enable him to see well. Medical technology is working on building an artificial eye that would enable a blind person to see at least light and darkness. This might work for one who lost vision in adulthood, but not for one who was born blind, who never developed the infrastructure of nerves for seeing in the first place. Indeed, Chrysostom in his own way hints at these facts:
Furthermore, not only did [Christ] fashion eyes, not only did He open them, but He also endowed them with power to see. And this is a proof that He also breathed life into them. Indeed, if this vital principle should not operate, even if the eye were sound, it could never see anything. And so He both bestowed the power to see by giving the eyes life, and also gave the organ of sight completely equipped with arteries, and nerves, and veins, and blood, and all the other things of which our body is composed.8
This passage contains another echo of Adam’s creation in Genesis 2:7: “Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”
Arguments
The man who has been healed of lifelong blindness “came back” to the temple area “able to see” (John 9:7). Yet he is not met with congratulations but challenged by his Jewish neighbors and then by Pharisees. These arguments occupy most of the chapter, through verse 34. The way he responds to these challenges is impressive. First, his neighbors and people who have seen him begging ask each other whether he is in fact the one who was born blind. He uses his eyes and finds his way around so effortlessly that they wonder if he is the same man. “He kept saying, ‘I am the man’” (9:9). Chrysostom comments, “He was not ashamed of his former affliction, nor did he fear the anger of the crowd, nor did he hesitate to appear in public in order to proclaim his Benefactor.”9 If he were ashamed of his disability, as one could easily be in that culture, he would have kept silence and tried to “pass” as somebody else. But he is of an honest character, full of courage and faith in Christ, and wants to give Christ public credit for the gift he has given. Chrysostom returns to these points about the man’s character throughout his homilies on John 9. The man gives forthright, truthful answers to those who question him, and as a result they continue to engage him in argument.
When his neighbors and acquaintances ask how he has been healed, he explains, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight” (John 9:11). Then they ask him where Jesus is, and he replies, “I do not know” (9:12). To begin with, he does not know much about Jesus except that he has given the amazing gift of sight. However, as the arguments continue, he is pressed by his interlocutors to arrive at a more and more exalted view of who Jesus is.
Then the acquaintances bring Pharisees to talk to him, perhaps hoping they can clarify matters. Since the healing has occurred on a Sabbath, they dispute among themselves: “Some of the Pharisees said, ‘This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath.’ But others said, ‘How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?’ And they were divided” (John 9:16). At this point, some of them had a favorable view of Christ. As Chrysostom says, “They were being educated by the miracles.”10 Then, as a group, the Pharisees try to get the man who was healed to settle their argument; they ask him who he thinks Jesus is. He replies, “He is a prophet” (9:17). The Pharisees do not like this answer, so they continue to investigate and argue. Meanwhile, perhaps at their request, some Jews ask the man’s parents three questions: whether he is their son, whether he was born blind, and how he has come to see. They answer that he is indeed their son and was born blind, but to avoid getting in trouble, they do not answer the third question. “Ask him,” they said; “he is of age. He will speak for himself” (9:21).
Since his parents have not satisfied them, the Pharisees question the man born blind a second time, stating aggressively, “We know that this man [Jesus] is a sinner” (John 9:24) because, in their opinion, he does not keep the Sabbath. As Chrysostom explains,11 the man born blind replies as an eyewitness, reporting only what he knows from his own experience. He knows from the miracle Jesus has worked that he is not a sinner, but the man has no prior experience of Jesus’s conduct. So he says in a conciliatory way, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see” (9:25). He bases his claim about Jesus entirely upon what has indisputably happened to him. The Pharisees have no reasoned answer to this assertion, so they again speak aggressively, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” (9:26). Chrysostom, himself a master rhetorician, observes that the man born blind is winning the argument and notes that he now presses his case further: “Because he had defeated them and laid them low, he finally ceased speaking mildly.”12 He refused to answer their question about the healing, having answered it before: “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?” (9:27). This is splendid Johannine irony. The man is probably thinking of what he himself wants to do. Not surprisingly, the Pharisees react with an angry accusation: “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from” (9:28–29). By this time the man must be taking their insult as a compliment, and he is further emboldened. He answers with a theological argument about Jesus based on the healing: “Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing” (9:30–33). Notice how he turns the Pharisees’ own argument against them, namely, that God does not listen to sinners but listens to his obedient worshipers.
The Pharisees no longer engage with what he has said but instead respond with an ad hominem attack: “You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?” (John 9:34). They use his disability to attack him, even though it is no longer there. Since he was born blind, they say he was actually born a sinner, and his parents no doubt are sinners too. Their pride is offended that someone from such a background would dare to try to teach them. Contrast this attitude with how Jesus responds to his disability at the beginning of the chapter: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned.”
From Blind Beggar to Apostle
The Pharisees “drove him out” (John 9:34). He is probably expelled from the temple, and maybe also the synagogue, from which his parents feared being expelled if they confessed Jesus too boldly (9:22). The man born blind can no longer be a beggar, he has no livelihood, and now he has been rejected by leaders of the Jewish community. As a matter of religious obligation, Jewish people gave alms to disabled beggars, especially in or around the temple. Now able bodied, the man has lost his place in society, lowly as it was.
Then Jesus takes the initiative and finds him again. John Chrysostom eloquently explains what happens:
Those who endure some terrible suffering and are insulted for the sake of truth and the confession of Christ are the ones particularly held in honor by him. . . . If we are insulted for God’s sake, we shall be honored both in this world and in the next. Furthermore, since they had thrown him out of the temple, Jesus found him. The Evangelist pointed out that He came there for the purpose of meeting him. And what a reward He conferred on him: the best of blessings. And I say this because He made Himself known to him who before did not know Him and included him in the company of His own disciples.13
Jesus immediately gives him a new community and a new place in it. He calls this man as he, in John 1, has called Andrew and Peter, Philip and Nathanael. It is clear from his dispute with the Pharisees that the man with the opened eyes has the truthfulness, courage, intelligence, and articulate speech of an apostle. He now has the opportunity to travel with Jesus and learn from him directly. He is not one of the Twelve, whose names we know, but is it not likely that he becomes one of that larger group of apostles whom Luke names as the “seventy-two” (Luke 10:1–17 marg.)?
At his second meeting with Jesus, he sees him for the first time, but, given the good hearing and good memory a person born blind develops, he probably recognizes his voice. He listens openly and respectfully, though he does not yet really know who the Lord is. Jesus asks him, “Do you believe in the Son of God?” (John 9:35 marg.).14 Eager to learn, he answers, “And who is he, Lord? Tell me, so that I may believe in him” (9:36 marg.). Then the Lord reveals himself to him: “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he” (9:37). Christ invites the man to believe in him but does not order him to believe. As Chrysostom says, he asks whether he believes “not out of ignorance, but that the athlete who bore many sufferings would be granted a crown.”15 He invites him to reveal his own faith, the faith that has sprung from the healing of his eyes, has grown through facing the challenges of the Pharisees, and is now coming to fullness. “He said, ‘Lord, I believe,’ and he worshiped him” (9:35−38). Chrysostom observes, “By this action the man showed his belief in Christ’s divinity, for he added the prostration in order that no one might think that what he said was merely words.”16 Chrysostom understood the Greek of John 9:38 as saying that the man expresses his worship in a physical action, such as kneeling and bowing his forehead to the ground. So to him the blind man’s confession is equivalent to the confession of Thomas when he saw Christ after the resurrection: “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28).
Jesus then speaks of how this man has obtained sight, while the Pharisees have become blind (John 9:39–41). Here, according to Chrysostom, he speaks of “two kinds of sight and blindness: one physical, the other spiritual.”17 Christ healed the man blind from birth first of physical blindness, then also of spiritual blindness. As his perceptions unfold, he continues to be receptive and cooperative. His example shows that physical blindness, and by implication other kinds of disability, is not tied to sin, nor is it shameful. As Chrysostom says earlier, “Evil does not consist in the misfortunes of this life, as also good does not consist in the blessings of this life, but sin is the only evil, and disability is in reality not an evil.”18 When the Pharisees ask Jesus in John 9:40, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” Chrysostom observes that they are concerned only with the things of the senses and are “ashamed of physical blindness.”19 In these homilies, John Chrysostom shows the same appreciative and compassionate attitude toward the disabled that he shows toward the poor throughout his writings. And indeed, the disabled often are poor.
The Blind Rabbi
In John 9, the Pharisees are portrayed as gravely deficient, not only in their attitude toward Christ, but also in their attitude toward people with disabilities, especially blindness. John’s negative portrayal may in general be unfair to them, given that they and Jesus held enough theological views in common to find many grounds for arguing with each other, like rabbis disputing over the meanings of Scripture. So the Pharisee Saul of Tarsus could become Paul the apostle.
Yet most of the spiritual descendants of the Pharisees became the rabbis who preserved and reconstituted Judaism after the fall of the temple in AD 70. The rich diversity of their voices interpreting and disputing over Scripture and the Jewish way of life is preserved in the talmudic literature (ca. AD 200–500). Unlike the temple priesthood governed by rules in Leviticus, rabbis were mostly laypeople, as the Pharisees were, and could have disabilities themselves. They expressed differing views on issues of disability. In contrast with John’s portrayal of uniformly negative Pharisaic attitudes toward blindness, I will share one story from the Babylonian Talmud about three rabbis who respond to it much more positively. One of them is the chief rabbi of the time, named in the talmudic text simply as “Rabbi”:
Rabbi and Rabbi Ḥiyya were on the road. When they reached a certain town they said, “Is there a sage here? Let us go and greet him!” The people said to them: “There is a sage here and he is blind.” Rabbi Ḥiyya said to Rabbi: “You sit. I will go and greet him so that you don’t degrade your exalted status.” But he prevailed over him and they went together. When they were taking their leave [of the blind sage], he said to them: “You have received the one who is seen, but who does not see. May you merit to be received by the One who sees, but who is not seen.” Rabbi said to Rabbi Ḥiyya: “If I had followed your advice, you would have kept me from this blessing!”20 (Ḥagigah 5b)
As a courtesy, the chief rabbi and his companion like to visit the rabbis in towns they pass through on their journey. This gives local rabbis a chance for conversation and consultation with senior colleagues. So people tell them that the rabbi in their village is blind. Rabbi Ḥiyya regards blindness as shameful and worries that the man’s shame would spread to his illustrious companion if he visited, so to spare him, Rabbi Ḥiyya offers to make the visit alone. But Rabbi disagrees, they dispute about it, and the senior colleague wins the argument. It would be interesting to know what they said to each other, but the Talmud does not record their conversation.
So the two go together to see the blind rabbi. At the end of their visit the gracious host gives a blessing to his guests. They all belong to a culture in which blessings are considered to be concretely effective. He says, “You have received the one who is seen, but who does not see.” They have received him as a colleague and entered into dialogue with him, for which he is thankful. Then he turns this saying around: “May you merit to be received by the One who sees, but who is not seen,” that is, the invisible God. The blind rabbi’s subtle point is that all the rabbis, in fact all people, are like himself in relation to God. All are seen by God, all can enter into dialogue with him through prayer, but nobody can see him. The blind rabbi is, in effect, an example to everybody. Moreover, he has edified the chief rabbi, who remarks that the visit has brought the blessing to both himself and Rabbi Ḥiyya. Rabbi Ḥiyya’s shame about blindness has been corrected by the other two rabbis. At their parting, all three are honored through the blessing. The blind rabbi, like the blind apostle in John 9, is honored for speaking wisdom.
John the Evangelist and John Chrysostom exemplify a Christian belief that there is nothing shameful about physical disability. Above all, God is never offended when people with disabilities seek to serve him. Like the anonymous village rabbi in Ḥagigah 5b, John’s man born blind could serve in a ministry of teaching and exhortation. Another example is the monk and biblical teacher in fourth-century Alexandria who went down in history as Didymus the Blind.21
Although the ancient Greeks and Romans thought the gods would be offended if a disabled person served as a priest, and Judaism, too, excluded them from the priesthood because they were “blemished,” the Christian church explicitly rejected this opinion. In the Apostolic Canons, a collection of regulations used in the early church and ratified by the Council of Nicaea and subsequent ecumenical councils, it is stated, “If anyone has lost an eye or has a lame leg but in other respects is worthy of the episcopate, he may be ordained, since a defect of the body does not defile a person, but pollution of the soul does.” Bishops were the highest rank of Christian priesthood. However, people with more severe disabilities were excluded because they would have practical difficulties in doing a bishop’s work: “Yet if a person is deaf or blind, he may not be made a bishop, not as if he were defiled by this, but so that the affairs of the Church may not be hindered.”22 As an apostle, the man born blind who received his sight would have been called to travel to places new to him, which could have been very difficult without eyesight. His vocation must have become much easier for him to fulfill with the sight Christ granted him. Yet we must recognize, as John’s Jesus recognized—as Chrysostom, the chief rabbi in Ḥagigah 5b, and the authors and editors of the Apostolic Canons would have agreed—that his earlier blindness was never itself a diminution of his humanity.
I hereby thank my teachers Blake Leyerle and Fr. Brian Daley, SJ, and my friend and colleague Fr. Andrew Hofer, OP, for their gracious help in critiquing earlier drafts of this essay.
1. Robert Garland, The Eye of the Beholder: Deformity and Disability in the Graeco-Roman World (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995).
2. Judith Z. Abrams, Judaism and Disability: Portrayals in Ancient Texts from the Tanach through the Bavli (Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 1988), 16–70.
3. In PG 59:305–28; trans. Sr. Thomas Aquinas Goggin, St. John Chrysostom: Commentary on Saint John the Apostle and Evangelist, Homilies 48–88, FC 41 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1959), 85–124; this work is cited below as Goggin.
4. PG 59:305.
5. PG 59:306–7.
6. Jack Bemporad, “Soul: Jewish Concept,” in Encyclopedia of Religion, edited by Lindsay Jones, 2nd ed. (Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan Reference, 2005), 12:8556–61.
7. PG 59:307–8; Goggin, 89–90, alt.
8. PG 59:308; Goggin, 91–92.
9. PG 59:312; Goggin, 99.
10. PG 59:313; Goggin, 101.
11. PG 59:318; Goggin, 110–11.
12. PG 59:318; Goggin, 111.
13. PG 59:321–22; Goggin, 120–21, alt.
14. This is what Chrysostom’s text says, PG 59:322, an important point reflected in his interpretation of the text. Many biblical versions, including the RSV and NRSV (cf. marg.), say “Son of Man,” an exalted title as Dan. 7:13–14 and Jesus use it, yet this title is ambiguous when compared to “Son of God.” The standard scholarly version of the original, The Greek New Testament, ed. Kurt Aland et al., 2nd ed. (New York: United Bible Society, 1968), 363–64, says Sy pisteueis eis ton huion tou anthrōpou? Yet the footnote cites many more manuscripts that say huion tou theou than the reading chosen, including one by Chrysostom, probably cited above. According to The New Testament in the Original Greek: Byzantine Textform 2005, ed. Maurice A. Robinson and William C. Pierpont (Southborough, MA: Chilton, 2005), 219, the contemporary Greek version likely closest to what Chrysostom knew reads Sy pisteueis eis ton huion tou theou?
15. PG 59:322; replacing Goggin’s weak paraphrase, on 121.
16. PG 59:311; Goggin, 122.
17. PG 59:323; Goggin, 122.
18. PG 59:307; Goggin, 88, alt.
19. PG 59:323; Goggin, 123.
20. Quoted in Julia Watts Baker, “Reading Talmudic Bodies: Disability, Narrative, and the Gaze in Rabbinic Judaism,” in Disability in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: Sacred Texts, Historical Traditions, and Social Analysis, ed. Darla Schumm and Michael Stoltzfus (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 5–27, esp. 18–19. This article provides a good overview of approaches to disability in talmudic literature.
21. See Richard A. Layton, Didymus the Blind and His Circle in Late Antique Alexandria (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004).
22. Apostolic Canons 77 and 78, quoted in John H. Erickson, The Challenge of Our Past: Studies in Orthodox Canon Law and Church History (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1991), 64n35, with English updated in translation.