tragic than the condition of those who do not see is that of those who, on the basis of confidence in their ability to see, judge Jesus a blasphemer. This is the condition of “the Jews” who use the Scriptures as the source of light and who on this basis judge Jesus and condemn him as a sinner who is anything but one sent by the Father. This is the theme of the healing of the man born blind. The story says that Jesus made mud and anointed the eyes of the blind with it. Then he sent him to the pool of Siloam. The name of the pool comes from the Hebrew word Shalom, peace. The narrator twists the etymology of the word and explains to the reader that the name comes from the Hebrew Shalach, meaning “Sent.” After washing his eyes with the water of The One Sent, the man born blind now sees. This is a never-heard-of miracle, as the blind man informs the Pharisees. It has never been done before (9:32).
As an afterthought, after we have read the story, the narrator informs us that the miracle took place on a Sabbath. Basing themselves on Torah, the Pharisees condemn Jesus in absentia as a sinner. Since it was not an emergency case, he could well have waited until the following day to make the mud and anoint the eyes of the blind.
The readers are emphatically informed that the Pharisees judge Jesus a sinner on the basis of their knowledge. “We know that this man is a sinner” (9:24). “We know that God has spoken to Moses” (9:29). On the contrary, both the parents and the man born blind confess that they do not know (9:12, 21, 25).
Actually, the man born blind confesses that he knows one thing: he was blind and now he sees (9:25). What he knows he knows from experience. What the Pharisees know they know from authority. They are proud disciples of Moses, and according to the Pharisaic interpretation of the law of Moses anyone who makes mud and anoints another with it on a Sabbath has broken the law and is a sinner. By experience the ex- blind testifies that the Light of the Sent One facilitates seeing and gives life. Those who think they have found life in the Scriptures, on the other hand, are blinded by their own self sufficiency. In this context Jesus says: “For judgment (krima= condemnation) I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind” (9:39).
This story was put together by those who knew what they were doing. They built its plot to highlight the irony of the situation – irony being a characteristic of most Johannine stories. Those who think themselves to be well informed and able judges end up judged and condemned. Those who know and feel secure in their beliefs are declared to be blind sinners. In the meantime, the one who was born blind has his eyes open to see, and without becoming an idolater adores the Sent One who gave him Light (9:38).
The spark in the half closed eyes and the intelligent smile of the narrator is visible to readers through the ages. The blinding certainty of those who pretend to see is exposed for what it is when confronted by the Light of the world. Seeing God in the Son who came to reveal God cannot depend on other sources of light. Those who rely on them end up revealing that they are in the dark.
The presence of Jesus gives light to the one born blind and blinds those who think they see. As the headlights of a car allow the driver to see the road ahead but blind those who travel in the opposite direction, so the Light of the world illumines those who see by his Light and blinds those who insist on seeing by their own lights.
In this gospel the message of Jesus is not centered on the establishment of the Kingdom of God. What Jesus reveals is the source of life. The one born blind, as the Pharisees say, is a disciple of the One who gave him sight. Actually, for the Johannine community he is the prototype of the true disciple. Once able to see he worships the unique God who gave him light and life. His eyes were washed in the fountain of The One Sent by God. This is how the Logos makes visible the God no one has ever seen. As the Sent One insists, he did not come to condemn the world but to save it, but at the same time, unavoidably, he blinds and condemns those who pretend to see, especially the disciples of Moses.
The coming of the Light divides the world between those who abide in darkness and those who walk in the Light (3:19; 11:9 – 10; 12:35, 46). According to John distinguishes itself by giving the world a radically dualistic structure, but its dualism has lost the temporal tension that informs the expectations of a coming kingdom which are characteristic of apocalypticism. In According to John we have the repetition of the first day of creation — in the beginning. Once again the light that brings about life displaces the darkness that lurks in the waters of the deep (Gen. 1:1 – 2). The tensions created by the Johannine dualisms provide the context for its understanding of salvation. That the light enlightens and blinds, gives life and condemns to death causes one to wonder how this can be. Did Jesus come to bring life or to bring judgment? To collapse the apocalyptic final judgment into the appearance of the Son as the revealer of the Father only increases the tension that has always existed within the view that God is both a loving Creator and a Judge. This is the tension that sustains faith. To believe on the basis of the Light that emanates from Jesus is the opposite of unbelief, but this is not in tension with the unbelief that characterizes the darkness. While the darkness may seem threatening it is unable to comprehend or apprehend the light. The Light of the world that brings life eternal illumines the lives of those who believe and takes away from them all fear of the darkness. The children of light don’t live for the future and have nothing to fear from the future. The Light has given them eternal life.
4. No One Has
Ascended into Heaven
The prophets of Israel gave to Western Civilization its orientation toward the future. They were the ones who diagnosed the need for a radical change from the status quo and predicted that this change would come in the future. Traditional societies were anchored in the annual natural cycle. Life was to be lived in conformity with the constant repetition of the vital cycle in nature. The prophets freed time from the notion that it is bound to the cycles of nature with their constant returns to the beginning. They conceived time as a horizontal line into the future that would bring The Day of the Lord and The Kingdom of God. To live is to hope for That Great Day, not to reenact the past ad infinitum in yearly festivals.
Rather than to think of life as grounded in time and history, Plato taught that to live in the accidents of time and its changes is to live anxiously, lacking a footing in reality. To live authentically is not to become but to be. To live wisely is to anchor one’s life on that which is, not on the things that are constantly becoming something else. To live is to escape the world of becoming in time and take hold of the things that are eternal. It is, therefore, absolutely necessary to gain knowledge of the things that are in the higher spheres of the chain of being. The scaffolding of life is not in time but in space. About the things that exist in time and are constantly becoming something else one may have an opinion. To know is to have grasped intellectually the things that are, that are not changed by time. Truth should not be confused with opinions about material things. The truth only exists in that which is eternal, that is, in ideas.
As a Mediterranean nation, the Jews of Jesus’ time were thoroughly Hellenized. Even if the common people may not have known Plato’s philosophical work, and may not even have known his name, the Hellenistic world was permeated with a popular version of Plato’s thought. This meant that the prophetic vision, which instilled hope in a future when communion with God would be possible as God’s kingdom became a reality and God’s throne was located on Mount Zion, was not predominant. Within a Hellenistic culture Jews explored the mystical avenues used by Hellenistic mystery cults, and Merkabah Judaism developed its own version of how to ascend to the heavenly spheres in order to get in touch with the divine realities that are eternal.
Jewish Merkabah mysticism established ways of ascending to the heavenly spheres and anchoring one’s life on the things that really are. Not surprisingly, Elijah’s chariot (2 Kings 2:11) became the vehicle of choice for those who wished to ascend to the heavenly regions and thus escape from the anxieties of life in the changes brought by time to those living in matter. Even the human body was an impediment to the ascent to spiritual realities. That trips to heaven provided knowledge of heavenly realities
