the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Bible Dictionaries
Blindness (2)
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or BLINDNESS.—Blindness is a very common disease in the East. It is mainly due to ophthalmia caused partly by the sun-glare and partly by lack of cleanliness. The word ‘blindness’ or ‘blind’ is used in the Bible, however, very frequently of a spiritual condition; and the references in the Gospels are specially interesting as the physical and the spiritual states are sometimes intertwined, the former being used as emblematic of the latter.
In Matthew 11:5 the first evidence of His Messiahship, adduced by Jesus to the disciples of John the Baptist, is that the blind receive their sight. The first miracle of this nature in the life of Jesus is recorded by St. Matthew (Matthew 9:27 ff.) as occurring at Capernaum.
Two blind men followed Him, crying, ‘Thou Son of David, have mercy on us.’ Jesus seems unwilling at first to grant their request, as we are told that it was not till they had entered the house with Him that He turned a favourable ear to their entreaty. Satisfied of their faith, and of the spirit in which they approached Him, He pronounced the word of healing.
In St. Mark (Mark 8:22 ff.) another miracle of restoring sight to the blind is recorded which has features of its own.
Jesus leads the blind man out of the village (Bethsaida), and, having spit upon his eyes, touches them. Sight is only gradually restored, as at first he sees men like trees walking. This is one of the many instances of the realism of St. Mark. Probably it is a reminiscence of the well-known difficulty experienced by the blind-born, to whom sight has been given through a surgical operation, of adjusting the knowledge acquired by the new faculty with that derived through the other avenues of sense-perception.
The story of the blind man or men at Jericho is recorded in all three Synoptics (Matthew 20:29 ff., Mark 10:46 ff., Luke 18:35 ff.). It has also features in common with the incident narrated in Matthew 9:27.
St. Mark and St. Luke speak of only one blind man, St. Matthew has two. All three give the words of healing differently. There have been many attempts made to harmonize the various accounts,* [Note: For a summary of these see Plummer, Internat. Crit. Com., ‘St. Luke,’ in loco.] but the necessity for making such attempts arises out of a mechanical theory of inspiration which is difficult to maintain. Is it not enough for all practical purposes to hold the substantial accuracy of the Evangelic narrative without troubling ourselves about those minute divergences which occur in different versions of the same event narrated by the most trustworthy witnesses?
The miracles recorded in Matthew 12:22 and John 9 stand by themselves as having a very close relation to the teaching of Jesus which follows. St. Matthew tells us that there was brought to Jesus one possessed with a devil, blind and dumb; and He healed him, insomuch that the blind and dumb both saw and spake. This gave rise to the charge of the Pharisees, that the miraculous power of Jesus was not a God-given, but a devil-given power. ‘This fellow doth not cast out devils, but by Beelzebub the prince of the devils.’ To the clear moral vision of Jesus the attitude implied in this objection showed a radical depravity of nature, an inability to discriminate between fundamental ethical distinctions. ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.’ If Satan, inspires to deeds of beneficence, then he ceases to be Satan. He who does good is inspired of God, and the measure of the good he does is the measure of his conquest over Satan. It is in this connexion that Jesus utters the remarkable reference to blasphemy against the Holy Ghost as the unforgivable sin. See art. Blasphemy.
The other instance where the miraculous cure of blindness is made a text for the most characteristic teaching of Jesus is that recorded in John 9. Here it is a man blind from his birth that Jesus cures. And when the Pharisees seek to persuade him of their peculiar theological tenet that the power of Jesus is derived from Satan, the man has strength of mind enough to fall back on that primary moral instinct to which Jesus always appeals. ‘Whereas I was blind, now I see. This man has done good to me, and for me, therefore, he is good. It is not the function of the prince of darkness to give sight to the blind.’ He cannot, therefore, accept their theory of the source whence Jesus derives His power.
This leads us to a predominant feature of the teaching of Jesus—His presentation of the gospel as vision. Jesus claims to be the Light of the world. Light to those who see is its own evidence, and Jesus, therefore, in making this claim can desire no recognition other than that spontaneously made by the soul when purged from the sinful passions that obscure or deflect its vision. To secure effective vision there must be not only light, but also a healthy visual organ. Blindness may arise from the absence of light, from mere functional derangement of the organ of vision, or from some fatal organic defect in the organ. It is to those whose blindness comes from either of the first two causes that Jesus appeals. He comes as Light, strengthening the visual faculty, dispelling the darkness that envelops the soul, and revealing to it the spiritual realm. ‘I am come into this world that they which see not might see’ (John 9:39). This presentation of Jesus as Light appealing to the organ of spiritual vision and vindicating empirically His unique Divinity dominates the whole of the Fourth Gospel. But the principle is as clearly enunciated in the Synoptics. It is the pure in heart who see God (Matthew 5:8), because the pure heart is the organ of the God-consciousness. In the great confession of St. Peter the real point of our Lord’s commendation lies not in the clear enunciation of the Messiahship and the Divine Sonship of Jesus, but in the manner in which the profoundest of all spiritual truths has been reached. ‘Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven’ (Matthew 16:17).
Jesus, the Light of the world, can appeal only to those who have the faculty of sight. Where the faculty of sight is impaired, or destroyed, however clearly the light may shine, there is no vision. This obseuration of the spiritual orb is what is called ‘judicial blindness.’ The phrase implies that there never can be such radical defect of vision without personal guilt in the person so affected. It is a penalty of sin, the judgment that comes through neglecting the light (cf. John 9:41). Inasmuch as Jesus is the true Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world, there is in human nature, as such, the capacity of spiritual vision; but this capacity, either by disuse or perversity, may be so radically corrupted as to be impervious to the light. And when this is so, the sinner rushes to his doom heedless of the plainest warnings. This is a truth always recognized in the Gospels. St. John in his Prologue says that the Light shineth in darkness, but the darkness comprehended it not (cf. Matthew 6:22 f.). It is the meaning of the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, a sin unforgivable, inasmuch as it does not recognize itself as sin, and thus renders impossible that repentance which is the condition of forgiveness (but see art. Blasphemy.).
A. Miller.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Blindness (2)'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/b/blindness-2.html. 1906-1918.
