Divine Power and the Blind Man

It is believed regarding God that no one is the cause of evil. However, the suffering endured in training and the recognition of God's power at work was not fully known later, because of the greater rewards given to the righteous from God then, and not as now extending the struggles longer because of the life remaining for ages.

Since the blind man was blind from birth, it appears to the disciples to seek the cause; and as it was impossible for him to commit the same sin before being born, they look to that of the parents. For he knew through the grief of parents that there are sufferings concerning children. But the Lord says that blindness does not come because of some sin, but for the sake of the glory of God about to be, for the purpose of the power of God being known through the paradoxically occurring sight (John 9:7). The participation of Siloam in the work, which is interpreted as having been sent, just as the evangelist did not mark in vain, shows the sending of the Creator's power toward the renewal of his own creation, being made purifying from sins, of which the water of the bath was a symbol, and through the cleansing of sins bringing back health and bringing the diseased and purified nature into perfection.

Not as needing to learn something, these approach the question from the blind man (John 9:10), but as if shaming him with something more defamatory against the Lord because of the perceived brevity regarding the Sabbath (John 9:17); for they thought that being among many, they would drag one down, and these things were meager and cheap, but they thought it great to stop the praise for him and to be able to condemn the thing done not being testified by him who was healed. But he did not show fear, having known the Lord through trial (John 9:16), but as much as he was able to grasp, he says about him to be a prophet, and this appropriately, since he did not know the authority of the divinity, not knowing that he had made him by his own power.

So much does a pre-conceived dogma and a certain disposition toward the passing of right upon things prevail, and to darken the reasoning.

And that he made the blind man see on the Sabbath, they do not consider; but that 'he made clay' John 9:6, they judge, being scoffers of the Lord, working his works many times on this day, so that from the 'slavery under the elements' Galatians 4:3, as the apostle says, he might free the men having made them fit from the Sabbath-slavery into the slavery of God; for to work the work of God according to the Sabbath-rule is to serve God instead of the Sabbath.

Not finding the denial they wanted from the healed one, they seek this from the parents, hoping that they, having been disturbed, would be accomplices to them in denying, because this one born blind is the one now seeing John 9:18. But the evangelist says that they do not even believe; for faith does not dwell in a contentious soul and in a soul arraying itself against the power of God, so that they are not without cause for their unbelief, but are even greatly to blame, having constructed hardness within themselves, through which they did not receive the good of faith. They disturb the parents, accusing them, saying that they say their son was born blind; how, they say, to see a son John 9:28.

You say this out of arrogance. What they say is such a thing. We know that God through Moses gave law, but this one we do not know, except as one loosening the law; for on the Sabbath he healed the blind; for it is for this purpose they say they do not know him John 9:29-30. And that you are a disciple of him, they say as if you are disparaging him; and that he does not know, they say as if they are able to conceive nothing concerning the suspicion of his birth according to the flesh, nor anything concerning his unspeakable birth. What then is against this the healed one? From these same words he perceives them and makes them fall upon themselves. This, he says, the wonderful thing, that you do not know where he is from, surpasses human comprehension. Furthermore, since he himself has not spoken from above, but knowing, for he says, 'we know that God does not hear sinners' John 9:31, that he has spoken.

With a wonderful veil, the parable covers the things revealed to the unworthy, leaving the recognition to the worthy. And the power of the parable is to reveal the departure occurring toward the good from the legal rule and...