Note 135 — Chapter IX · MIRACLES OF JESUS.

The principal passage commonly adduced in support of this position, is the introduction to the history of the man born blind, which was last considered (John ix. 1–3). Here the disciples, seeing on the road the man whom they knew to have been blind from his birth, put to Jesus the question, whether his blindness was the consequence of his own sins, or of those of his parents? The case was a peculiarly difficult one on the Jewish theory of retribution. With respect to diseases which attach themselves to a man in his course through life, an observer who has once taken a certain bias, may easily discover or assume some peculiar delinquencies on the part of this man as their cause. With respect to inborn diseases, on the contrary, though the old Hebraic opinion (Exod. xx. 5; Deut. v. 9; 2 Sam. iii. 29), it is true, presented the explanation that by these the sins of the fathers were visited on their posterity: yet as, for human regulations, the Mosaic law itself ordained that each should suffer for his own sins alone (Deut. xxiv. 16; 2 Kings xiv. 6); and as also, in relation to the penal justice of the Divine Being, the prophets predicted a similar dispensation (Jer. xxxi. 30; Ezek. xviii. 19 f.); rabbinical acumen resorted to the expedient of supposing, that men so afflicted might probably have sinned in their mother’s womb,135 and this was doubtless the notion which the disciples had in view in their question, v. 2. Jesus says, in answer, that neither for his own sin nor for that of his parents, did this man come into the world blind; but in order that by the cure which he, as the Messiah, would effect in him, he might be an instrument in manifesting the miraculous power of God. This is generally understood as if Jesus repudiated the whole opinion, that disease and other evils were essentially punishments of sin. But the words of Jesus are expressly limited to the case before him; he simply says, that this particular misfortune had its foundation, not in the guilt of the individual, but in higher providential designs. The supposition that his expressions had a more general sense, and included a repudiation of the entire Jewish opinion, could only be warranted by other more decided declarations from him to that effect. As, on the contrary, according to the above observations, a narrative is found in the synoptical gospels which, simply interpreted, implies the concurrence of Jesus in the prevalent opinion, the question arises: which is easier, to regard the expression of Jesus in the synoptical narratives as an accommodation, or that in John as having relation solely to the case immediately before him?—a question which will be decided in favour of the latter alternative by every one who, on the one hand, knows the difficulties attending the hypothesis of accommodation as applied to the expressions of Jesus in the gospels, and on the other, is clear-sighted enough to perceive, that in the passage in question in the fourth gospel, there is not the slightest intimation that the declaration of Jesus had a more general meaning.