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 is also in evidence in the Revelation of John the Theologian. He reports to have ascended and been admitted to the very room where God’s throne and God’s entourage are to be found. There he learned things that were sealed, were to remain secret, until the proper time (Rev 4:1 – 6:1). The apostle Paul confesses to having ascended to the third heaven and to Paradise. There he was told things “that cannot be told, which man may not utter” (2 Cor. 12:1 – 4).
In Platonic terms reaching the higher spheres and seeing and hearing things that are secret can only be realized by the soul, or the intellect, the mind. In the Hebraic traditional culture the body is essential to any form of life. Matter is not ballast that must be discharged by those who wish to reach higher forms of reality. It is essential to any living thing. Thus Paul, a Jew to the core, as an intelligent citizen of the Hellenized world, having achieved an ascent to Paradise, wonders whether he was in the body or out of the body during this journey to the world above. To a Platonist the body would constitute a disqualifying impediment. An apocalyptic Jew like Paul had difficulty conceiving how he could make a trip to heaven without his body. Admirably, Paul admits his ignorance as whether he made the trip in the body or without it (2 Cor. 12:3).
The gospel According to John has some passing references to the need to wait for the future and its drastic changes. This gospel makes five references to “the resurrection in the last day” (6:39, 40, 44, 54; 11:24). The predominant perspective in this gospel, however, is not temporal; it is spatial, vertical and challenging. “No one has ascended into heaven, but he who descended from heaven” (3:13). The admonition is not “to watch and wait,” as in the synoptic gospels, or the letters of Paul. According to John does not advise having patience, or resignation until the Day of the Lord. It also contradicts all those who claim to have ascended to the heavenly spheres. The flat declaration that “no one has ascended to heaven” must have been quite shocking, both for the mystery religions whose devotees were initiated for these journeys and for a Judaism, whether apocalyptic or mystical, that also prepared people for journeys to the realms above.
While affirming that no one has ever ascended to heaven, According to John cites one exception to the rule. The One Sent by the Father, who descended from heaven, has also ascended into heaven. In other words, the one who descended to the world “below” has ascended to the world “above” from which he came. For those who are from below it is impossible to ascend. Only he who descended from “above” has ascended.
The world above and the world below are also designated “the spirit” and “the flesh.” These two realities are, apparently, mutually exclusive. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit” (3:6). Since human beings are born of the flesh, they belong to the world below; therefore, it is impossible for them to ascend. The Father’s purpose in sending his Son to this world was to open