Abstract
Didymus the Blind is unusual and perhaps unique as an ancient Christian exegete and teacher who reflects on blindness and was himself sight impaired. As one of the most important commentators on Scripture in the fourth century, his reflections on the meaning of sight are relevant to the discussion of disability today. He extends the faculty of sight beyond the physiological and gives it a telos in the right understanding of things in the experience of virtue. This wider description of sight supports a more inclusive idea of ability which can be applied in the Church.
Introduction to Didymus the Blind
Didymus the Blind was one of the most significant commentators on the Scriptures in the fourth century. The papyrus on which his extant commentaries were found in 1941 at Tura, an area outside Cairo, represent “the largest corpus of Biblical exegesis in Greek from a single Christian author.”[1] He was a critical disciple of Origen[2], and the most important teacher in Alexandria, attracting figures such as Jerome and Rufinus to learn from him[3], while also entertaining Anthony the Great[4], and being supported by Athanasius[5].
We learn from Jerome, Rufinus and Palladius[6], who visited him in Alexandria, that he lost his sight when a child of only 5 years of age, and before beginning formal education[7]. Sozomen says that he learned the alphabet from a tablet with the letters etched deeply into the surface[8]. He gained a reputation for the greatest erudition among his peers. His importance to the understanding of Scripture in relation to disability is that he was himself disabled[9]. We know that he was called Didymus the Blind during his life since Jerome, but Jerome insisted on describing him as Didymus “the one who sees”[10], and this idea of seeing properly is the aspect of his commentary which will be investigated in this paper.
His Scriptural Commentary
He came under some suspicion in the late 4th centuries in Alexandria[11]. Then, the Emperor Justinian and the Second Council of Constantinople controversially condemned some of his works with Origen in AD 553[12]. His writing, On the Trinity[13], was known, and some excerpts from his commentary in the catenae. But it was the discovery at Tura in 1941 which made a large proportion of his work available to scholars interested in his commentary and theology[14].
Some of his works remain lost, but he produced commentaries on more than 30 books of the Old and New Testament, together with lecture notes from three other books, and more than 16 other theological works[15]. Though a follower of Origen and from the interpretative school of Alexandria, Layton describes Didymus as never failing to take account of the literal meaning of the text but also “accepting scriptural language as defined by its own idiom.”[16] Rather he understands the intent of the Scriptures to be inspired by God the Holy Spirit and therefore worthy of him[17]. His interpretation has some significant insights when applied to the discussion of Scripture and Disability today.
Blindness in the Commentary of Didymus
Rufinus spent eight years studying with Didymus and reports, “he was deprived of his eyesight … but he was inflamed with an even greater desire for the sight of the true light.”[18] Rufinus adds, “he prayed to the Lord unceasingly not that he might receive sight in his physical eyes, but the illumination of the heart.”[19] An anecdote has been preserved by Jerome and Rufinus. It concerns the visit of Anthony who said to him,
“Do not be troubled, Didymus, because you are deemed deprived of your physical eyes, for what you lack are those eyes which mice, flies, and lizards have; rejoice rather that you have the eyes which angels have, by which God is seen, and through which a great light of knowledge is being kindled for you.”[20]
In these references from Didymus himself we find sight is considered as much more than a physical ability. There is sight which belongs to animals and insects as much as humans, but there is sight that belongs only to humans. This other sight is not merely a metaphor but is a deeper reality of which physical sight is only one aspect and not the most important. Even the medical model of sight is more than the receptors in the eye being stimulated by light. It is the processing of that data as it reaches the brain. It is the interpretation of that data, and the narrowing of attention based on psychological factors which is properly considered to be sight. The process of seeing is also an interior matter if we consider that two people looking out over the countryside will have an entirely different experience even though the visual data received through the eyes is the same. One person might say, “Do you see that rabbit in the field?” and the other person might truthfully say, “No, I can’t see it!” even though it appears as light in his eye. Didymus presents sight in this broader and richer sense, beyond even the necessarily psychological aspects. Its object is not only the material of the world but perception of the reality of things, and of God. This represents sight as seeing things properly, and not merely seeing things as they appear to the mind through the agency of the eye. It is possible to see clearly in this way even if the physical ability of the eye is compromised.
The commentary of Didymus on the first chapters of Genesis[21], and the book of Zechariah[22] are available in English translation and will be used to explore his understanding of sight. In one passage in On Zechariah, he describes the healings of Jesus and writes, “Many examples of such cures occur in the Gospels, where Jesus even heals the ailments in a physical sense: he brought the deaf and blind to sharpness of hearing and sight, healing ‘every disease and malady’ of body and much more of soul.”[23] Didymus notes the literal sense, but focuses on the healing of the soul, accomplished by Jesus, who gives sight to the soul. Didymus describes the physical healings, when they took place, as secondary to the inward healing which took place more often. He is not suggesting that an inward healing is compensation for an outward disability, but that the purpose of sight is recovered in those who receive an inward healing even more than those who receive only an outward one.
Elsewhere in Zechariah he discusses the senses and says, “Every person, as a living being, has five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch.”[24] This follows some of the ancient categorisations of the senses[25]. Didymus extends this idea, not simply as metaphor, but requiring the idea to be considered more deeply. He says, “he has as well their equivalent on a spiritual level: eyes enlightened, and hearing… sight and hearing beneath the surface…”[26]
The senses are more than the physiological, even more than the psychological. Sight is not restricted to the physical organ but exists with an inward component. This is not a metaphor but the reality existing beneath the surface. The eyes and their associated functionality are one aspect of what it means to have sight. This physiological function is intended to be the external aspect of a sense of sight which operates interiorly and as a spiritual functionality. Reducing the sense of sight to only the physiological process is to reduce it to only the external functionality. In Zechariah, Didymus connects such a reductionist approach to the five foolish virgins. He says, “if any people from carelessness lose the senses of the interior man and act only by the mortal ones, they will become five foolish virgins, relying on material things only.”[27] The physiological aspect is important, but as far as Didymus is concerned it is not the most important when the sense of sight in its fullest understanding is being considered.
This will become clearer as the commentary On Genesis is examined. In this context Didymus introduces the idea of “useful blindness”. He understands there is a physical faculty of sight, which may work more or less well. But there is an extension of this faculty beneath the surface and into the spiritual and interior domain which may also work more or less well. He discusses this in his commentary on Genesis 3:5. The Scripture in the LXX says, “And the snake said to the woman, “You will not die by death, for God knew that on the day you eat of it, your eyes would be opened, and you would be like gods knowing good and evil.”[28] This becomes the basis for Didymus’ thoughts on sight.
In his commentary he notes that the serpent, Satan embodied, wished to open the eyes of Adam and Eve. In some sense their eyes were closed. What did he want them to see? It was the possibility of evil, of fulfilling the desire for pleasure and orienting their vision around self-centredness. Didymus considers that a person may have physical sight and yet not see by associating this with the practice of virtue, of becoming the person that God has created each one to be. He says, “When virtue is being practiced, they are not open, remaining closed with a useful blindness, which Jesus says in the Gospel is his role: ‘I came so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.’”[29] This is an interesting perspective for Didymus to introduce, and it can hardly be incidental that he introduces it while he is himself physically blind.
He links the words of the Lord Jesus in the Gospel, that he had come to bring both sight and blindness, with this passage in Genesis, where there is also a consideration of seeing and not seeing. Christ has come into the world to bring blindness, as if this was a positive experience and not necessarily only a negative one. Didymus links this to virtue, so that if virtue is the pursuit and development of spiritual and Christ-like character in union with God, then this blindness is a practical and dynamic matter and not simply a static state. It is when a person is seeking and practicing virtue that they become blind, with a “useful blindness”[30]. Adam and Eve experienced this useful blindness before they were led astray by the serpent and gained a harmful sight of evil.
Didymus needs to explain more clearly what he means, and adds, “Now, in actual fact, instead of making anyone blind, Jesus gave sight to the blind. So, it is clear that he blinds those who see badly, and makes them see again with eyes that bring benefit, those of the interior man, which preserve purity of vision, not in a physical sense but spiritually.”[31] This is not a metaphorical use of the idea of sight and blindness, unless a medical model of sight is the only one possible. Rather, there is a deeper expression of sight and blindness beneath the surface that is also a reality, though not merely a physical one. Jesus did not make people physically blind, that is true. But he did blind those who already were not seeing properly, though they had the faculty of physical sight. He removed the way of seeing which was turned to evil. He made blind in this sense. While at the same time giving sight of the reality of all things and an experience of enlightenment. Didymus is not concerned with whether a person has physical sight or not, rather that every person should seek a purity of vision, which connects the interior and exterior faculty of sight, and which may exist even if the external and physical faculty of sight is diminished.
He considers how Adam and Eve had both sight and were blind in the time before the Fall. He comments, “Before the transgression, therefore, the human being had eyes to look at things as he should, that is, to apply understanding to things in knowledgeable fashion.”[32] Didymus is concerned with what the eyes are used for, the telos of sight, and not simply the physiological functionality. Sight is to do with applying “understanding to things in knowledgeable fashion”, and the eyes provide some data, but this is not the goal of sight or the essential purpose of sight, which is understanding. Adam was therefore seeing when “his eyes were looking at sights appropriate to him.”[33] Sight is connected with virtue, as he has proposed. But they were blocked up, and made blind in a negative sense, when they listened to Satan and turned their gaze to evil. When they saw and were attracted by what was not appropriate for the life of virtue, they were actually blind and blinded.
At the same time, “They ate, and the eyes of both were opened, and they realized that they were naked.”[34] Their physical faculty of sight remained the same. But they saw and became blind, and they were blind and now they saw. In this context the words of Christ find their relevance. “‘I came so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.”[35] They had lost the facility to see things according to virtue and according to nature, and now were unable to see other than according to the principle of desire. He continues, “instead of her judging by sight what was set before her for food, the prior deception aroused a certain satisfaction and enjoyment, and then she urged the man, who was deceived, to get involved.”[36] She should have judged only according to the physiological aspect of sight, but according to the more complete sense in which sight is the fruit of virtue. Having been deceived she now had faculties of external and internal sight which were blinded by passion and the thought of pleasure.
Their eyes were already open, and they saw in the way that Anthony says even an insect sees, but their sight as perception and understanding was now changed. They had “been stripped of virtue”by their will and actions and so they realised that they were naked in the more significant interior sense. This was the purpose of Satan, according to Didymus. It was “that what is seen in the light of true reason by the pure eye of the soul he causes to be seen in opposite fashion, suggesting what is pleasant in place of what is good, and presenting what is good as a nuisance.”[37] The medical model of human nature and of disability would not consider this as the meaning of sight, other than in a metaphorical sense. But for Didymus this is the essential quality of sight, and the purpose for which it is to be used, and the manner in which it is disturbed.
Adam and Eve were created blind in a true sense, with “eyes that previously were beneficially closed.”[38] They did not see according to the principle of passion and pleasure. However, they had physical eyes that could process sense data. The purpose of Satan’s deception was that their eyes might be made open according to this principle of “suggesting what is pleasant in place of what is good, and presenting what is good as a nuisance.”[39] Didymus has a concept of sight which extends beyond the physical. He is clear, “the soul, you see, has an eye which of itself has regard for spiritual things, and an ear which responds to instruction from someone else.”[40] Is sight as an activity of the soul to be dismissed as an analogy? Didymus considers it to be as much an aspect of the interior nature of human persons as the external and physical.
How does this eye of the soul operate and connect with the eye of the body? He says, “By distorting them the serpent achieved deception, the result being damage to the senses and the mind; when the senses suffer distortion, then the mind’s choices are also distorted.”[41] When virtue is not the aim and telos of a person then their choices become corrupted and, therefore, they no longer see without distortion and are blinded. To what extent, Didymus would insist, does sight mean being able to see this or that thing if it is seen in the wrong way and with the wrong understanding and for the wrong end?
Useful blindness and disability
If sight is to do with understanding of things and of God, then it is more than the eye, more than the processing of visual data. If the object of sight is this understanding through the seeking after virtue, leading to a purity of vision, then it is necessary to ask whether a person with a physical disability has such sight, and what disability means with such a deeper understanding of what sight represents. Certainly, Didymus had a physical impairment which required some accommodations, such as learning the alphabet with engraved letters, and using assistants to make a written record of his words. But it does not seem that Didymus considered himself disabled. Indeed, he was considered to be one of those who had the greatest of sight.
This raises the question of how disability and ability are defined and who defines them. If a person is short-sighted and unable to see to drive, watch the TV, or read, they will accommodate their visual impairment with glasses, but will not normally be called disabled. Yet they are unable to function without such accommodation. It is not accommodation then, which defines physical disability in the medical model. Rather whether a certain aspect of our humanity can be made to work as it is assumed it should. Sight is reduced to the merely physical and the external, as Didymus notes. However, he is not willing to reduce sight to the efficiency of the eye. His description of sight provides it with a telos in purity of vision in the inner man. If the physical eye is one aspect of this purity of inner vision but not its entirety, then impairment in the external eye need not bring about a true blindness and disability according to this other model. This is why Didymus was considered to be pre-eminently one who had sight, even though his external eyes were defective.
Conclusion
There is a place for the medical model, especially when considering treatment for the eyes, but within the Church there is scope for a different model. Almost every person needs some accommodation or other, but this need not be defined and described as disability. If sight is properly understood as being experienced in the growth of virtue, and as an increasing understanding of the meaning of all things and God, then it becomes accessible to all, whatever their physical and even mental constraints. It becomes an aspect of the spiritual journey of each one into union with God so that we are all called to see more clearly, whatever our physical condition. Such a perspective subverts the attitude that anyone with working physical eyes can naturally see. It makes everyone a fellow traveller in the journey to increasing experience of sight so that those who see will become blind with a useful blindness, while those who are blind will see in the way that matters most and is the telos of all seeing.
Bibliography
Bayliss, G.D. The Vision of Didymus the Blind: A fourth-century Virtue-Origenism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2015.
Didymus, and Robert C. Hill. Commentary on Genesis. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2016.
Didymus, and Robert C. Hill. Commentary on Zechariah. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2006.
Lawrence, Louise Joy. Sense and Stigma in the Gospels: Depictions of Sensory-Disabled Characters. Oxford University Press, 2018.
Layton, Richard. “Didymus the Blind and the Philistores: A Contest over Historia in Early Christian Exegetical Argument.” New Approaches to the Study of Biblical Interpretation in Judaism of the Second Temple Period and in Early Christianity, 2013, 241–67.
Palladius, and Clarke W. K. Lowther. The Lausiac History. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1918.
Penner, Ken M., Rick Brannan, and Israel Loken. The Lexham English Septuagint. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2020.
Rogers, Justin. Didymus the Blind and the Alexandrian Christian Reception of Philo. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2017.
Rufinus, Eusebius, and Philip R. Amidon. History of the Church. Washington, D.C: The Catholic University of America Press, 2016.
Steiger, Peter. “The Blessings of Blindness: Divine Illumination as Spiritual Health.” Scrinium 15, no. 1 (2019): 89–110.
[1] Rogers, Justin. Didymus the Blind and the Alexandrian Christian Reception of Philo. (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2017), 1.
[2] Rogers, 5.
[3] Rogers, 3.
[4] Palladius, and Clarke W. K. Lowther. The Lausiac History. (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1918), 52.
[5] Rogers, 6.
[6] Layton Philistores
[7] Palladius and Clarke, 52.
[8] Rogers, 3.
[9] Steiger, Peter. “The Blessings of Blindness: Divine Illumination as Spiritual Health.” (Scrinium 15, no. 1, 2019), 89.
[10] Steigler, 93.
[11] Bayliss, G.D. The Vision of Didymus the Blind: A fourth-century Virtue-Origenism. (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2015), 17.
[12] Bayliss, 17.
[13] Bayliss, 46.
[14] Rogers, 1.
[15] Bayliss, 54-55.
[16] Layton, Richard. “Didymus the Blind and the Philistores: A Contest over Historia in Early Christian Exegetical Argument.” New Approaches to the Study of Biblical Interpretation in Judaism of the Second Temple Period and in Early Christianity, 2013, 267.
[17] Layton, 257.
[18] Rufinus, Eusebius, and Philip R. Amidon. History of the Church. (Washington, D.C: The Catholic University of America Press, 2016), 442.
[19] Rufinus, 443.
[20] Rufinus, 443.
[21] Didymus, and Robert C. Hill. Commentary on Genesis. (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2016).
[22] Didymus, and Robert C. Hill. Commentary on Zechariah. (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2006).
[23] Zechariah, 144.
[24] Zechariah, 199.
[25] Lawrence, Louise Joy. Sense and Stigma in the Gospels: Depictions of Sensory-Disabled Characters. (Oxford University Press, 2018), 6.
[26] Zechariah, 199.
[27] Zechariah, 199.
[28] Penner, Ken M., Rick Brannan, and Israel Loken. The Lexham English Septuagint. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2020), Genesis 3:5.
[29] Genesis, 81.
[30] Genesis, 81.
[31] Genesis, 81.
[32] Genesis, 81.
[33] Genesis, 81.
[34] Genesis, 82.
[35] Genesis, 81.
[36] Genesis, 82.
[37] Genesis, 83.
[38] Genesis, 83.
[39] Genesis, 83.
[40] Genesis, 83.
[41] Genesis, 83.