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215 Chapter 13 Jesus “The One Who Sees God” Rudolf Bultmann was one of the most influential commentators on the Gospel of John in the last century. Although many of his interpretations of the gospel have now been abandoned, their influence lingers on in some quarters. One place in which that influence has been felt has been in the tendency to elevate hearing over seeing as the preferred way of coming to faith in Jesus. In his treatment of the Gospel of John in his Theology of the New Testament, Bultmann included a chapter entitled simply “Faith,” with its first subsection called “Faith as the Hearing of the Word.”1 Noticeably missing is any equally prominent role given to seeing because, as is probably well known, Bultmann denigrated faith based on signs or seeing as superficial and needing external crutches, as Jesus’ rebuke to Thomas exemplifies. Bultmann writes: As the miracle is a concession to the weakness of man, so is the appearance of the Risen Jesus a concession to the weakness of the disciples. Fundamentally they ought not to need it! Fundamentally it ought not to be the sight of the Risen Lord that first moves the disciples to believe “the word that Jesus spoke,” for this word alone should have the power to convince them.2 At least some ancient writers saw matters differently. Oft-quoted is Heraclitus’ dictum “Eyes are surer witnesses than ears.”3 This sentiment was echoed by ancient Greek historians. For example, Polybius comments , “Nature has given us two instruments, as it were, by the aid of which we inform ourselves and inquire about everything. These are hearing and sight, and of the two sight is much more veracious according to Heraclitus. The eyes are more accurate witnesses than the ears, he says” Marianne Meye Thompson (Histories 12.27.1; cf. 4.2.1–2).4 In a similar vein, Herodotus recounts the tale of the ill-fated Candaules’ desire to convince his guard, Gyges, of the beauty of his wife, and so arranges that he should see her undressed because, “You do not believe what I tell you of the beauty of my wife; men trust their ears less than their eyes” (Histories 1.8). The general and commander Thucydides comments on the Athenians’ reluctance “to speak about matters quite remote, whose only witnesses are the stories men hear rather than the eyes of those who will hear them told” (Wars 1.73.2). While Dio Chrysostom echoes the sentiment, he also notes the greater difficulty of convincing the eyes: “The popular saying that the eyes are more trustworthy than the ears is perhaps true, yet they are much harder to convince and demand much greater clearness; for while the eye agrees exactly with what it sees, it is not impossible to excite and cheat the ear” (12.71). Finally, in his handbook, How to Write History, Lucian refers to the dictum of Heraclitus but goes on to mock those historians who made false claims about what they had seen, or who “neither see what is worth looking at, nor, if they did see it, have they the ability to give it suitable expression” (29).5 Claims to seeing could be falsified, and the possibility of seeing without understanding remains. The Jewish author Philo quotes Heraclitus’s pronouncement (Drunkenness, 82). He speaks of “the more certain testimony of sight,” and notes that “hearing stands second in estimation and below sight, and the recipient of teaching is always second to him with whom realities present their forms clear to his vision and not through the medium of instruction” (Confusion, 57, 148; cf. Abraham, 57, 61). Similarly, he contrasts Ishmael and Israel in terms of hearing and seeing, to the detriment of the former: “Ishmael” means “hearkening to God.” Hearing takes the second place, yielding the first to sight, and sight is the portion of Israel, the son freeborn and first-born; for “seeing God” is the translation of “Israel.” It is possible to hear the false and take it for true, because hearing is deceptive, but sight, by which we discern what really is, is devoid of falseness. (Flight, 208) A similar juxtaposition of hearing and sight occurs in the Gospel of John. For example, in John 6, Jesus states that everyone who “has heard and learned from the Father” comes to him, thus making it plain that they have been “taught by God” (6:45). This affirmation, however, is quickly modified by the...

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