And his disciples asked him, saying, Teacher, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?
All Commentaries on John 9:2 Go To John 9
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
And His disciples, &c. This question sprang out of the opinion of the ignorant multitude, who think that diseases are the punishments of sin, and, as S. Ambrose says, "They ascribe weaknesses of body to the deserts of their sins." But they are wrong in this; for though it is often the case, yet not always. For Job , though innocent, was afflicted in order to try his patience, as Tobias also, and many others. S. Chrysostom and Theophylact say that this question was out of place and absurd.
Others think that the disciples were led to ask this question by what Christ said (v14), "Sin no more, lest a worse thing happen unto thee."
A man"s own fault, and not that of another, seems to be the cause of his own blindness, by way of punishment. Original sin is in truth the cause of all the evils and punishments which befall us in this life, and of the diseases of infants especially as S. Augustine teaches us (Contr. Julian iii4). But this was not the special reason why this Prayer of Manasseh , above all other infants, was born blind. Whence S. Augustine says, "This man could not have been born without original sin; nor yet have added nothing to it by his life. He therefore and his parents had sin, but the sin was not the cause of his being born blind."
S. Cyril supposes that the disciples were imbued with the error of Pythagoras and Plato, who thought that souls existed before their bodies, and that for their sins they were thrust down into bodies, as Origen afterwards held. But Leontius considers that the disciples did not speak of the sin of the blind man which took place before his birth, but after it. As if God, foreseeing what would happen punished him beforehand with blindness. But whatever might be the opinion of the disciples (and it is hard to conjecture), it is certain they were wrong. For souls did not exist before their bodies, and God only punishes past and not future sins. God, it is true, punishes the sins of parents in the persons of their children. And children are frequently born weak, blind, and deformed, &c, or soon die, in consequence of the vices of their parent (see 2 Samuel 12:14, and Exodus 20:5).
