Section 4
never answers such questions with an answer of yes or no, right or wrong. This is because the Gospel of John is a book of life, not a book of the knowledge of good and evil. Therefore, the Lord said that the man's blindness was so that "the works of God might be manifested in him."
Why is it that the Lord never answers with a yes or a no? Because yes-or-no answers are from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Good and evil are just like yes and no. While both yes and no belong to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, in this Gospel the Lord comes to us as the tree of life. The tree of life is God as our life. Consequently, in this Gospel the Lord never answers people with a yes or a no. He always refers them to God. The Lord does not refer to yes or no for an answer, but to God as the tree of life. The Lord's answer in 9:3 brought His disciples directly to God, that is, it brought them to the tree of life. At this point, the disciples were still very religious, holding to their religious concepts, which belong to the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but the Lord was trying again and again to turn them from the tree of knowl edge to the tree of life. Those disciples were under the Lord's training in this matter for three and a half years. Even after that time, one of the