Seeing Is Believing

“Let this Christ, the King of Israel, now come down from the cross, so that we may see and believe!” Mark 15:32

See – Where do you suppose that cultural aphorism (“seeing is believing”) came from?  I’m guessing that you never thought about it.  In popular Christian circles “seeing is believing” is often opposed to faith.  We think of faith as believing without seeing, sometimes even associating faith with the impossibility of seeing.  But I’ll bet we haven’t given much thought to the cultural influence necessitating this distinction or on the aphorism itself.  Why do we tie seeing with justified true belief?

“The Greeks are a people of the eye, and seeing is important to them.  It has strong significance in their religion, which is a religion of vision.”[1] It is noteworthy that Greek has but one verb for hearing, akouo, but at least ten verbs of seeing.  Boman suggests that this penchant for vision is a result of Greek philosophical stress on the connection between perception and reality. “Seeing is believing” begins with the assumption that observation is the true path for assessing reality. Observation is fundamental to the Greek view of the world.  In fact, theoria (the basis of our idea of “theory”) is directly associated with examination by observation.  The Greek mind is the mind set apart from the object of inquiry.  To see is to see from a distance, to draw a line between subject and object.  Even the Greek gods maintain the aloof position of the spectator.

In this verse, one of the ten Greek verbs for seeing is employed.  The verb is eido.  It is important to know that eido is not simply a verb about perceiving.  It is also a verb about knowing.  In other words, just as Hebrew connects “to hear” and “to respond-obey” with the same verb (shama’), so Greek connects “to see” and “to know” with one verb, eido.  Consider what this means.  Eido is visual, separate perception tied directly to the cognitive process of knowing.  If I want to know something in Greek, I need to see it.  In fact, seeing is knowing.  It is connection between an external, separate reality and my internal cognitive apprehension of that reality.  But Hebrew takes an entirely different approach.  Hebrew connects hearing with responding.  Hearing demands a dynamic relationship.  I must be attuned to listening to another before I can hear in such a way that I respond.  The sound wave assault on my auditory nerves is not hearing.  Hearing is interacting with the sound so that I am affected in my behavior.  While Greek postulates the necessity of a spectator, Hebrew demands the involvement of a participant.  The two worlds couldn’t be more different.

The skeptics at the cross voiced Hellenistic jeers.  “Show us a sign,” they demanded, but their ears were deaf.  They stopped listening to the Word of God and the words of the Son of Man.  Consequently, they removed themselves from involvement.  They became spectators, disconnected from Hebrew reality.  Because their ears were stopped, their eyes were blind.

How much of our contemporary Christian expression is really solidly Greek?  How much do we actually rely on visual confirmation, spectator worship and disconnected cognition?  How different would it be if we became Hebrew listeners instead of Greek observers?  Do you think we would say, “Hearing (responding) is believing?”

Are you listening?

Topical Index:  see, eido, akouo, hear, theoria, Mark 15:32