Catholic Commentary
Division Among the Jews Over Jesus' Words
19Therefore a division arose again among the Jews because of these words.20Many of them said, “He has a demon and is insane! Why do you listen to him?”21Others said, “These are not the sayings of one possessed by a demon. It isn’t possible for a demon to open the eyes of the blind, is it?”
John 10:19–21 describes a division among the Jewish audience after Jesus claims to be the Good Shepherd, with some accusing him of demon possession and insanity, while others counter that his healing of the blind man proves his divine authority. The passage exemplifies how Jesus's words inevitably create a judgment moment, forcing listeners to take a stance based on reason and evidence rather than remain neutral.
Jesus' words don't negotiate neutrally—they split every room, because truth demands a verdict.
John 10:19 — "Therefore a division arose again among the Jews because of these words."
The opening word oun ("therefore") anchors this reaction directly in what Jesus has just proclaimed in 10:1–18: that he is the Gate, the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep, who has power to take it up again, and that no one can snatch his sheep from the Father's hand. Such claims are not neutrally received. The word schisma (σχίσμα) — "division," "tear," "split" — is pointed. This is the same word used in 7:43 and 9:16, forming a deliberate Johannine motif: wherever Jesus speaks with full authority, the audience fractures. The evangelist uses "the Jews" (hoi Ioudaioi) here not as an ethnic slur but in his characteristically dramatic sense — those who represent the religious establishment and its ambivalence toward Jesus. Notably, this is a second division ("again"), pointing back to the earlier schism in 9:16 triggered by the healing of the blind man. The healing and the discourse are thus inseparable: the sign and the word create a single, compounding crisis of faith.
John 10:20 — "He has a demon and is insane! Why do you listen to him?"
The charge of demonic possession (daimonion echei) is among the gravest insults a first-century Jewish audience could level at a religious teacher: it was an accusation that his spiritual authority was not from God but from an adversarial, corrupting spirit. The coupling with mainetai ("he is mad," "raving") adds a social dimension — this is not just theological rejection but an appeal to crowd psychology, a bid to shame those who are being drawn to him ("Why do you listen to him?"). The rhetorical question is a deflection: rather than engaging Jesus' words on their merits, the accusers try to reframe the act of listening itself as irrational capitulation to a lunatic. The spiritual sense here is searching: the voice of the Good Shepherd (10:3–4, 16, 27) is audible to the sheep who belong to him; those who cannot hear it experience his words as noise, as madness. The hardening of heart is its own kind of spiritual deafness, which John has been tracing since the Prologue: "the light shone in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it" (1:5).
John 10:21 — "These are not the sayings of one possessed by a demon. Isn't it possible for a demon to open the eyes of the blind, is it?"
The counter-voice among the crowd introduces the decisive argument from evidence. The explicit callback to the healing of the man born blind (ch. 9) is theologically surgical. The question is framed as a mē-question in Greek, expecting a negative answer: No — a demon cannot open blind eyes. The crowd's skeptics are reasoning from the axiom, rooted in Jewish theology, that demonic power is destructive and corrupting, not restorative and life-giving (cf. the footnote reference to Exodus 4:11, where God alone is identified as the one who makes the blind and the seeing). To restore sight is a God-attributed act; therefore the one who performed it cannot be in the grip of a demon. The argument is not yet full faith — these voices do not confess Jesus as Messiah or Son of God — but they model the legitimate use of reason in approaching revelation: they interrogate the evidence and refuse to dismiss what they have witnessed. Their words point forward to the "greater works" of 14:12 and to the resurrection itself as the ultimate sign that no demonic power can counterfeit.
Taken together, verses 19–21 exemplify the krisis ("judgment," "decision") that John's Gospel continually stages. The Word of God is not a comfortable background hum; it is, as Hebrews 4:12 says, "a two-edged sword." Division is not merely a sociological by-product of Jesus' ministry — it is a necessary consequence of the Incarnation breaking into history and demanding a verdict.
Catholic tradition has long recognized that the schisma produced by Christ's words belongs not to the failure of his mission but to its very nature. St. Augustine, preaching on this passage (In Johannis Evangelium Tractatus, Tract. 48), observes that division "was not made by Christ, but arose from those who heard him" — a distinction of moral responsibility that the Church consistently maintains. Christ's word is itself blameless light; the varying responses of darkness and receptivity reveal the interior disposition of the hearer.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (§548) connects Jesus' miraculous signs — including the opening of blind eyes — directly to his Messianic identity: "The signs worked by Jesus attest that the Father has sent him. They invite belief in him." The crowd's argument in verse 21, that a demon cannot open blind eyes, thus touches the heart of the Christological criterion: divine power working through Christ vindicates his origin. The Church Fathers, particularly St. Cyril of Alexandria (Commentary on John, Bk. 6), stress that the inability of demons to heal is not merely a matter of power but of will and telos — demons destroy the image of God in humanity; Christ restores it. The blind man's healing is therefore not just a miracle but a recapitulation of the original creative act, consistent with Exodus 4:11.
Vatican I's Dei Filius (ch. 3) affirms that miracles are genuine warrants for credibility — "signs most certain" (certa signa) of divine revelation. The skeptics of verse 21 are, implicitly, doing proto-apologetic reasoning: they move from authenticated sign to the trustworthiness of the teacher. This is not mere rationalism but the proper exercise of faith seeking understanding (fides quaerens intellectum), which St. Anselm and the entire Catholic intellectual tradition endorse. The schisma also prefigures the ongoing division within humanity that the Church acknowledges: no one can encounter the living Christ and remain entirely indifferent.
Contemporary Catholics regularly encounter versions of both reactions recorded in these verses. In secular culture, the teachings of the Church — on human dignity, sexuality, the sanctity of life, the Real Presence — are frequently dismissed with the functional equivalent of "he is mad": these ideas are treated as irrational, embarrassing, or the product of institutional delusion. The temptation for Catholics is to be silenced by this social pressure, to stop "listening" in exactly the way the accusers in verse 20 demand.
Verses 20–21 offer a concrete model of resistance: not polemical aggression, but calm appeal to evidence. When challenged on the coherence of Catholic faith, ask the question the open-minded crowd asks — where do the fruits point? The healing of the blind is visible. The Church's history of founding universities, hospitals, and the entire Western tradition of human dignity is visible. Personal conversion stories are visible. The "demon" cannot open blind eyes; the persistent fruitfulness of Christian faith in human flourishing is its own argument. At the same time, these verses call for honest self-examination: am I a sheep who recognizes the Shepherd's voice, or have I grown so comfortable with cultural noise that his word has started to sound like madness to me too?