But Nathanael said to him,
"Can anything good come from Nazareth?"
Philip said to him, "Come and see."
Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him,
"Here is a true child of Israel.
There is no duplicity in him."
The question has been raised, "Was Nathaniel, aka Bartholomew, mentally handicapped. The exchanges between today's patron with Philip and the Lord, as told in Saint John's Gospel, might suggest it. His question about Nazarenes might echo the popular humor of any region about a neighboring region. Just mention an Iowan to a Minnesotan! It's an immediate, humorous, thoughtless, and perhaps insensitive reaction to a word.
Nathaniel's amazed reaction to Jesus' remark about him, uttered in spontaneous simplicity, apparently prompted the Lord's caricature of him -- "There is no duplicity in him." Does that suggest a form of mental impairment?
Patristic references to Nathaniel as an author and apostle to India, and a different reading of today's text suggest that this Apostle had above average intelligence; but he is nonetheless invoked today as a patron saint of autism. And it's good to see that many organizations, religious and secular, now welcome the talents, abilities, and eager generosity of people with disabilities. When I entered the seminary as a high school freshman in 1962, the standards were more arbitrary than reasonable. African-American applicants were often turned away as if that too were a disability.
Saint John's account reminds us of the cynicism of this world about anything new or unexpected. Although our culture prides itself on its willingness to explore the unexplored and go where no man has gone before, there is also room for cynical reactions to religious truths. A scientific age dismisses philosophy, once known as the "mother of all sciences;" and theology, the "queen of all sciences."
Many scientists frankly dismiss the idea of philosophy although the entire enterprise is founded on certain necessary ontological principles. That things can be counted with numbers, and predictions made about how many things there are in a set with multiplication and division, are assumptions based on the principle that things are as they seem. If reality is an illusion, as some philosophes insist, then nothing is predictable or reliable.
The Gospels speak truth to us, a truth which is deeper than a philosophy limited to research, facts, hypotheses, and theories. The Truth of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has been revealed to us; and Nathaniel's amazement expresses our human, joyful astonishmnet at the Good News. We are privileged and delighted to share that exhileration with him despite naysayers.
