Section V

the second appearance of Christ in the circle of the apostles on the second Sunday: Thomas

(Joh 20:26-31)

Thomas called Didymus (the Twin), one of the Twelve, was absent when Jesus first showed Himself to the apostles. We have already learned to know him as a faithful man, but melancholy and irresolute.¹ To a man of this disposition, the test to which all the disciples were put by the death of Christ must have been a peculiar trial. The thought of the death of Jesus appears to have sunk his melancholy heart in a fathomless abyss of sorrow. This state of mind was doubtless the reason why he was absent at the first assembling of the disciples. The spirit of doubt, sorrow, and dejection distracts and isolates the soul. In those days Thomas went comfortless his solitary way. This is shown by the reply which he gave the disciples who told him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ With the most rugged resoluteness, he said, ‘Except I shall see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into His side, I will not believe.’

By this saying, Thomas has justly become the representative of the partial unbelief which often presents itself in various forms in the very midst of the life of faith; of that unbelief which from its connection with nobler motives may be called well-disposed, in contradistinction to the baser kind of unbelief.

Although it had now, through the most positive testimony of his companions, become his duty to accept, in their literal acceptation, the promises which Christ had given of His rising again on the third day, yet he would not receive them in their historical sense, though he might still take them in a spiritual sense, as the other disciples formerly did. He gave his companions a mortifying refusal of the belief due to them in this matter of history. And what was worse, and the most ambiguous symptom in his state, he laid down definite conditions—conditions which seemed to imply the most obstinate doubt, merging in the most wilful caprice, under which alone he would acknowledge the Lord Himself as the Risen One. It might in the meantime be very much a question, if Christ would reveal Himself under such conditions.

We see here again how fearfully the circle of the apostles was sifted by the period of the cross. All the disciples were put to flight outwardly and inwardly, and forsook their Lord; but the storm of temptation beat most violently on three: Judas goes down before it; Peter is rescued with difficulty; and Thomas, eight days after the resurrection, is still in great danger.

Yet Thomas was far from being so unbelieving as he appeared to be. This is proved by his being found, after eight days, in the company of those who believed in the resurrection. Had the resurrection-message of his friends been offensive to him, he would have avoided their society still more than he did eight days before. That he was really among them, tells of the spirit of hope which strongly, although unconsciously, animated him. He was not afraid of being convinced of the truth of their belief; but he wished, he hoped to be convinced of it. This is the distinctive mark between honest doubters and thorough-going unbelievers. The latter have always a practical motive in their breast, which acts as a repellant against the world of faith, and makes vain all testimonies for the truth. They therefore more and more avoid the opportunity of being convinced by these testimonies. They shun the company of believers, whose resurrection-joy is hateful to them. The former, on the contrary, have a principle within them which shows itself as an indissoluble bond of fellowship between them and the world of faith, and is always working as an attracting power. This principle leads them through all doubts of their understanding and heart into the centre of faith. They therefore become always more and more stedfast in adhering to the society of believers. This was the case with Thomas. Hence Christ could, without compromising His sovereignty, consent to his seemingly too stiff conditions. Thomas did not desire the Lord to visit him in solitude, he gave Him opportunity to meet with him in the church. In the affections of his suffering heart he went longing and waiting for meeting with the Lord, while his proud and troubled but true and faithful mind, which would yield to no phantasmic illusion, was still uttering the strongest doubt.

‘After eight days,’ says the Evangelist, ‘again His disciples were within (ἔσω, within; in the accustomed place of meeting), ‘and Thomas was with them.’ If it be asked, how it came to pass that the twelve still tarried at Jerusalem, although the Passover had ended on the previous Saturday, and although Jesus had commanded them to go to Galilee, Thomas’ state of mind is sufficient as a first answer. He was still without the conviction needed for his going to Galilee in joyous hope. And if an apostle, one of the eleven, was still without that conviction, how many might be found in the wider circle of disciples in whom also it was wanting! It was natural for these to linger a while before they could separate themselves from the scenes where Jesus had suffered, where they had once seen their Messianic hopes borne to the grave, and where they were now again beginning to awake from death, under the wonderful tidings of His resurrection, in which they thought they did not believe, while yet faith was already springing up in the depths of their life. But how could those disciples who were joyous in the faith abandon the weak in the faith, the loiterers, and by their inconsiderate disregard expose them to the danger of lapsing into unbelief among Christ’s enemies at Jerusalem?

Even had they wished to depart at the earliest opportunity, they could not have set out until the morning of this eighth day, for the day before was the Jewish Sabbath. The present, however, was the first Sunday after the great Sunday of the resurrection, on which the Lord had shown Himself to them; and it may easily be supposed that they already considered this day as their new Sabbath. The first Christians could not depart from Jerusalem, the place of their Lord’s crucifixion and glorification, on the first returning Easter Sunday of the Church. Even if they had not consciously resolved to solemnize this day, yet a secret and powerful feeling would have kept them from beginning their journey on it. But probably they had this day, with the presentiment of a speedy separation, once more met with their companions in the faith who abode in Jerusalem.

The doors were again shut as they were before, and the miracle of the former Sunday was renewed. Jesus stood suddenly in their midst with His well-known salutation, Peace be unto you. He then turned immediately to Thomas, saying, Reach hither thy finger and behold (examine) My hands, and reach hither thy hand and thrust it into My side; and be not faithless, but believing.

There can be no question raised about how Christ could know of the unbelieving expression of Thomas. We have seen that He had risen to superterrestrial, free life in glory. Hence follows, that He could, while invisible, draw near to the disciples. But in His words to Thomas we again recognize the spirit of solemn and heavenly joy. He consents to Thomas’ demands with unclouded serenity, and thereby reveals again His condescension and love, and at the same time His pity, which well knows Thomas’ need of comfort, and recognizes the willingness to believe in his apparent unbelief. But by consenting to Thomas’ very terms, He changed his proud and stiff demand into a confession of poverty and need. Thomas may use his finger and apply his hand, in order to pass from unbelief to faith. Thus the word of highest love, especially its concluding clause, Be not faithless, but believing, is at the same time a word of reproof and correction for the disciple. He must be made to feel it as a reproach, that he wished to handle before he believed.² At the same time this saying of Christ’s enounces, that it is possible that the reality of the new life may be touched with the finger and grasped by the hand, without producing faith.

Our Lord’s expression is like an ever-during, sorrowful-serene, irenic-ironic smile of His spirit, at all the marks of pusillanimity shown in the Church by little faith and inability to believe. Ay, use the finger and touch the mark of His wounds—the marks on His hands in His body the Church on earth; put your hand into the ever-bleeding, ever-healing scar of the wound in His side—His heart-wound which is always anew inflicted on Him in His Church; and in order to be convinced of the truth and power of Christ’s resurrection, feel, by this touching, the always new and ever-warm life in this mysterious body.

Thomas felt at once the certainty of the appearance of Christ, and the full heavenly power of His words of comfort and rebuke. Trembling with delight, he exclaimed, My Lord, and my God! One must quite misunderstand the spirit which gave utterance to this exclamation,³ if he can find in it a mere formula of astonishment. The exclamation was owing to the appearance of Christ to the eyes of Thomas in the brightness of His glory and Godhead. Thomas now knew everything at once—knew that Christ was living and standing before him—that He was risen—that He was his Lord and his God-specially knew that He was his Lord and his God from His heavenly knowledge concerning his unbelieving words, from His heavenly pity for his poor weak heart, and from the divine certainty and power with which He translated him from a disconsolate and forlorn condition to the blessedness of belief.

Believing Thomas could not now think of realizing his request. In this we again recognize the honest doubter, as distinguished from the obdurate unbeliever. The latter would perhaps have applied his finger and his hand, and then kept silence, outwardly convinced; but after a moment, he would again have discovered fresh evasions. Perhaps he would now refuse to acknowledge the sufficiency of the very proof he had desired, but would immediately propose new conditions of belief. Thomas, on the contrary, had sufficient proof in the visible and tangible appearance of the living Saviour. He recognized His spirit and life, and sought not to realize his foolish demand, of which he was now ashamed. Jesus sealed his faith with the words, ‘Thomas, because thou hast seen Me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.’ He recognizes his faith as true, and therefore blessed. The truth of his faith was shown by his not taking the last step, of examining the Lord’s body by handling it; his blessedness manifested itself in his reverential glorifying of Christ. Yet Christ calls blessed above others those who believe although they have not seen Him, although they have not previously received that degree of evidence of His resurrection. Not that He means to say that they who, like Thomas, first see and then believe, must continued less blessed. Paul attained to belief by seeing the Risen One; and who could have more joy in believing than he? But to see and then believe must always be considered an extraordinary case; the ordinary way is to proceed from faith to beholding. Only men who are by nature singularly honest and upright, are capable of arriving at belief in the first-mentioned way. Most of those who take this path, take it with such deceit of heart, that they can scarcely come to faith. And even the most upright continue unhappy, so long as they reject the call to faith because they have not yet seen the Lord, or have not yet, by the way of investigation, convinced themselves of the truth of the resurrection. Nay, even in the very act of outwardly beholding the glory of Christ Himself, they must at last exercise an effort of faith, inasmuch as they cannot see His glory with their bodily eyes alone. Thus blessed above them are those who come to faith as soon as the real grounds of faith and unmistakeable evidences of a blessed life are presented to them. Thus this saying of our Lord sets forth the eternal order, that man comes not to faith by beholding, but through faith to beholding; and also intimates the blessedness of those who take this order, and the great suffering and danger of those who partially reverse it. But our Lord’s pronouncing those who follow the appointed order blessed, implies a reference to others in future who may not be willing to follow it.

His word is certainly to be considered as an abiding warning to those who will not believe because they see Him not. Thomas is set as a perpetual testimony precisely for those who doubt, with the resurrection, the whole truth of our Lord’s life. He is in a special sense their apostle; he represents and sets forth their doubts, in so far as they are honest. He therefore stands as a perpetual guarantee, that Christ’s disciples did not arrive at the certainty of His resurrection through easy faith or fanaticism, but in a spirit of cautious circumspection, and partially as doubting inquirers.⁴

Thomas, in this position, is a solemn sign for judgment on those who, in their investigations and inquiries, depart always further from the faith. But he is just as much the patron saint of all honest inquirers and doubters in the bosom of the Church and among her catechumens. The Inquisition, taken in its widest sense, is always to be considered as a gloomy and alien spirit in a church in which Thomas, with his stubborn doubts of the resurrection, was long and faithfully borne with and tolerated—in a church in which his sighs of disconsolateness were permitted to mingle with the expressions of joy at the resurrection.⁵ The Inquisition seeks to convince the doubter, not by pointing to the marks of Christ’s sufferings on its own body, but by inflicting painful and deadly wounds on him. As Paul, by his coming from seeing to believing, is set for a lasting sign to the Church, that one may attain to believing knowledge of Christ otherwise than by historical tradition and succession, though these be the usual means; nay, that Christ can turn even honourable opposition to His name into a kind of means of knowing Him; so Thomas went the same way in order to make known to the Church that the grace of Christ can transform even the path of doubt into a way of faith. But the main thing we should look at in the way he was led, is expressed by Christ’s words, ‘Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.’ He recalls the refining, doubting, discouraged, faint-hearted spirits from their inward torturing thoughts, to simplicity of heart and divine courage begotten in their inmost soul, and thereby to faith.

With this narrative John concludes the statements which he designed to adduce as proofs of Christ’s resurrection, and mediately as proofs that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. He does not speak of His miracles in general, but only of the proofs by which He showed Himself after His resurrection, which seem to Him as a new kind of sign by which He made Himself known to His disciples as the Risen One.⁶ He remarks, that there were many other proofs of this kind, but that he had selected these, and arranged them according to their tendency to promote faith in Christ.

Yet he does not mean these to be the last communications which he gives from the life of the risen Saviour. But what he further adds no longer aims at proving the glory and divinity of Christ; it serves rather to exhibit His continued and lasting rule in the world.

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Notes

Baur applies the words, Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed, so as to attain the result, that one should not believe because of what takes place outwardly, but should be sure of what his faith contains in itself; and that everything outward is only a means for what is, in itself, certain, which means again nullifies itself.

1) See II. iv. 13.

2) [Christ repeats to him his own words, and calls him to his own conditions; which, to a man beginning to see his extravagance, is of all rebukes the severest. Sherlock.—ED.]

3) Like Theodore of Mopsuestia. See Lücke, ii. 800. [See a note upon this, and also on the Sociuian interpretation of these words, in Lampe, iii. 708.—ED.]

4) As Leo the Great remarked regarding the doubts of the disciples, and of Thomas in particular. ['Dubitatum est ab illo, ne dubitetur a nobis.']

5) See above. Compare my work über d. Geschichkichen Charakter, &c., 131

6) Which He did ἐνώπιον τῶν μαθητῶν αὐτοῦ: comp. Liicke, ii. 802. Tholuck, on the contrary (419), refers this expression to the miracles of our Lord in general. He thinks that John could not have spoken of many other appearances of the risen Saviour. But why not, if lie would consider one thing with another? Tholuck further asks, How should he have come to use σημεῖα ποιεῖν, referring to miraculous appearances? Just because it can be said that the miraculous was the most prominent element in the appearances. But the supposition, that the Evangelist concludes his treatise here, is untenable, when we take, as was done (p. 337), a connected view of the whole series of similar retrospects by John.