SECTION III. THE DOUBT OF THOMAS
John xx. 24-29.
"Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was
not with them when Jesus came" on that first Christian Sabbath evening, and
showed Himself to His disciples. One hopes he had a good reason for his
absence; but it is at least possible that he had not. In his melancholy humor
he may simply have been indulging himself in the luxury of solitary sadness,
just as some whose Christ is dead do now spend their Sabbaths at home or in
rural solitudes, shunning the offensive cheerfulness or the drowsy dullness of
social worship. Be that as it may, in any case he missed a good sermon; the
only one, so far as we know, in the whole course of our Lord's ministry, in
which He addressed Himself formally to the task of expounding the Messianic
doctrine of the Old Testament. Had he but known that such a discourse was to be
delivered that night! But one never knows when the good things will come, and
the only way to make sure of getting them is to be always at our post.
The same melancholy humor which probably caused
Thomas to be an absentee on the occasion of Christ's first meeting with His
disciples after He rose from the dead, made him also skeptical above all the
rest concerning the tidings of the resurrection. When the other disciples told
him on his return that they had just seen the Lord, he replied with vehemence:
"Except I shall see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my fingers
into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not
believe."[28.22] He was not to be satisfied with the testimony of his brethren:
he must have palpable evidence for himself. Not that he doubted their veracity;
but he could not get rid of the suspicion that what they said they had seen was
but a mere ghostly appearance by which their eyes had been deceived.
The skepticism of Thomas was, we think, mainly a
matter of temperament, and had little in common with the doubt of men of
rationalistic proclivities, who are inveterately incredulous respecting the
supernatural, and stumble at every thing savoring of the miraculous. It has
been customary to call Thomas the Rationalist among the twelve, and it has even
been supposed that he had belonged to the sect of the Sadducees before he
joined the society of Jesus. On mature consideration, we are constrained to say
that we see very little foundation for such a view of this disciple's
character, while we certainly do not grudge modern doubters any comfort they
may derive from it. We are quite well aware that among the sincere, and even
the spiritually-minded, there are men whose minds are so constituted that they
find it very difficult to believe in the supernatural and the miraculous: so
difficult, that it is a question whether, if they had been in Thomas's place,
the freest handling and the minutest inspection of the wounds in the risen
Saviour's body would have availed to draw forth from them an expression of
unhesitating faith in the reality of His resurrection. Nor do we see any reason
[hungarumlaut]priori for asserting that no disciple of Jesus could have been a
person of such a cast of mind. All we say is, there is no evidence that Thomas,
as a matter of fact, was a man of this stamp. Nowhere in the Gospel history do
we discover any unreadiness on his part to believe in the supernatural or the
miraculous as such. We do not find, e.g. that he was skeptical about the
raising of Lazarus: we are only told that, when Jesus proposed to visit the
afflicted family in Bethany, he regarded the journey as fraught with danger to
his beloved Master and to them all, and said, "Let us also go, that we may die
with Him." Then, as now, he showed Himself not so much the Rationalist as the
man of gloomy temperament, prone to look upon the dark side of things, living
in the pensive moonlight rather than in the cheerful sunlight. His doubt did
not spring out of his system of thought, but out of the state of his
feelings.
Another thing we must say here concerning the
doubt of this disciple. It did not proceed from unwillingness to believe. It
was the doubt of a sad man, whose sadness was due to this, that the event
whereof he doubted was one of which he would most gladly be assured. Nothing
could give Thomas greater delight than to be certified that his Master was
indeed risen. This is evident from the joy he manifested when he was at length
satisfied. "My Lord and my God!" that is not the exclamation of one who is
forced reluctantly to admit a fact he would rather deny. It is common for men
who never had any doubts themselves to trace all doubt to bad motives, and
denounce it indiscriminately as a crime. Now, unquestionably, too many doubt
from bad motives, because they do not wish and cannot afford to believe. Many
deny the resurrection of the dead, because it would be to them a resurrection
to shame and everlasting contempt. But this is by no means true of all. Some
doubt who desire to believe; nay, their doubt is due to their excessive anxiety
to believe. They are so eager to know the very truth, and feel so keenly the
immense importance of the interests at stake, that they cannot take things for
granted, and for a time their hand so trembles that they cannot seize firm hold
of the great objects of faith--a living God; an incarnate, crucified, risen
Saviour; a glorious eternal future. Theirs is the doubt peculiar to earnest,
thoughtful, pure-hearted men, wide as the poles asunder from the doubt of the
frivolous, the worldly, the vicious: a holy, noble doubt, not a base and
unholy; if not to be praised as positively meritorious, still less to be
harshly condemned and excluded from the pale of Christian sympathy--a doubt
which at worst is but an infirmity, and which ever ends in strong, unwavering
faith.
That Jesus regarding the doubt of the
heavy-hearted disciple as of this sort, we infer from His way of dealing with
it. Thomas having been absent on the occasion of His first appearing to the
disciples, the risen Lord makes a second appearance for the absent one's
special benefit, and offers him the proof desiderated. The introductory
salutation being over, He turns Himself at once to the doubter, and addresses
him in terms fitted to remind him of his own statement to his brethren, saying:
"Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and
thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing." There may be
somewhat of reproach here, but there is far more of most considerate sympathy.
Jesus speaks as to a sincere disciple, whose faith is weak, not as to one who
hath an evil heart of unbelief. When demands for evidence were made by men who
merely wanted an excuse for unbelief, He met them in a very different manner.
"A wicked and adulterous generation," He was wont to say in such a case,
"seeketh after a sign, and there shall no sign be given unto it but the sign of
the Prophet Jonas."
Having ascertained the character of Thomas's
doubt, let us now look at his faith.
The melancholy disciple's doubts were soon
removed. But how? Did Thomas avail himself of the offered facilities for
ascertaining the reality of his Lord's resurrection? Did he actually put his
fingers and hand into the nail and spear wounds? Opinions differ on this point,
but we think the probability is on the side of those who maintain the negative.
Several things incline us to this view. First, the narrative seems to leave no
room for the process of investigation. Thomas answers the proposal of Jesus by
what appears to be an immediate profession of faith. Then the form in which
that profession is made is not such as we should expect the result of a
deliberate inquiry to assume. "My Lord and my God!" is the warm, passionate
language of a man who has undergone some sudden change of feeling, rather than
of one who has just concluded a scientific experiment. Further, we observe
there is no allusion to such a process in the remark made by Jesus concerning
the faith of Thomas. The disciple is represented as believing because he has
seen the wounds shown, not because he has handled them. Finally, the idea of
the process proposed being actually gone through is inconsistent with the
character of the man to whom the proposal was made. Thomas was not one of your
calm, cold-blooded men, who conduct inquiries into truth with the passionless
inpartiality of a judge, and who would have examined the wounds in the risen
Saviour's body with all the coolness with which anatomists dissect dead
carcasses. He was a man of passionate, poetic temperament, vehement alike in
his belief and in his unbelief, and moved to faith or doubt by the feelings of
his heart rather than by the reasonings of his intellect.
The truth, we imagine, about Thomas was something
like this. When, eight days before, he made that threat to his brother
disciples, he did not deliberately mean all he said. It was the whimsical
utterance of a melancholy man, who was in the humor to be as disconsolate and
miserable as possible. "Jesus risen! the thing is impossible, and there's an
end of it. I won't believe except I do so and so. I don't know if I shall
believe when all's done." But eight days have gone by, and, lo, there is Jesus
in the midst of them, visible to the disciple who was absent on the former
occasion as well as to the rest. Will Thomas still insist on applying his
rigorous test? No, no! His doubts vanish at the very sight of Jesus, like
morning mists at sunrise. Even before the Risen One has laid bare His wounds,
and uttered those half-reproachful, yet kind, sympathetic words, which evince
intimate knowledge of all that has been passing through His doubting disciple's
mind, Thomas is virtually a believer; and after he has seen the ugly wounds and
heard the generous words, he is ashamed of his rash, reckless speech to his
brethren, and, overcome with joy and with tears, exclaims, "My Lord and my
God!"
It was a noble confession of faith,--the most
advanced, in fact, ever made by any of the twelve during the time they were
with Jesus. The last is first; the greatest doubter attains to the fullest and
firmest belief. So has it often happened in the history of the Church. Baxter
records it as his experience, that nothing is so firmly believed as that which
hath once been doubted. Many Thomases have said, or could say, the same thing
of themselves. The doubters have eventually become the soundest and even the
warmest believers. Doubt in itself is a cold thing, and, as in the case of
Thomas, it often utters harsh and heartless sayings. Nor need this surprise us;
for when the mind is in doubt the soul is in darkness, and during the chilly
night the heart becomes frozen. But when the daylight of faith comes, the frost
melts, and hearts which once seemed hard and stony show themselves capable of
generous enthusiasm and ardent devotion.
Socinians, whose system is utterly overthrown by
Thomas's confession naturally interpreted, tell us that the words "My Lord and
my God" do not refer to Jesus at all, but to the Deity in heaven. They are
merely an expression of astonishment on the part of the disciple, on finding
that what he had doubted was really come to pass. He lifts up his eyes and his
hands to heaven, as it were, and exclaims, My Lord and my God! it is a fact:
The crucified Jesus is restored to life again. This interpretation is utterly
desperate. It disregards the statement of the text, that Thomas, in uttering
these words, was answering and speaking to Jesus, and it makes a man bursting
with emotion speak frigidly; for while the one expression "My God" might have
been an appropriate utterance of astonishment, the two phrases, "My Lord and my
God," are for that purpose weak and unnatural.
We have here, therefore, no mere expression of
surprise, but a profession of faith most appropriate to the man and the
circumstances; as pregnant with meaning as it is pithy and forcible. Thomas
declares at once his acceptance of a miraculous fact, and his belief in a
momentous doctrine. In the first part of his address to Jesus he recognizes
that He who was dead is alive: My Lord, my beloved Master! it is even He,--the
very same person with whom we enjoyed such blessed fellowship before He was
crucified. In the second part of his address he acknowledges Christ's divinity,
if not for the first time, at least with an intelligence and an emphasis
altogether new. From the fact he rises to the doctrine: My Lord risen, yea, and
therefore my God; for He is divine over whom death hath no power. And the
doctrine in turn helps to give to the fact of the resurrection additional
certainty; for if Christ be God, death could have no power over Him, and His
resurrection was a matter of course. Thomas having reached the sublime
affirmation, "My God," has made the transition from the low platform of faith
on which he stood when he demanded sensible evidence, to the higher, on which
it is felt that such evidence is superfluous.
We have now to notice, in the last place, the
remark made by the Lord concerning the faith just professed by His disciple.
"Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed:
blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed."
This reflection on the blessedness of those who
believe without seeing, though expressed in the past tense, really concerned
the future. The case supposed by Jesus was to be the case of all believers
after the apostolic age. Since then no one has seen, and no one can believe
because he has seen, as the apostles saw. They saw, that we might be able to do
without seeing, believing on their testimony.
But what does Jesus mean by pronouncing a
beatitude on those who see not, yet believe?
He does not mean to commend those who believe
without any inquiry. It is one thing to believe without seeing, another thing
to believe without consideration. To believe without seeing is to be capable of
being satisfied with something less than absolute demonstration, or to have
such an inward illumination as renders us to a certain extent independent of
external evidence. Such a faculty of faith is most needful; for if faith were
possible only to those who see, belief in Christianity could not extend beyond
the apostolic age. But to believe without consideration is a different matter
altogether. It is simply not to care whether the thing believed be true or
false. There is no merit in doing that. Such faith has its origin in what is
base in men,--in their ignorance, sloth, and spiritual indifference; and it can
bring no blessing to its possessors. Be the truths credited ever so high, holy,
blessed, what good can a faith do which receives them as matters of course
without inquiry, or without even so much as knowing what the truths believed
mean?
The Lord Jesus, then, does not here bestow a
benediction on credulity.
As little does He mean to say that all the
felicity falls to the lot of those who have never, like Thomas, doubted. The
fact is not so. Those who believe with facility do certainly enjoy a
blessedness all their own. They escape the torment of uncertainty, and the
current of their spiritual life flows on very smoothly. But the men who have
doubted, and now at length believe, have also their peculiar joys, with which
no stranger can intermeddle. Theirs is the joy experienced when that which was
dead is alive again, and that which was lost is found. Theirs is the rapture of
Thomas when he exclaimed, with reference to a Saviour thought to be gone for
ever, "My Lord and my God." Theirs is the bliss of the man who, having dived
into a deep sea, brings up a pearl of very great price. Theirs is the comfort
of having their very bygone doubts made available for the furtherance of their
faith, every doubt becoming a stone in the hidden foundation on which the
superstructure of their creed is built, the perturbations of faith being
converted into confirmations, just as the perturbations in the planetary
motions, at first supposed to throw doubt on Newton's theory of gravitation,
were converted by more searching inquiry into the strongest proof of its
truth.
What, then, does the Lord Jesus mean by these
words? Simply this: He would have those who must believe without seeing,
understand that they have no cause to envy those who had an opportunity of
seeing, and who believed only after they saw. We who live so far from the
events, are very apt to imagine that we are placed at a great disadvantage as
compared with the disciples of Jesus. So in some respects we are, and
especially in this, that faith is more difficult for us than for them. But then
we must not forget that, in proportion as faith is difficult, it is
meritorious, and precious to the heart. It is a higher attainment to be able to
believe without seeing, than to believe because we have seen; and if it cost an
effort, the trial of faith but enhances its value. We must remember, further,
that we never reach the full blessedness of faith till what we believe shines
in the light of its own self-evidence. Think you the disciples were happy men
because they had seen their risen Lord and believed? They were far happier when
they had attained to such clear insight into the whole mystery of redemption,
that proof of this or that particular fact or doctrine was felt to be quite
unnecessary.
To that felicity Jesus wished His doubting
disciple to aspire; and by contrasting his case with that of those who believe
without seeing, He gives us to know that it is attainable for us also. We, too,
may attain the blessedness of a faith raised above all doubt by its own clear
insight into divine truth. If we are faithful, we may rise to this from very
humble things. We may begin, in our weakness, with being Thomases, clinging
eagerly to every spar of external evidence to save ourselves from drowning, and
end with a faith amounting almost to sight, rejoicing in Jesus as our Lord and
God, with a joy unspeakable and full of glory.
This document (last modifiedSeptember 17, 1997) from Believerscafe.com
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