Thomas, the man who doubted the resurrection. Was there anything really unusual about his reaction? After all, incredulity was as common a reaction back then as it is today. Not everybody believes everything that they are told.
Experience has taught most of us that this is a wise caution. If Thomas had adopted a believing approach, would history have remembered him as “Gullible Thomas” instead of “Doubting Thomas”?
Gullibility is always common. We are perpetually bombarded with claims of research and studies that prove or dismiss something or other. We have seen that the superfood of a Monday could be a health hazard by Friday, that the crime of yesteryear is a fashion today and the ninth planet simply isn’t.
The world is a confusing place and a lot of the time it can be difficult to distinguish what is true from what is claimed as true. That does not stop us.
Only natural
A large portion of our conversation questions things we have heard. If something seems implausible, it is only natural to question it. Was there anything dishonourable in Thomas’s inability to believe that a dead man had come back to life?
Tradition has not been kind to Thomas. This was the man who doubted the words of the apostles. To this day his name is used to describe any team-member who shows any sign of reluctance to follow the leader.
He was only exercising the intellect that we claim God gave us. That is an honourable action.
Thomas is the icon of human intellect seeking its own answers. The intelligent part of us can only find rest when it finds truth. It is a wonderful human passion that drives and inspires us.
In Thomas, human intellect becomes part of the apostolic foundation of the church. It would take more than 1,000 years before the church would rise above this tradition and recognise the sacredness of the scientific mind.
Another Saint Thomas would become the icon for the gifts displayed by the Thomas that Jesus chose.
Intellect can wander and err. It has great powers of its own and loves to learn. Sometimes it can find answers and sometimes it struggles. When left to work alone it can become deranged; it usually needs the challenge and company of others to keep it sane. It can amaze us, frighten us and give us life. Nothing is too big a challenge for it.
Since time immemorial we have gazed out into the universe and tried to understand a bigger picture from the limits of our own experience and imagination. That desire that we have to know and understand the bigger picture is the thing that sets us most apart from other creatures.
Easter is sometimes called the “New Creation”. The story of creation states that humanity was created in the image and likeness of God. Humanity returned the compliment and re-created God according to its own images.
That re-creation made God into a fearsome perfection. It was far removed and unappreciative of the humanity that was supposedly in the image and likeness of God. Religion was often suspicious of human attributes.
If nothing else, Christ’s chosen companions were all very human. The Gospel is an account of their imperfect knowledge, loves, ambitions, confusions, betrayals, devotions and even doubtfulness.
In this particular story Thomas gets his question answered definitively. He was far luckier than many people since then who struggle to make sense of the resurrection. Thomas is the apostle of the New Creation, the one who used the God-given ability to question and resurrected the perfection of Eden within us.