02 — The Doubting and the Confession
The dogmatic heart of the collection: the scene of John 20:24–29, in which Thomas — absent on the evening of the Resurrection — refuses to believe on the word of the others, and then, eight days later, seeing and being invited to touch the wounds, makes the highest explicit Christological confession in the Gospels, “My Lord and my God.” These two files treat the doubt and the confession in turn: the first the absence and the refusal, the second the confession itself and the beatitude that follows it, “blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle)
This is the scene on which the whole later honor of Thomas rests, and around which the Church built the Sunday after Pascha. The Fathers read it not as a blemish on an apostle but as a providential doubt: a doubt that, by demanding to see and touch the wounds, secured for the whole Church the bodily reality of the Resurrection, and that issued in the fullest confession of the divinity of the risen Christ anywhere in the Gospels. This section handles the text closely — the absence, the conditions Thomas set, the eighth-day appearance, the address to the wounds, the confession, and the beatitude — and gathers the patristic reading that turns “doubting Thomas” into “the apostle of the confession.”
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Doubt | The absence on Pascha evening (John 20:24); the refusal — “Except I shall see… and put my finger into the print of the nails… I will not believe” (John 20:25); and the patristic reading of the doubt as providential, securing the Resurrection’s bodily reality for the Church. |
| My Lord and My God | The eighth-day appearance, the wounds, and the confession “My Lord and my God” (John 20:26–28) — the highest Christological confession in the Gospels — with its patristic exegesis; and the beatitude on those who believe without seeing (John 20:29). |
See Also
- Thomas in the Gospels — the four Johannine scenes that frame the confession
- Antipascha — how the Church keeps this scene every year on the Sunday after Pascha
- Faith and Sight — the theology of believing without seeing
- Christology — “My Lord and my God,” the confession of the risen Christ’s divinity
References
- The Holy Bible, Authorized (King James) Version and Revised Standard Version. (John 20:19–31.)
- Gregory Palamas. Homily 23 (On Thomas Sunday). In The Homilies, trans. Christopher Veniamin. Waymart: Mount Thabor Publishing, 2009.
- Gregory the Theologian. Oration 44 (On New Sunday). In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Vol. 7.
- Brown, Raymond E. The Gospel According to John. Vol. 2. Anchor Bible 29A. Garden City: Doubleday, 1970.