My Lord and My God

Eight days after the Resurrection, the risen Lord came again to the gathered disciples, the doors being shut, and turned directly to Thomas, offering him the wounds he had demanded to touch; and Thomas answered, “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28) — the highest explicit confession of Christ’s divinity in the Gospels. This file treats the eighth-day appearance, the confession and its Christology, and the beatitude that follows it: “blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed” (John 20:29).

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle)

The Eighth Day

“And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you” (John 20:26). The detail “after eight days” — that is, the following Sunday, the first day of the next week reckoned inclusively — is the seed from which the Church grew the Sunday after Pascha as Thomas Sunday (see Antipascha); the Lord chose to resolve Thomas’s doubt not at once but on the eighth day, the day of His own Resurrection, and the Church has kept that octave ever since (Gregory Palamas, Homily 23; trans. Veniamin 2009). The repetition of the circumstances of the first appearance — the closed doors, the sudden standing in the midst, the greeting of peace — underlines that the same risen Lord who came on Pascha evening now comes for the sake of the one who was absent. The closed doors are themselves a sign the Fathers dwell on: the risen body passes through them, yet is the same body that bears the wounds, at once glorified and tangible (Chrysostom, Homilies on John 87.1; NPNF I/14).

The Offered Wounds

The Lord then turns to Thomas and gives him, word for word, the proof he had demanded — showing that He had heard the demand though He was not visibly present when it was made: “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” (John 20:27). The echo of Thomas’s own conditions (John 20:25 — the finger, the hands, the side) is exact and deliberate; the Lord meets the doubt on its own terms (Brown 1970, on 20:27). Two things the Fathers note here. First, the Lord’s knowledge of the unspoken demand reveals His divinity even before Thomas confesses it — He answers what was said in His absence (Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John 12). Second, the risen body retains the marks of the Passion: the glorified flesh is not a flesh that has cast off its wounds but one that bears them transfigured, the trophies of the victory over death (Gregory the Great, Forty Gospel Homilies 26; the wounds preserved “for our healing”). The Lord does not rebuke Thomas harshly but invites him gently to faith — “be not faithless, but believing.”

The Confession

Thomas’s response is the summit. The Gospel says nothing of his actually touching — by the plain reading, the sight and the Lord’s words were enough, and Thomas answered at once: “And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God” (John 20:28). The hymnography and many of the Fathers leave open whether he touched; the liturgy of Thomas Sunday sometimes speaks of the touching of the side, sometimes of the seeing alone (Pentecostarion, Sunday of Thomas). But the words are unambiguous, and they are addressed to Jesus — “and said unto him.” Thomas calls the risen Christ ho Kyrios mou kai ho Theos mou, “my Lord and my God.”

This is, on the consistent reading of the Fathers and of modern exegesis alike, the highest explicit confession of Christ’s divinity in the Gospels — the only place where a disciple addresses Jesus directly as “my God” (Theos), and it forms a deliberate inclusio with the Gospel’s opening, “the Word was God” (John 1:1): what the prologue declares of the Word, the last disciple to believe confesses of the risen Lord, and the Gospel comes full circle (Brown 1970, on 20:28). The confession is at once personal (“my”) and dogmatic: Thomas does not merely acknowledge a fact but commits himself in worship to the One he names. The Fathers built the Church’s Christology in part on this verse — Theodore of Mopsuestia’s attempt to read the words as a mere exclamation of praise to the Father, not an address to Christ, was rejected, and the verse stands as a scriptural pillar of the confession of the true divinity of the Son (the rejection of Theodore’s reading is among the points associated with the controversies that culminated at Constantinople II in 553; see Christology). For an Orthodox reader, “My Lord and my God” is the doubt’s harvest: the one who would not believe at second hand becomes the mouth of the Church’s surest confession.

“Blessed Are They That Have Not Seen”

The Lord’s reply turns the scene outward to every later believer: “Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed” (John 20:29). The beatitude does not retract the gift given to Thomas — his faith is real and his confession accepted — but it ranks higher the faith of those who, lacking the sight Thomas was granted, will believe on the apostolic testimony alone. The whole Church after the apostolic generation lives in this beatitude: she has not seen the risen Lord with bodily eyes, and she believes (Gregory the Great, Forty Gospel Homilies 26.8; PL 76:1202; trans. Hurst, CS 123). The Fathers read the word as addressed precisely to us, the readers; and the Evangelist confirms it by appending immediately his statement of purpose: “these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name” (John 20:31). Thomas’s confession and the Lord’s beatitude together close the Gospel’s argument: the book exists so that those who have not seen may believe, as Thomas believed when he saw (Brown 1970, on 20:29–31).

The Confession in the Church’s Prayer

The verse has passed deep into Orthodox devotion. The faithful repeat “My Lord and my God” at the elevation of the Holy Gifts in many local usages, and the words are woven through the propers of Thomas Sunday, where the Church sings that Thomas “touched the life-giving side” and “cried with faith, Thou art my Lord and my God” (Pentecostarion, Sunday of Thomas; trans. HTM 1990). What began as the resolution of one apostle’s doubt has become the Church’s perpetual confession of the divinity of the risen Christ — the doubt of Thomas, in the Church’s reading, made for the faith of all (Gregory the Great, Gospel Homilies 26.7).

See Also

  • The Doubt — the absence and refusal that the confession resolves
  • Thomas in the Gospels — the confession as the climax of the Johannine portrait
  • Antipascha — the eighth-day feast that keeps the confession
  • Faith and Sight — the beatitude on believing without seeing
  • Christology — “My Lord and my God” as a confession of Christ’s divinity

References

  • The Holy Bible, Authorized (King James) Version and Revised Standard Version. (John 1:1; 20:26–31.)
  • John Chrysostom. Homilies on the Gospel of St. John 87. In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series I, Vol. 14.
  • Cyril of Alexandria. Commentary on the Gospel of John, Book 12 (on John 20:26–29). Trans. P. E. Pusey. Oxford, 1885.
  • Gregory the Great. Forty Gospel Homilies 26.7–8 [PL 76:1201–02]. Trans. David Hurst, CS 123. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1990.
  • Gregory Palamas. Homily 23 (On Thomas Sunday). Trans. Christopher Veniamin. Waymart: Mount Thabor Publishing, 2009.
  • Brown, Raymond E. The Gospel According to John. Vol. 2. Anchor Bible 29A. Garden City: Doubleday, 1970. (On John 20:26–31 and the inclusio with the prologue.)
  • The Pentecostarion. Trans. Holy Transfiguration Monastery. Boston: HTM, 1990. (Sunday of Thomas.)