Faith and Sight

At the heart of Thomas Sunday lies a paradox the Church embraces: the apostle’s doubt, which demanded sight before faith, became the means by which the faithful who do not see are confirmed — “blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed” (John 20:29). This file draws out the theology of faith and sight that the feast distills: the “good unbelief” of Thomas, the relation between seeing and believing, and the patristic homilies for the New Sunday that turn the doubt into the Church’s surest ground.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle)

The Paradox of the “Good Unbelief”

Orthodox hymnography does not apologize for Thomas; it praises his doubt. The propers of the feast call it a “right good disbelief” (kalē apistia), a doubt that “brought the hearts of the faithful to knowledge” (stichera of the Sunday of Thomas, Pentecostarion; HTM 1990). The paradox is deliberate: an unbelief is called good because of what it produced. Had Thomas believed at once, on the word of the others, the Church would have had the disciples’ testimony only; because he refused, demanded the wounds, and then confessed, the Church has in addition the testimony of a man who would not be persuaded except by the bodily evidence of the risen Christ — and who was persuaded. The doubt thus functions as a kind of cross-examination conducted on the Church’s behalf: the most exacting of the disciples tested the Resurrection and was overcome by it (Gregory the Great, Forty Gospel Homilies 26.7; PL 76:1201–02; trans. Hurst, CS 123). What looks like weakness in the apostle is, in the economy of the feast, strength for all who come after.

Seeing and Believing

The Gospel sets the two in a careful order. Thomas said, “Except I shall see… I will not believe” (John 20:25); the Lord granted the sight — “behold my hands” (John 20:27) — and Thomas believed and confessed (John 20:28). Then the Lord ranked the orders of faith: “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 condemn faith that follows sight — Thomas’s faith is accepted, and his confession is the highest in the Gospel — but it crowns the faith that does not require sight. The Fathers read this as the charter of the whole post-apostolic Church: the apostles saw and believed and bore witness; the Church believes on their witness without seeing, and in that believing is called blessed (Gregory the Great, Gospel Homilies 26.8; PL 76:1202; Chrysostom, Homilies on John 87.1; NPNF I/14). Faith, in this teaching, is not a lesser substitute for sight but a higher relation to the unseen God — “the evidence of things not seen” (Heb 11:1), to which the beatitude assigns the greater blessing.

Why Thomas Had to Touch — and Why We Need Not

The Fathers press the point that Thomas’s bodily verification was given once, for all. Because one apostle insisted on touching the nail-prints and the spear-wound, the bodily, fleshly reality of the Resurrection was established beyond a vision or a rumor; and because it was established then, no later believer need establish it again (Gregory the Great, Gospel Homilies 26.7). The risen Christ bore the wounds precisely so that they could be touched and the identity of the crucified and the risen confirmed (Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John 12, on 20:27). Thomas’s hand, reaching toward the side, reached on behalf of the Church; his confession, “My Lord and my God,” is spoken in the Church’s name. This is why the liturgy can call the doubt “good”: it was the doubt that the Church needed someone to have, and Thomas had it, and resolved it, once for all.

The Eighth Day and the New Creation

The New Sunday’s theology of faith is bound to its theology of the eighth day. The Lord resolved Thomas’s doubt “after eight days” (John 20:26), on the octave of the Resurrection; and the Fathers read the eighth day as the figure of the new creation, the day beyond the seven of this age, the Lord’s Day that is the dawn of the world to come (Gregory the Theologian, Oration 44 (On New Sunday); NPNF II/7). Faith without sight belongs to this eighth-day order: it is the mode in which the Church already lives in the age to come while still in the body, believing in the risen Lord whom she does not see and will see face to face. Thus the feast joins the two themes — the renewal of Pascha on the eighth day and the blessedness of unseeing faith — into a single confession of the new creation inaugurated by the Resurrection and entered by faith (Gregory the Theologian, Oration 44; Gregory Palamas, Homily 23 (On Thomas Sunday); trans. Veniamin 2009).

The Homilies for the New Sunday

The patristic homiletic tradition for this Sunday is rich. Gregory the Theologian’s Oration 44, preached for the New Lord’s Day, dwells on renewal — the renewal of creation, of the soul, of the Paschal joy — and on the eighth day as the symbol of the age to come, setting the doctrinal frame the later tradition fills in (Oration 44; NPNF II/7). Gregory Palamas, in Homily 23 for Thomas Sunday, treats the appearance and the confession at length, reading Thomas’s faith as the model of the Church’s own movement from hearing to confessing, and the wounds of the risen Christ as the abiding pledge of the bodily Resurrection (Gregory Palamas, Homily 23; trans. Veniamin 2009). Chrysostom’s homily on John 20 (Homilies on John 87) had already given the Greek East its reading of the exacting but honest disciple whose doubt makes the testimony surer (NPNF I/14); and Gregory the Great gave the Latin West the formula that the doubt of Thomas “has done more for our faith than the faith of the disciples who believed” (Gospel Homilies 26.7; PL 76:1201). Across these homilies the consistent teaching is one: the feast is not about the failure of an apostle but about the gift his doubt became — the sure faith of those who do not see.

See Also

References

  • The Holy Bible, Authorized (King James) Version. (John 20:24–31; Heb 11:1.)
  • The Pentecostarion. Trans. Holy Transfiguration Monastery. Boston: HTM, 1990. (The “good unbelief”; the stichera and canon of the Sunday of Thomas.)
  • Gregory the Theologian. Oration 44 (On New Sunday). In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Vol. 7. (The eighth day and renewal.)
  • Gregory Palamas. Homily 23 (On Thomas Sunday). Trans. Christopher Veniamin, The Homilies. Waymart: Mount Thabor Publishing, 2009.
  • John Chrysostom. Homilies on the Gospel of St. John 87. In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series I, Vol. 14.
  • Gregory the Great. Forty Gospel Homilies 26.7–8 [PL 76:1201–02]. Trans. David Hurst, CS 123. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1990.
  • Cyril of Alexandria. Commentary on the Gospel of John, Book 12. Trans. P. E. Pusey. Oxford, 1885.