“Then Jesus said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and look at my hands. Put your hand into the wound in my side. Don’t be faithless any longer. Believe!” “My Lord and my God!” Thomas exclaimed. Then Jesus told him, “You believe because you have seen me. Blessed are those who believe without seeing me.” – John 20:27-29
I’m continuing a dialogue begun last week with Michel Mercier, a Montreal blogger who responded to my pre-Christmas invitation to engage the topic of whether organized religion’s contribution to history has been primarily positive or negative. Commenting on the incident noted above from St. John’s Gospel, Mercier blogs: “(This part of the Bible) was clearly intended to mock and discourage skeptical inquiry while at the same time praising blind faith in claims of divine revelation.”
I am somewhat perplexed by Mercier’s claim in that the invitation of Jesus to Thomas to personally examine his scars via sight and touch is actually an affirmation that data and evidence do play an important role in the construction of an intelligent faith. Think of it as Jesus saying to Thomas: “You want to see the evidence that this body was the one nailed to a cross and speared by a Roman soldier, then look at these scars, touch them, handle them to convince yourself.”
It doesn’t appear to me that Jesus is in any way reluctant to give Thomas an opportunity to examine the scientific data.
Where a difference of opinion in this regard enters the picture is when it comes to interpreting what Jesus intended to communicate by his last words in this narrative: “Blessed are those who believe without seeing me.”
Mr. Mercier contends Jesus is hereby encouraging “thoughtless adherence to blind faith.” Against the background of Christ’s invitation to Thomas to examine the empirical evidence of his resurrection for himself, I am not convinced that such is the only possible interpretation of ancient words or even an accurate one.
D.A. Carson suggests that given the imminence of Christ’s physical departure from earth, his “blessed are those” statement should be understood as “Blessed, then, are those who cannot share Thomas’ experience of sight, but who, in part because they read of Thomas’ experience come to share Thomas’ faith.”
In other words, for those of us coming on the scene after Jesus left this world, we obtain blessing from God when we believe without the benefit of actually seeing or touching the physical evidence for ourselves. Blessing is received by believing what is heard or read via the comparatively few details of Christ’s life that John does describe, hence John’s words in verses 30, 31 which Mercier chooses to overlook.
Thus, Christ’s words “blessed are those” are actually addressed not to Thomas but to those of us who follow whose belief concerns the reliability of John’s record.
