Not Doubting Thomas, but Nicene Thomas: the Resurrection, Saint Thomas, and the faith of Nicaea

Low Sunday 27.4.25

John 20:28

“Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’” [1]

It is Doubting Thomas Sunday. 

A day when we celebrate Thomas as the patron saint of doubters. 

A day when we affirm the role of doubt in the Christian life. 

A day when we are encouraged to have doubts about the Christian faith.

Well, no, actually. 

Apart - obviously - from the words of John’s Gospel quoted at the outset, all that I have just said is nonsense. It is wrong.

It is not Doubting Thomas Sunday. 

On this Sunday after Easter Day we rejoice in Saint Thomas the Apostle’s great declaration of faith concerning Our Lord Jesus Christ: “My Lord and my God!” [2].

Saint Thomas is not the patron saint of doubters. 

He is, rather, the Apostle who gives full-throated expression to the most explicit statement of the Christian faith in the entire New Testament [3].

And, no, the Sunday after Easter Day is not a day when we affirm - or, worse, encourage - the place of doubt in our Christian faith: not least because in our Gospel reading the Risen Christ addresses Thomas and says “Do not doubt but believe”.

Today’s Gospel reading, then, is about doubt giving way to faith; about believing in, not doubting, the Resurrection of Christ; about us sharing not Thomas’ initial doubts but the faith he confessed in the Risen Christ - “My Lord and my God!”.

In his account of what occurred after the first Easter Day, John - like the other Gospel writers - sets before us the understandable confusion of the disciples. 

The Tomb was empty. The women, notably Mary Magdalene, had encountered the Risen Christ. In the words of Mary Magdalene in John’s account, “I have seen the Lord”. 

What was happening? Even the gospel writers, a few decades later, struggled to find words to articulate the Resurrection: and why wouldn’t they? What language do you use to describe, to understand God’s life and light exploding forth from the Tomb, overcoming the darkness of death?

When the Risen Lord had appeared to the disciples on the evening of that first Easter Day, Thomas had not been present. This is not surprising. 

The disciples had been devastated by the crucifixion of Jesus. They were all too aware of their profound failure to remain faithful to Him as He was betrayed and handed over to the authorities. And now they were fearful of what the authorities would do to finally stamp out the movement that had gathered around the dead Jesus. Thomas not being present with the other apostles, therefore, is not at all surprising.

So Thomas is not with the other apostles when the Risen Christ stands amongst them. When they say to Thomas “we have seen the Lord”, he does not believe. 

Why? Perhaps it was a combination of the trauma of the crucifixion and burial, the sense of his hopes placed in Jesus utterly dashed and defeated by death, and the burning shame of his own failure as a disciple of Jesus. It just was not possible that the spiritual life, meaning, hope, faith could continue.

Then, a week later, when Thomas is with the other apostles, the Risen Lord again is before them: “he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Do not doubt but believe’”.

Here, Thomas, are my wounds: the signs of love, grace, forgiveness in me. I have overcome death. Life, meaning, hope, faith are found in me. Do not doubt but believe.

This is when John’s entire Gospel reaches its high point. Everything is building to this moment, with Thomas before the Risen Christ. Now, in this moment, we who read John’s Gospel, standing alongside Thomas and the other apostles, now we behold what it all means, what is at the very centre of all that has occurred in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus [4].

“Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’”

Here, in the Risen Lord, His wounds of love visible, here is God: truly and fully God. This is God: loving us, forgiving us, restoring us, bringing to us life eternal, life in God.

There is no ambiguity in the words of Thomas. It is not that Jesus Christ is like God; or akin to God; or is divine in a lesser way than is God the Father.

If this were so, we would have no assurance that in Jesus Christ there is truly, fully the redeeming, gracious, renewing love of God, bringing us to share in the very life of God [5]. 

If Jesus Christ was only like God, or akin to God, or divine in a lesser sense, we would be left uncertain; then it would be the case that what is seen and beheld in Jesus is not fully, truly God, but something less, something that cannot be fully trusted as the revelation of God’s purposes for us and love towards us.

But ... “Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’”

Each Sunday as we gather here as the Church, Thomas’ great confession of faith becomes our own as we say the Nicene Creed.

The Nicene Creed was composed 1,700 years ago this year, by a church council, the Council of Nicaea. Three centuries separate it from the Gospels. This passage of time, however, is not a weakness, it does not undermine this Creed. 

It took those centuries of Christians praying, worshipping, and reading the Scriptures to draw out the full meaning of Thomas’ confession of faith and the rest of the New Testament witness to Jesus Christ.

Slowly, over time, it became clear what the Christian Church needed to say in order to grasp what Thomas meant, what the other New Testament writers meant about Jesus: that He is, in the words of the Creed we shall shortly say, “eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father”.

In Jesus Christ, we behold, we encounter, the One who is truly, fully God, who therefore draws us into the very life of God, forgiven, healed, restored, renewed, in God, through God.

Each time we say this Creed, we stand alongside Saint Thomas the Apostle on that Sunday after the first Easter Day; and with Thomas we see the truth of the Resurrection; that dark, cold death could not hold Jesus Christ because He is fully, truly God; that the very life and light of God bursts forth from the empty Tomb in the Resurrection, touching us, touching people everywhere, across the ages, across the globe, healing, restoring, renewing us, bringing to us the life eternal.

And so, in this joyful Eastertide, we, with Thomas, say of the Crucified and Risen Christ, “My Lord and My God!”.

__________

[1] In BCP 2004, the Gospel reading for Low Sunday in Years A, B, and C is John 20:19-31.

[2] For our Orthodox brothers and sisters, this is Saint Thomas Sunday. In the words of the liturgy of the day, "While the tomb was sealed, You, O Life, did shine forth from the grave, O Christ God".

[3] In his translation of the New Testament, David Bentley Hart notes that Thomas' confession "unambiguously means 'God' in the absolute sense". John Behr in his superb 'John the Theologian & his Paschal Gospel' states, "This is the most emphatic scriptural statement attributing to Jesus the full sense of the word 'God', explicitly with an article". 

[4] Again, Hart: "Thomas' words here, then, appear to be the final theological statement of the Gospel". And Behr: "Christ is finally and fully, and only in this Gospel, called 'God' (20:28)".

[5] It is significant, of course, that Athanasius' famous declaration - "He, indeed, assumed humanity that we might become God" - occurs in his robust defence of the Alexandrian Christology affirmed by Nicaea, 'The Incarnation of the Word of God' (58).