Ask any art lover which painting best depicts St Thomas and most will probably refer to the famous picture by Caravaggio which gives a very graphic depiction of the story from John’s Gospel. Having demanded evidence of the risen Christ, Thomas is shown putting his finger in the wound in Jesus’ side and he casts aside all doubt – he is confronting a flesh-and-blood Jesus. Some scholars have suggested that this story of Doubting Thomas may have been devised by John as a device to invoke and then resolve the issue of doubt – thereby attempting to lay any doubt about Jesus’ claims to rest once and for all. Whatever the status of the story, for all Christians, Thomas has come to represent the sincere and devout believer who seeks certain proof before he or she can believe.
The story of Thomas is an intensely human story. Perhaps one of the reasons that Caravaggio’s painting is so popular and enduring, is because we can see ourselves in this situation. Thomas is portrayed with a humanity that we all share and he is a figure that most – if not all of us – can identify with. We must all have doubted something that we thought to be true and on occasions - found ourselves proven to be right. It is only human to have doubts, when things do not on the face of it, square up to our own knowledge or our sense of reason and experiences of the world. As an old saying goes: "Doubt comes in at the window, when reason is denied at the door!" We have not seen, in the literal sense, and yet in spite of that, we still believe. We have faith, but that will not necessarily stop doubts creeping in when our sense of reason is challenged.
Among doubters, there are of course, those who are fanatical in their disbelief. They are often very intelligent people, but tend to think with closed minds in a closed system of ideas and hold intractable beliefs; openness to new ideas or possibilities is anathema to them. Outside the religious camp, the adherents of the ‘new atheism’ are inclined to come into this category. One certainty has been dismissed and another put firmly in its place. Such people do not have to question what they think, because they are so convinced that they know all of the answers. Fanatical doubt can become so bold and intense in character, it can actually become like another faith.
A true doubter is a different character; this person is a seeker - a person who is open-minded and is genuinely seeking truth. They listen, they exercise tolerance, balance and judgement in their quest. They don't get hooked into narrow systems of thought, but keep an open mind. Of course, it is sometimes difficult to believe what you do not or cannot see. How can you have faith, particularly the kind that Thomas was challenged with, when reason is stretched to the limit? I know some people will say that real faith has nothing to do with one's formal, intellectual beliefs, which are seen as getting in the way of a living faith. Well perhaps, yet there are times when I think that faith gets extraordinarily simplistic in the way it is presented and it is just not intellectual enough! But I counter that by saying, that faith is not just a matter of the intellect or the will but a function of the soul. The soul, with its deep capacity to love, is connected to the fundamental meaningfulness of life; that in itself can inspire faith. But, to the one who truly seeks to make it real, it will always bring doubts.
We live in a very sceptical world, perhaps more so now than ever before. People have doubts because in our post-enlightenment age, people have lots of questions - committed Christians, people on the outside of faith and those hovering on the threshold, but not sure whether they can make a commitment and come in. But their doubts are real and their questions are pertinent and cannot be dismissed. So how can we help them? For me, one has to be a seeker as much as a defender of the faith. My faith is nurtured and strengthened by two things: experience and imagination.
Firstly, experience. If you talk to someone outside the faith and simply discuss the question of Jesus' resurrection in terms of whether or not he was clinically dead after crucifixion and then resuscitated it will probably be discussed on the level of scientific curiosity rather than as a question of faith. Indeed, for many people, discussion that begins at that starting point will probably not affect them at all at any other level. The question is not one that can only be discussed from the basis of historical fact as though by bludgeoning people with that fact they will somehow come to believe. I would suggest that we should approach it differently by asking: "Is Jesus now dead or is he still alive for us now?” Pressed further, the question gives rise to other questions: How does Jesus change peoples lives now? Can one still say: "Jesus lives and in him I live also” and what does that really mean? Arguably, only those who have been 'resurrected' themselves can actually celebrate the events of Easter. We have to show that we are ourselves, living answers to these questions if we are to help bring others into faith and see what resurrection really means and how it relates to that most central past event. We cannot skirt around those questions.
And secondly, there is imagination. All our great scientists, philosophers, innovators and theologians have only achieved success or at least opened up new possibilities, through a leap of the imagination. I believe that authentic Christian faith requires a leap of the imagination. Unfortunately, we live in an age that is obsessed with 'proof and the need for proof, in empirical and scientific terms. But true imagination actually means it is necessary to believe more than we can prove. To some extent, it is only by keeping a belief in more than we can prove that we keep alive the very spirit of our humanity and demonstrate to ourselves that we are always more than we are or more than we have. And so it is with faith. In faith, imagination and experience go hand in hand. To engage deeply and meaningfully with faith, requires that one has to be more like an artist and less like a rationalist.
Doubt is the healthy and critically alert companion of faith, not its enemy. As the American spiritual writer Fred Buechner puts it "Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving". I think that a faith which avoids doubt or dismisses it, in the long term also avoids the claim of its own truth; it loses credibility. We have to live in and with the questions. If we look again to the story of Thomas, we see he is not prepared to take the accounts of others at face value. Thomas wants to know by experience; He wants his religion to be his own. He wants to touch the truth for himself. His doubt is simply honesty. In this way, Thomas approached religion critically. But I don’t consider that Thomas was an unbeliever. He presumably did not think that talk of the Kingdom of God was just magical language for smaller minds. Thomas's critical instinct did not destroy his concern for the life that might be, but is not yet, in the world.
Thomas's religion is a critical faith and not a blind faith. Such a critical outlook has an important place in contemporary religion. For those who want to develop a mature, living, open and credible faith, it may first be necessary to walk with Thomas in order to then walk with the risen Christ. This part of the Easter story says that there is room for each of us, with our questions and concerns. Thomas is a patron saint for those who are trying to live a critical faith – a serious, vital and relevant faith for a modern world. In this respect, Thomas is the one who probably most truly touches the Resurrection.