THE Evangelists rarely provide personal witness to the events recorded in their Gospels, or express opinions about them. Matthew and Mark never give us, their readers and listeners, first-person reflections on events, or direct us what to make of them.
Luke does express his thinking, in Acts 1.1-3, to “Theophilus”. This could be a Christian individual. The name, though, could also be a cipher signifying each and every one of us; for it means (more or less) “Dear-to-God”.
John begins like Mark and Matthew, but the closing words of chapter 20 express his own intention for generations of Christians, reaching into a future that he himself could hardly have imagined. He still minimises the personal element by using the passive: not “I have not written in this book,” but “which are not written in this book”. Not “I have written so that you may come to believe,” but “these are written so that you may come to believe.”
Even these passives tell us something about his hopes for his Gospel. John wants to change people from not-belief to belief. And, once that state of belief or faith is evoked, it entails “that through believing you may have life in his name” — something that John has been exploring since chapter one (1.4; 3.16, etc.).
Without this lection’s context, we may not think to ask: why make this disclosure now? These verses feel like a conclusion, and the lection ends with them; so it is easy to forget that there is a further chapter still to come. Why would John add chapter 21 after the end of chapter 20? and then include another conclusion after that (21.25)?
John 20.30-31 is not a conclusion, after all. John’s own voice seems to have broken in without his realising, driven by the overwhelming imperative to communicate this message: the meaning of the story of Thomas in the light of Jesus’s resurrection.
Taking “doubting Thomas” in the usual way (with the value judgement implied in that label) makes us think that doubt is something to be frowned on, and that Jesus commends those who believe without proof.
The leap of faith being asked of Thomas is to trust in something just because he has been told it. But there is no sign in the text that Jesus is angry with Thomas, or disappointed. He does not rebuke Thomas, as we might expect him to, if doubt were a sin.
I am not clear that what “doubting” Thomas is guilty of (if anything) is doubt at all. What Jesus says to him is, precisely, “do not be without-faith (apistos), but with faith (pistos)”. Being “without faith” is not the same thing as having doubt. In any case, doubt is not a sin.
Thomas is telling the truth; so Jesus is patient with him, and gives him what he needs to move from “without-faith” to “with faith”. His being without faith is not a choice but a fact; and Jesus does not condemn people for being honest.
The modern concept of faith as “blind faith” is dangerous. Faith is not a determined suspension of incredulity, or an exercise in wilful denial of evidence — like a determination to “beat” an illness, which may amount to nothing more than mental resistance to medical reality. Christians are not Christians because they can make themselves believe six impossible things before breakfast — or even one.
Thomas does not deserve criticism for being honest about where he was, spiritually speaking. After all, he was still in that room with the other disciples. He had not given up on their bond of fellowship, or the Lord who united them.
John makes his book’s objective explicit here, because Thomas’s story is the question to which his Gospel and his risen Lord form a double answer: how to help people across the gulf between not believing and believing?
Thomas could not put his faith (or “belief”) in what was, up until then, merely hearsay evidence. Hearsay evidence is sometimes permissible in court, when a witness is dead (or unfit, abroad, lost, or afraid). But Jesus is not dead; for he steps into the scene, and witnesses to himself.
Now, Thomas can believe. And now John’s purpose is fulfilled; for he has recorded the witness of Jesus himself in his Gospel, and it speaks as directly to us as it did to Thomas. Not hearsay. In person. Beyond reasonable doubt.