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The Incredulity of Saint Thomas by Caravaggio, c. 1602. A doubting Thomas is a skeptic who refuses to believe without direct personal experience – a reference to the Gospel of John's depiction of the Apostle Thomas, who, in John's account, refused to believe the resurrected Jesus had appeared to the ten other apostles until he could see and feel Jesus's crucifixion wounds.
Jesus granted Thomas's demands to verify his crucifixion, marks: [3] the marks of the nails in Jesus' hands and the pierced hole on his side . [4] It surely shocked Thomas that Jesus knows exactly his problem as every letter of his requirements for physical verification ( John 20:25 ) is met and spoken back to him with uncanny precision.
Thomas has shown his difficulties to understand Jesus in John 11:16 and John 14:15, and this time he hesitated when confronted with the resurrection account. [3] Thomas' emphatic disbelief of the disciples' testimony intensified his resolution to seek physical evidence to convince him that the risen Jesus was the Jesus he had known. [ 4 ]
With this statement, Jesus was not only reaching out to Thomas, but is reaching out to all future believers (cf. John 17:20–24) and embraces them all. [3] The followers of Jesus since the time of Jesus rely on 'secure evidence' (Scripture, the witness of the church through the ages, personal experiences in faith) without having actually seen ...
[6] [7] Therefore, an argument could be made on syntactical grounds that Thomas's expression was an exclamation of astonishment spoken to Jesus but actually directed to God, and that John would have had to use the vocative case instead if Thomas's words were directed to Jesus. [8] However there are many objections to this.
Some visionaries have reported physical contact with Jesus. The Bible suggests that post-resurrection (yet pre-ascension) physical contact with Jesus is possible, for in John 21:17 Jesus told Mary Magdalene: "Don't touch Me for I have not yet ascended to the Father"". In John 20:27 Jesus ordered Thomas the Apostle: "Put your hand into My side".
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A "Doubting Thomas" is a skeptic who refuses to believe without direct personal experience—a reference to the Gospel of John's depiction of the Apostle Thomas, who, in John's account, refused to believe the resurrected Jesus had appeared to the ten other apostles until he could see and feel Jesus' crucifixion wounds.