“I want things I can feel and handle,” explains the skeptical Dr. Barrack of H.G. Wells’s The Undying Fire. He is, he admits, “A Doubting Thomas, born and bred…I am an Agnostic by nature and habit and profession.” The patron saint of architects, stonecutters and masons, Thomas has been invoked throughout the ages to describe those for whom the senses are the foremost arbiters of belief and doubt.
Having been absent at Jesus’ first post-resurrection appearance, Thomas rejects the claims of his fellow disciples and protests, “Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe” (John 20:19–25). Eight days pass until Jesus stands again in the disciples’ midst. He addresses Thomas: “Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side, and be not faithless, but believing.” And Thomas responds, “My Lord and my God” (John 20:26–28).
Alex Rapoport’s 5-foot tall painting, The Incredulity of Thomas, depicts the movement from incredulity to belief: One of Thomas’s feet remains beyond the threshold of the painted frame, while the other steps toward Jesus.
British author Dorothy Sayers notes the supreme irony of Thomas’s doubt: “The one absolutely unequivocal statement, in the whole Gospel, of the Divinity of Jesus” comes from Thomas. Only here, without qualm or ambiguity, is the word “God” used of him.
“I want things I can feel and handle,” explains the skeptical Dr. Barrack of H.G. Wells’s The Undying Fire. He is, he admits, “A Doubting Thomas, born and bred…I am an Agnostic by nature and habit and profession.” The patron saint of architects, stonecutters and masons, Thomas has been invoked throughout the ages to describe those for whom the senses are the foremost arbiters of belief and doubt. Having been absent at Jesus’ first post-resurrection appearance, Thomas rejects the claims of his fellow disciples and protests, “Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and […]
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