Intuitive Faith

Blessed are those who have not see
and yet believe.
John 20:29

The noted scholar Ernst Kaesemann once observed that the Fourth Gospel, from which today's second lesson is taken, was included in the New Testament canon "by human error, but by divine providence." By this he meant that the Gospel according to John is so different from the other three gospels that you would expect any human editor to have excluded it.

And yet, despite this, or perhaps because of it, John's gospel has been a favorite with many Christians and has been called, from antiquity, "the spiritual gospel." The account of Jesus appearance on the Octave of Easter Sunday, that is, today, illustrates this special character of the Fourth Gospel.

The central figure in the story is Thomas, one of the Twelve. His refusal to accept the other apostles' word for Jesus' resurrection is usually taken as a sign of lack of faith. And yet, in his demand that he see the print of the nails in Jesus' hands and place his own hand in Jesus' side (John 20:25) Thomas is really only asking for what the other ten disciples--Judas is out of the picture--have already received. He wants to on a par with them; he doesn't want to be odd man out.

So if there is any criticism implied in our gospel, it goes beyond Thomas and touches the apostolic college as a whole. The faith of all the apostles is based on having seen the Lord, and it is precisely this faith with which is contrasted the faith of those who have not seen and yet believe (John 20:29).

The contrast, then, is not between Thomas and the other ten-after this second appearance of Christ they are all in the same position of those who have seen. Rather, Thomas is contrasted, implicitly, with someone who is not in the story at all: the Beloved Disciple.

This mysterious figure represents the faith of the Johannine community and is the supreme example of Jesus' "own" (John 13:1). He is closer to Jesus than Peter, both in life and in death. He reclines on Jesus' breast at the Last Supper (13:23), and he stands by Jesus' cross (19:26). He perceives the significance of the Empty Tomb (20:8), without any need to be instructed by an angel. He recognizes the Lord's presence when the disciples draw up a miraculous catch of fish (21:7).

The Easter experience, upon which the apostolic title rests (cf. 1 Corinthians 9:1), is not a special privilege. The need to see the risen Lord expresses a deficiency in the faith that is based on it. The Beloved Disciple sees the meaning of the grave cloths, which is hidden from the apostle Peter (John 20:6-7).

Such intuitive insight into the sign value of incidents connected with Jesus' life and death seems to have been characteristic of the Johannine community, and to have distinguished them from so-called "apostolic" churches.

Such insight is what we too must depend on, if our faith is to be a truly personal act, and not simply an acceptance of what others have seen and believed. For us, as for the Johannine Christians, it is the spirit, and not some apostolic figure from the past, who brings to remembrance all that Jesus has said (John 14:26), and enables us to perceive the true significance of his words and actions, and of the scripture's testimony concerning him (John 2:17; 12:16).

April 27, 2003