Thomas would not believe the report of the other disciples who said they had seen Jesus alive. He only believed in Jesus’ resurrection after Jesus appeared to Him as well. Jesus’ words to Thomas on that day have been immortalized in the Gospel of John: “Because you have seen me, you have believed: blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed” (John 20:29).
This verse is often used by those who oppose the use of evidence and reason in evangelism. They argue that if God’s blessing is given to those who believe in Jesus’ resurrection without evidence, then apologetic arguments aren’t just unnecessary, but a spiritual hindrance that robs people of the blessing that comes through faith. On its face, Jesus does appear to berate Thomas for requiring evidence of His resurrection while pronouncing a blessing on those who believe without the need for evidence. A closer examination of the passage in its context, however, reveals this reading of the text to be mistaken.
First, this reading of Jesus’ words would contradict the thrust of John’s gospel. John was quite clear that he included Jesus’ miracles to provide evidence that Jesus was who He said He was, so that people might put their faith in Jesus for salvation: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:30-31). These words follow immediately on the heels of the verse in question. If John had understood Jesus’ words to Thomas to mean that evidence was unspiritual and unnecessary, surely he would not have immediately contradicted Jesus by telling his readers that he wrote of Jesus’ signs to serve as evidence that Jesus was the Christ and to engender faith in his readers.
Second, we should keep in mind that all of the apostles were similarly situated to Thomas. Like Thomas, they also doubted others’ who had testified to seeing Jesus alive from the dead (Mk 16:10-14; Lk 24:8-11). And like Thomas, they did not come to believe in the resurrection until Jesus appeared to them personally. If Jesus was condemning Thomas’ need for evidence, such condemnation applied equally to the other apostles. If Jesus’ closest associates —those who walked with Him for over three years — needed evidence, how much more those of us who have never met Him in the flesh, living 2000 years after these events?
Third, notice that Jesus did not say “Blessed are those who believe without evidence,” but rather “Blessed are those who have not seen me and yet believe.” Jesus’ concern was not evidence in general, but a particular kind of evidence: empirical evidence. Jesus condemned Thomas’ empiricism, not his desire for evidence. Thomas should not have needed empirical evidence to believe. He already had sufficient evidence to conclude that Jesus had been raised from the dead, namely the testimony of the other apostles and followers of Jesus who had seen Jesus alive. No less than 20 people had already seen Jesus alive from the dead on no less than three separate occasions. Thomas was requiring a level of evidence that was not necessary. Jesus was not condemning Thomas for wanting evidence before believing, but for refusing to believe the evidence already provided to him. Jesus condemned Thomas for requiring the same experience as the other apostles before he would believe. Jesus knew that only an extremely tiny number of people would ever have such an experience. Jesus intended for people to believe based on far less evidence. Thomas was requiring too much.
John’s readers were in the exact same position as Thomas: They had been presented with the apostolic testimony concerning Jesus’ resurrection, and they were expected to believe on that basis – rather than some empirical basis like the apostles experienced. John used Jesus’ words to Thomas to speak to skeptics who reasoned that they can’t be expected to imitate the faith of the apostles without having the same experience as the apostles. John makes clear to his readers that Jesus counts those as “blessed” who believe in His resurrection on the basis of apostolic testimony rather than empirical evidence. Our evidence is the testimony of those who had empirical evidence of the resurrection. Christian apologetics is concerned with providing people with good reasons to trust that those testimonies are reliable and veridical so that they can come to the same conclusion the apostles did, without experiencing what they experienced.
An apologetic for Jesus’ resurrection does not violate what Jesus said to Thomas. No Christian apologist presents empirical evidence for Jesus’ resurrection. We provide reasons to trust the testimony of the Evangelists; we do not make Jesus appear before people’s very eyes! While we have many reasons to believe Jesus rose from the dead, we are doing so without having actually seen Jesus, and thus we, too, are blessed.
Thinking to Believe 
October 14, 2022 at 7:42 pm
For those of us who have seen Christ and I have seen Him, Christ knows that we acknowledge His having opened our eyes to have seen Him and for this we know that He is well pleased.
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October 15, 2022 at 6:04 am
“Thomas should not have needed empirical evidence to believe. He already had sufficient evidence to conclude that Jesus had been raised from the dead, namely the testimony of the other apostles and followers of Jesus who had seen Jesus alive.”
The problem here is that testimony is the LEAST reliable form of evidence. People can misinterpret, misremember, hallucinate, be tricked or simply lie, and it happens all the time. I’ve met Mormons, Hindus, Muslims, Shintoists and more who give equally fervent and earnest testimony of their religious experiences, but clearly they can’t all be right. Sincerity of belief is no guarantee of truth. That’s why empirical evidence is always preferred in court cases, and why testimony is worthless in science (except in certain specific soft-science studies where better evidence doesn’t exist).
Were I in Thomas’ shoes, I would require the evidence he requested in order to believe, because even a room full of ardent believers is not credible evidence (go to a Flat Earth Society meeting, faith healing session or a cold reading performance to see for yourself how easily people can be convinced a falsehood is true). That’s why I subscribe to the axiom “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” (and what could be more extraordinary than magical, supernatural or paranormal claims?).
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October 15, 2022 at 9:19 am
Derek, I’ll set aside the problematic “extraordinary evidence” epistemological standard for a moment to focus on your claim about testimony (which I think is really more about experience than it is about testimony itself).
Yes, experience and testimony are not always reliable, but not all experience and testimony are created equal. When one person claims to have seen Elvis alive, we doubt their testimony because it comes from one person. When two people claim to have seen Elvis alive, the claim is more credible, but when it’s clear that they only saw him for a fleeting moment 100 feet away, we doubt their testimony because there are so many other possible ways to explain their experience. But if 20 or so people claim to have seen Elvis alive, and they did so on different occasions both individually and in groups, and their sighting of Elvis included up-close and personal interactions with him including personal touch and dialogue, suddenly their testimony becomes a lot more credible – particularly if Elvis had predicted that he would survive his death. The nature of the experience and the quality of that experience matters.
Given the fact that Jesus had predicted His resurrection, and given the number, nature, and quality of the experiences being reported to Thomas, he should have believed.
I don’t believe alien life exists, but if my best friend (whom I know the intelligence and integrity of) claimed not to just see a strange light in the sky – but to have interacted with an alien up close and personal – I would take his claim seriously even if I remained a bit skeptical because it contradicts my worldview. But then, if my wife also claims to have encountered the same alien in the same way, my skepticism would diminish greatly. If a group of my cousins claimed to have a similar group experience, I would feel compelled to believe everyone’s testimony given my knowledge of their character, the number of claims, the number of experiences, and the quality of the encounters.
It seems to me that you are requiring Thomas to be much more skeptical than he should have been given the nature and quality of the experiences being reported to him. He should have believed.
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October 15, 2022 at 12:28 pm
exactly ……….. what’s so bizarre about Thomas’ statement is he saw Jesus do many miracles and the biblical evidence shows when Jesus sent the apostles out they also, which included Thomas, performed miracles.
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October 17, 2022 at 3:54 am
I see a number of problems with that claim, Jason. First and foremost, most biblical scholars agree that the gospels were written DECADES after the events portrayed and the authors were not likely even themselves eyewitnesses to those events (in any event, they were anonymous, so there is no way to verify their claims). Thus, their claims are hearsay.
Second, having multiple witnesses to an event is by no means a guarantee of their testimony being true. After all, MILLIONS of people (myself included) saw David Copperfield make the Statue of Liberty disappear and watched Criss Angel walk on water (look them up and see for yourself). Yes, the audience was tricked in both cases…but that is my point. It is far more likely that some fantastical event witnessed by many was the result of people being fooled than some supernatural event.
But even when people aren’t being deliberately tricked, our senses and expectations can play tricks on us as well. Have you heard of the “Miracle of the Sun”? In Portugal in 1917, tens of thousands of Christians and non-believers alike witnessed what they thought was the sun spinning and dancing in the sky and projecting multicolored rays. The audience had been told to expect a miracle, and so that’s what they saw, even though the phenomenon was purely natural. Yet thousands of people swore upon their lives that they had witnessed a miracle.
Even the hypothetical example of your friend recounting an interaction with an alien would not be sufficient reason to believe in aliens—even if thousands of others made the same claim (for the record, thousands of people HAVE claimed to have interacted personally with aliens). Even though we have good scientific reasons to think the universe is abundant with life—likely even other intelligent life—and there isn’t even any need to resort to the supernatural to explain how intelligent alien life could exist, belief in such alien life is unwarranted because the current evidence is simply insufficient (all those thousands of claimed witnesses notwithstanding). Again, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and an alien visitation is an extraordinary claim—not nearly as extraordinary as any claim for the supernatural (something that has never even been sufficiently demonstrated to exist), yet enough to justify a need for more evidence.
And finally, the gospels show no indication that any of the disciples witnessed Jesus dying, but that Mary did see it…only women weren’t considered reliable witnesses at the time. Furthermore, the Bible also says that people had trouble recognizing Jesus after his resurrection: Mary mistook him for a gardener, the disciples who were fishing didn’t recognize him, and the disciples who traveled with him to Emmaus didn’t recognize him until they shared a meal later on. Of course, the claim is that they were either too far away from Jesus to recognize him or he was magically disguised…but doesn’t that all sound suspicious enough to you to justify a request for much better evidence?
For these reasons I think the “eyewitness” arguments given for the resurrection are less than convincing. It’s easy to see many potential steps where misinformation, disinformation, hallucination, trickery, etc. could have been interjected to sell the whole resurrection narrative. And we all know that natural explanations and human gullibility are FAR more likely to be the reason behind an extraordinary claim. That’s why extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. This is not a problematic stance at all.
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October 19, 2022 at 2:22 am
Interestingly, I just now read about how Paul, John the Baptist, and the disciples weren’t convinced by Jesus’ story of the gospel, even though they had far more evidence than we’re expected to believe 2000 years later: https://onlysky.media/bseidensticker/why-accept-evidence-that-didnt-convince-jesuss-contemporaries-2/
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