Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Chapter XV. St. Thomas also confessed the same faith as Peter after the Lord's resurrection.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter XV.
St. Thomas also confessed the same faith as Peter after
the Lord’s resurrection.
But I want still to add
one more testimony from an Apostle for you: that you may see how what
followed after the passion corresponded with what went before it. When
then the Lord appeared in the midst of His disciples when the doors
were shut, and wished to make clear to the Apostles the reality of His
body, when the Apostle Thomas felt His flesh and handled His side and
examined His wounds—what was it that he declared, when he was
convinced of the reality of the body shown to him? “My
Lord,” he said, “and my God.”2443
Did he say what you say, that it was a
man and not God? Christ and not Divinity? He surely touched the body of
his Lord and answered that He was God. Did he make any separation
between man and God? or did he call that flesh Theotocos, to use your
expression, i.e., that which received Divinity? or did he, after the
fashion of your blasphemy, declare that He whom he touched was to be
honoured not for His own sake, but for the sake of Him whom He had
received into Himself? But perhaps God’s Apostle knew nothing of
that subtle separation of yours, and had no experience of the fine
distinctions of your judgment, as he was a rude countryman, ignorant of
the dialectic art, and of the method of philosophic disputation; for
whom the Lord’s teaching was amply sufficient, and as he was one
who knew nothing whatever except what he learnt from the instruction of
the Lord! And so his words contain heavenly doctrine; his faith is a
Divine lesson. He had never learnt to separate, as you do, the Lord
from His body: and had no idea how to rend God asunder from Himself. He
was holy, straightforward, upright: filled with practical innocence,
unalloyed faith, and pure knowledge: having a simple understanding
joined with prudence, a wisdom entirely free from all evil, together
with perfect simplicity: ignorant of any corruption, and free from all
heretical perversity, and as one who had experienced in himself the
force of the Divine lesson, he held fast everything which he had
learnt. And so he—countryman and ignorant fellow as you fancy
him—shuts you up with a brief answer, and destroys your position
with a few words of his. What then did the Apostle Thomas touch when he
drew near to handle his God? Certainly it was Christ without any doubt.
But what did he exclaim? “My Lord,” he said, “and my
God.” Now, if you can, separate Christ from God, and change this
saying, if you are able to. Make use of all dialectic art—all the
prudence of this world, and that foolish wisdom which consists in wordy
subtlety. Turn yourself about in every direction, and draw in your
horns. Do whatever you can with ingenuity and art. Say what you like,
and do what you like; you cannot possibly get out of this without
confessing that what the Apostle touched was God. And indeed, if the
thing can possibly be done, perhaps you will want to alter the
statement of the gospel story, so that we may not read that the Apostle
Thomas touched the body of the Lord, or that he called Christ Lord and
God. But it is absolutely impossible to alter what is written in the
gospel of God. For “heaven and earth shall pass away, but the
words” of God “shall not pass away.”2444
For lo, even now he who then bore his
witness, the Apostle Thomas, proclaims to you: “Jesus whom I
touched is God. It is God whose limbs I handled. I did not feel what
was incorporeal, not handle what was intangible: I touched not a Spirit
with my hand, so that it might be believed that I said of it alone
‘It is God.’ For ‘a spirit,’ as my Lord Himself
said, ‘hath not flesh and bones.’2445
I touched the body of my Lord. I handled flesh and bones. I put my
fingers into the prints of the wounds: and I declared of Christ my
Lord, whom I had handled: ‘My Lord and my God.’ For I know
not how to make a separation between Christ and God, and I cannot
insert blasphemous distinctions between Jesus and God, or rend my Lord
asunder from Himself. Away from me, whoever is of a different opinion,
and whoever says anything different. I know not that
Christ is other than God. This
faith I held together with my fellow apostles: this I delivered to the
Churches: this I preached to the Gentiles: this I proclaim to thee
also, Christ is God, Christ is God. A sound mind imagines nothing else:
a sound faith says nothing else. The Deity cannot be parted from
Itself. And since whatever is Christ is God, there can be found in God
none other but God.”E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
