Tomorrow is for many Christians the feast of St Thomas the Apostle, best known as “Doubting Thomas”. In the Gospel of John, Chapter xx, in response to his fellow disciples reporting that they have seen the crucified and resurrected Jesus, Thomas says: “Unless I see the mark of the nails in His hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in His side, I will not believe.”
There is a good deal of doubt and radical questioning in the Bible, notably in the Psalms and the book of Job, but also surrounding the ministry of Jesus and his death and Resurrection. There is no suggestion that bewilderment or honest doubt is a bad thing: if that is where we are, then we simply cannot help it, and something or someone is needed to help us to move beyond it. The key thing is how we respond when other possibilities are offered.
There is far more than doubt in the story of Thomas. Jean Vanier, in his profound and practical meditation, Drawn into the Mystery of Jesus through the Gospel of John, says: “It is moving how Jesus meets and accepts Thomas just as he is.” When Jesus comes He offers all Thomas asks for, but goes farther: “Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas’s response to Jesus goes farther than anyone else in the Gospel: “My Lord and my God!”
Then comes the twist in the tail, as Jesus goes yet further: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” Thomas has had the privilege of being an eyewitness; the rest of us are invited to trust eyewitnesses, just as readers of The Times are invited to trust its reports.
The Gospel of John was probably written as the last eyewitnesses to Jesus were dying. It distils together eyewitness testimony and years of meditation on it, inviting readers to go ever deeper and farther. It uses natural symbols (light, bread, water, wind, birth), dramatic stories, irony, ambiguity and multi-levelled statements to try to make sure that we think for ourselves, ask big questions and are never content with where we have reached — truth is superabundant and inexhaustible.
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John is also richly intercultural, weaving together Jewish religion with Hellenistic Roman civilisation. “My Lord and my God” was at that time a challenging political statement, since it was also used of the Roman Emperor: “Dominus et deus noster”. The Gospel’s opening phrase, “In the beginning was the Word” uses logos, a key term in both the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible and also in Greek philosophy, science and culture.
How about our civilisation? There was a recent announcement of a New College of Humanities in London, involving such extreme atheists as A. C. Grayling and Richard Dawkins. “Science literacy” is on its curriculum but not “religious literacy”. Yet near by, through the Religious Literacy Leadership Project, based in Goldsmiths, University of London, and funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England, more than 60 universities (so far) are collaborating to work out what religious literacy might mean for them.
The New College reminds me of periods in history when particular religious groups founded Oxford or Cambridge colleges, often in fierce competition with other groups. It also made me think how far Oxford and Cambridge have come since then. They and many other British universities have slowly and often painfully developed the field of “theology and religious studies”. Britain leads the world in having universities where it is possible both to study a range of religions through relevant academic disciplines, and also to ask, and try to answer, the big theological questions of meaning, truth and practice.
Theology and religious studies are open to those of any religious belief and none, believers and doubters, so a space is created where matters of faith can be explored by diverse academics and students in academic freedom. It is sad to hear Professor Grayling’s doubt-free assertions about the rightness of excluding such studies, saying that “theology and astrology are in the same area”.
There is a great deal of ignorant, foolish and dangerous belief around (both secular and religious), and there is a desperate need for well-informed, intelligent, wise and responsible belief. If universities do not help to meet that need they are failing in their responsibility towards knowledge and truth and also towards the rest of society.
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So we need places where the Gospel of John and the questions it raises are on the curriculum, and where Thomas is a figure in academic discussion as well as Christian celebration.
David F. Ford is Regius Professor of Divinity and Director of the Cambridge Inter-faith Programme in the University of Cambridge (www.interfaith.cam.ac.uk). His latest book, The Future of Christian Theology, was published in February by Wiley-Blackwell.