In my church, when I was confirmed, our minister told us that the apostles were all sinners. He described each of them as beloved children of our Lord, who fell short of perfection. Thomas wasn’t particularly singled out. It was part of the lesson of the Evangelical United Brethren that it was by grace that we are saved, not by works. Christ is our judge, not each other, and His judgement is given in love, with divine mercy.
Looking back over the years, I know I did not really feel that as faith, in those days, but now I do, and accepting it has given me peace that striving to be sinless never could. It also gives me reason to strive to be good, even knowing that sinlessness is not within me.
I don’t know what exact EUB doctrine is, with respect to Thomas.
Wow. no, not remotely. Quite apostate now, but as the child of a Xtian missionary & grandchild of a convert who spent his life teaching would-be preachers the life of Christ, I can answer this one like snap. We’d look at your pastor/teachers as the sort who want children to be so afraid to doubt that they don’t dare question.
Obviously, that sort of hyper-conservative attitude (in the targeted population) is unhelpful to a missionary mindset, and it’s so much more useful to missionaries to help people feel like they’re being freed from fear. So no, that sort of thing was not at all what I was taught. We saw Thomas’s story as wholly encouraging; he who asked for proof & got it.
It is very probably relevant that my grandfather was raised Unitarian, converted to evangelical Xtianity, & believed in the historical evidence for a bodily resurrection. He probably identified with Thomas a lot. And then he was dean of a Bible college, so he may have been working to counteract any tendency in preachers toward that attitude you describe for his whole life.
Likewise my church has no position on Thomas. I’ve heard one sermon about him. The gist of it was that since Thomas was a twin, he was particularly well aware that it was easy to mistake one person for another. That’s probably why he refused to believe the other disciples when they claimed to have seen the resurrected Jesus. Afterwards, he demonstrated his great restored faith by taking the gospel all the way to India.
I should point out that in the sort of disorganized evangelicalism I grew up in, there are a range of attitudes. And this is the sort of thing that would come up in discussion for those in Christian service. But my family, against Thomas? No, I don’t think so.
Never went into much about Tomas, but I think you said a lot to compare the denial of Peter to the doubting of Thomas. It just shows that the Lord is willing to do what ever it takes.
As for Judas, that apparently is a different case.
Fascinatingly, in the Apocryphal Acts of Thomas, after he believes Christ is God, he wasn’t particularly keen to go to India. Jesus shows up again, looking like a man, and sells him into slavery to a dude who is going from Jerusalem to India.
I was taught that each of the Twelve was deficient in some way, which is why they were just Apostles and not quite on Christ’s level. It’s kind of a metaphor for all Christians coming up a little short, but still being believers and saved.
Agreed. Luke makes it clear that the others were just as skeptical when the women made their report. (Later the two unnnamed other disciples also claimed to have saw him. When he finally appeard to the Apostles they can only think, at first, that they were seeing a ghost.)