Why did Thomas doubt the resurrection of Jesus?

[Mount_Carmel]

Bahman - Myself and indeed many others believe Jesus was/is BOTH very much God/Divine AND very much a [perfect - in moral and ethical terms] human being. That God through the medium of Jesus can know and feel/experience, in much the same way as we can and do feel human emotions etc… It was through His human DNA from his mother that he could feel vulnerability, abandonment and desolation.

ps. If God IS LOVE, then the Divine cannot be isolated from the feelings and concerns that relate to and help define LOVE.

 

[Starrsmother]

I don’t know, I am not Christian, you define Jesus for me. If he is God then he has to be emotionless, so he can neither suffer for others nor suffer. He of course could suffer if he is human but then he cannot be God.

It’s really hard to define God and the characteristics of Jesus as both God and man–and particularly to a non Christian. Hmmm…

I respect your question, however, and assuming that yours is a serious question and not just argumentative, I’d like to try. Remember please, that I am only a simple woman–not a theologian or an apologetic—so if my answer is overly simplistic, please forgive.

Catholics–and most Christian—believe that Jesus is the second person of the Trinity and both true God and true man, at the same time. Without going into a discussion of the Trinity–which would easily take two more replies like this one, I will focus on Jesus alone. We believe that God took on a human body through the incarnation of His human mother–Mary who remained and remains a virgin. Mary did not become pregnant through intercourse but because God—the Holy Spirit–who can do anything–chose to let her conceive and she agreed to do so out of her faith in doing God’s will. Thus, Jesus is God—but He also has a human body–just like you and I. He had a human mind and human needs including hunger, thirst and physical pain. His feelings could be hurt, He understood how humans felt and acted because he experienced the same things as we did and do while He was on earth. He was tempted by the devil to sin–just as we are. His human nature was as frail as or own and undoubtedly wished to take the easy path and sin–but because He was also divine, He had more strength to say “No!” than we mere humans.

My question to you would be why you assume that God is emotionless? It doesn’t follow to me that because God is God that he would be incapable of emotion when He is capable of everything and anything else. God created man in His image and likeness and gave us emotions–which He didn’t give many other creatures on earth. But man–in God’s image–was given emotions. To me, those emotions are part of our image and likeness to God. Jesus, being both divine AND human, would certainly experience and understand emotions too. Jesus loved Thomas who was infact, one of the 12 apostles that He handpicked. He understood doubt and He forgave it. It would,after all, be a pretty hard thing–even today–to believe that someone could rise from the dead, right? If I had been in poor old Thomas’ shoes,I might have told Peter that he was out of his ever loving mind too–that I knew for sure that Jesus was 100% dead and buried and that unless he could prove to me otherwise, I would think that he and the other 10 remaining apostles were so grief stricken that they were crazy! And so Jesus–who was fully aware of Thomas’ doubts but also of his good heart and deep love for Jesus that had caused Thomas to leave everything on earth that he loved and owned to follow the Lord during His 3 year ministry— decided to come and prove to Thomas that He had indeed risen from the dead–something that none of the apostles would have been capable of doing!!

 

[Bahman]

It’s really hard to define God and the characteristics of Jesus as both God and man–and particularly to a non Christian. Hmmm…

I respect your question, however, and assuming that yours is a serious question and not just argumentative, I’d like to try. Remember please, that i am only a simple woman–not a theologian or an apologetic—so if my answer is overly simplistic, please forgive.

Catholics–and most Christians believe that Jesus is the second person of the Trinity and both true God and true man. without going into a discussion of the trinity–which would easily take two more replies like this one, I will focus on Jesus alone. We believe that God took on a human body through the incarnation of His human mother–Mary who remained and remains a virgin. Mary did not become pregnant through intercourse but because God–who can do anything–chose to let her conceive and she agreed to do so out of her faith in doing God’s will. Thus, Jesus is god—but He also has a human body–just like you and I. He had a human mind and human needs including hunger, thirst and physical pain. His feelings could be hurt,

My question to you would be why you assume that God is emotionless?? god created man in His image and likeness and gave us emotions–which He didn’t give many other creatures on earth. But man–in god’s image–was given emotions. To me, those emotions are part of our image and likeness to God. Jesus, being both divine AND human would certainly experience and understand emotions too. Jesus loved Thomas who was infact one of the 12 apostles that He handpicked. He understood doubt and He forgave it. It would,after all, be a pretty hard thing–even today–to believe that someone could rise from the dead, right?

God is emotionless as it lives in state of timeless (outside creation). We live in state of time so our state of being could be subject of time, feeling angry, happy, etc. We cannot say that God is angry now because I did something wrong right now and it was happy yesterday because I did something good.