Thomas answered and said to him, My Lord and my God! 29. Jesus says to him, Because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed. Blessed are they who, without having seen, have believed.

What produces so profound an impression upon Thomas is not only the reality of the resurrection, which he touches with his hands, it is also the omniscience of the Lord, which the latter proves by repeating to him, just as they were, the words which he thought he had uttered in His absence. This scene recalls that of Nathanael (ch. 1). Just as in the case of the latter, the light shines suddenly, with an irresistible brightness, even into the depths of the soul of Thomas; and by one of those frequent reactions in the moral life, he rises by a single bound from the lowest degree of faith to the highest, and proclaims the divinity of his Master in a more categorical expression than all those which had ever come forth from the lips of any of his fellow-apostles. The last becomes in a moment the first, and the faith of the apostles attains at length, in the person of Thomas, to the whole height of the divine reality formulated in the first words of the Prologue. It is in vain that Theodore of Mopsuestia, the Socinians and others have wished to apply to God, not to Jesus, Thomas' cry of adoration, by making it either an expression of praise, or an exclamation in honor of God. It should not be, in that case, εἶπεν αὐτῷ, “He said to Him; ” besides, the term my Lord can only refer to Jesus. The monotheism of Thomas is made an objection. But it is precisely because this disciple understands that he bears towards Jesus henceforth a feeling which passes beyond what can be accorded to a creature, that he is forced, even by his monotheism, to place this being in the heart of Deity.

The repetition of the article and that of the pronoun μου give to these words a peculiar solemnity (Weiss).

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Old Testament

New Testament