BibleTeacher89 :
I think there are two or three possible explanations for what Thomas said. A caveat would be, unless we could ask Thomas himself, we can't know for sure. That being said, I can see one possibility being that Thomas addresses Jesus as “my Lord” and then acknowledges God working through him (“and my God”), much like Jesus earlier said, “He who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). This seems sort of related to what you said, but without reading too much into it that would flip what we know about Thomas and what he knew on its head. It seems to make the most sense to me if it were an exclamation of astonishment in the form of doxology (like Hallelujah). When we consider the context, the narrative emphasis is not that Thomas doubted Jesus’ divine identity, but that he doubted the resurrection (John 20:25: “Unless I see… I will not believe”). Jesus’ reply in verse 29, “Because you have seen me, you have believed”, confirms that what Thomas now believed was Jesus’ resurrection. Nowhere in the passage does John say, “And from that day forward Thomas believed Jesus was God.” If Thomas is literally calling Jesus “my God” here in any fashion, it would appear to clash with what Jesus had just said to Mary in verse 17 which she was to tell the disciples about having his own God whom he was going to be ascening to. Unless you interpret Thomas’s words differently, there’s tension. Also, consider what John says right after this in verse 31: “These things are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.” If John’s whole point was that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, then Thomas’s confession is most naturally read as aligning with that, not as overturning it by suddenly declaring Jesus to be God.
2025-08-30 01:05:27