“If I do not see the mark of nails in his hands, in his chest the wound of the spear, I will not believe at all”, and this doubt marks the brief passage of the Apostle Thomas in the Gospels. He demanded empirical-analytic proof; he wanted to act like the blind man who, at times, is less deceived than those who see. And so, it made him one of the famous men of all times, including in the popular anecdote, the proverbial “seeing is believing” is synonymous with Thomas.
When Jesus returned to the cenacle, he sought out Thomas. He had come because of him, for he had a love for him more significant than all denials. He calls him and says: “Bring here your finger and see my hands; come with your hand and put it in my side; and do not be unbelieving, but have faith”.
Stunned, he prostrates himself at Jesus’ feet and cries out, “My Lord and my God.”
In these words, similar to a greeting, Thomas confesses his defeat; defeat more beautiful than any victory.
More than two millennia have passed since this scene.
In 1945, in an ancient cemetery in Nag Hammadi, in Upper Egypt, some clay pots with manuscripts in Coptic characters were found. Some of these leather-bound papyri were used by peasants to light fire; part of it was sold and ended up in the Coptic Museum in Cairo, where they were kept for 11 years, with no one giving greater importance.
According to scholars, these manuscripts placed Thomas at the centre of Christianity’s scene, perhaps as a light to illuminate darkness where humanity finds itself, to soften their hearts.
This text would be the FIFTH GOSPEL, that is, copies of the original dating back to the second century of the Christian Era, so insistently referred to by the oral tradition. However, this gospel does not deal with the historical life of Jesus. There are 114 deeply metaphysical sentences, which opens with the statement: “These are the secret words of Jesus, the Living, which were written by Thomas, also called Didymos”.
The Aramaic word “Thomas” means “twin” in Greek “Didymos”.
The “secret words” are esoteric teachings uttered by Jesus, not to the masses, but to a chosen elite of his disciples able to comprehend the mystical meaning of certain profound truths. The other Gospels also state that Jesus said to his disciples: “It is given to you to comprehend the mysteries of the Kingdom of God, while I speak to the people only in parables”. Thomas limits himself to mentioning certain words of Jesus about the “mysteries of the Kingdom”, which defy spiritual intuition more than intellectual analysis. Some of these aphorisms are highly paradoxical, recalling at times the language of Lao-Tse, in his Tao Te King, justifying the well-known phrase probably attributed to Tertullian: “Credo, quia absurdum”, that is, I believe because it is absurd.
In his gospel, he seems to be more interested in the enigmatic verticality of the cosmic Christ than in the popular horizontality of the human Jesus. Unfortunately, Thomas is almost totally ignored by the four known Gospels. Christianity only knows him by the disbelief with which he faced the other disciples when they spoke to him of Jesus being revived, demanding and obtaining empirical proof of his physical resurrection.
The discovery of the Gospel of Thomas was a providential and timely event, as it proclaims the need for self-knowledge, which is the foundation of human self-realization or self-redemption.
Ancient theologians speak of salvation in the sense of salvation that comes outside of man. However, these theologies are in decline, while the self-redemption of the Gospel of Thomas is on a glorious ascent. The four Gospels, according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, also proclaim the truth of self-redemption through the conscience and experience of the inner Christ, redemption through mysticism and ethics.
But, given the primitive spiritual state of humanity, theologies have given extreme importance to different kinds of redemptions by external factors:
1)- Redemption through sacred objects and formulas,
2)- Redemption by the blood of an innocent man.
This pagan-Jewish ideology of redemption by these factors is being overcome as Christendom's spiritual elite is awakening to the central truth of Jesus' message: the redemption of man by the immanent God, by the Christ within, in every soul, by the divine Self in man.
In the Gospel of Jesus, there is only redemption through the mystique of the first and most significant of all commandments, revealed by the ethics of the second. Commandments on which all the law and the prophets are based, the quintessence of Christianity. Redemption is in the awareness of the unique fatherhood of God manifested in the experience of the universal brotherhood of men.
The spiritual elites of Christendom today are rediscovering this hidden treasure of Jesus' message, proclaiming their Christlike autonomy over all the tyrannies of external circumstances that retard human evolution.
In his Gospel, Thomas never tires of stressing this self-redemption of man by awakening the immanent God. Men's theological beliefs are giving way to the Christ experience. Once the unbeliever among believers, he reveals himself today the pioneer of the experienced to the inexperienced ones desirous of their comprehension of the mystery of God in man.
In this gospel, there is not the slightest hint of an ecclesiastical hierarchy or clerical hegemony. Early Christianity was a spiritual brotherhood, a form of true democracy, not a hierarchical monocracy. There is nothing of a privilege given to any of the disciples, not even to Peter; on the contrary, Simon Peter appears in a very embarrassing situation, as a mean spirit, especially in the last chapter 114, where he reveals an anti-feminist posture. A posture criticized by Jesus, who always had loyal women in his company.
In the Gospel of Thomas, there is no reference to transubstantiation or the power to forgive sins conferred by Jesus on his disciples. Everything is aimed solely at awakening spiritual force in man.
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