NOTES for Joh 20:29

How are we to understand these words of the risen Lord? Are those who saw with their own eyes the One raised from the dead not more blessed—those in whose lives this turning point clearly and irrevocably occurred, and who gained the irrefutable awareness that death had been conquered by the life of Jesus? And finally, why did the “other disciple,” whom we can easily recognize as Jesus' beloved disciple, not enter the tomb at first, having seen only a “hint” of the unexpected victory—the cloth that had covered His head? What would our faith be without the Gospel accounts of the Resurrection, and what would Thomas's faith have been without his encounter with the risen Jesus? By setting these difficult questions before ourselves, we can try to grasp the essence of our relationship with the Risen One: the question of how experiential knowledge, the testimony of the Gospel, and faith as an incomprehensible contact with the One who conquered death relate to one another.