It’s been a good while since I posted one of the sayings from the Gospel of Thomas. The last was on saying 4 and, as I pondered on this relatively simple (at least simple on the surface) saying, things got a little complicated. Here is how:
For some reason or other I (I suppose all others as well….but really don’t know) find that most of my thinking is limited by my vocabulary. That is to say as I rationally think my way through a problem I use language. That folks, may not be a good thing when we are trying to understand what purportedly is to be ‘what no eye has seen and what no ear has heard and what no hand has touched and what has not entered into the heart of man ‘ (Saying 17). In other words, if I am to understand Christ more fully I’ll not get there with my current way of thinking (using words to express thought or perhaps more aptly stated by using thoughts constructed of words). Let’s call this word/thought conundrum ‘Problem 1 ‘.
Problem 2 is ‘time ‘. Time is a big friggen deal. I am not talking about the time it takes to ponder on Christ and his meaning, I’m talking about the physics of time, whether it exists, whether it exists in all frames of reference, and if it doesn’t then the existence we are experiencing isn’t the truth. How did ‘time ‘ and physics suddenly poke their respective noses into the esoteric sayings provided by Thomas? Saying 4. Saying 4 and many other sayings imply (at least in my mind) that time may not really exist or that it exists in a way/form that is counter to how we experience it. Of course this problem only exists in Saying 4 if the old man and the child of seven days are the same person (or of the same person). In any case Problem 2 loops back to Problem 1 in that the old man and the child are working without the benefit of language to express thoughts unless that language, and those thoughts, are distinctly different that those I employ.
Importantly, the closer I get to thinking without words the more difficult it becomes to express to others (using words) what those thoughts are. If you’re poking around the Gospel of Thomas and it just doesn’t make any sense, try thinking about what he has written without formulating thoughts made of words. As for Problem 2, maybe it’s just not the right time for me to be wrestling with this. One thing for certain in this regard, I’ll not be taking any physics courses!
Finally, before I close out for the evening, I do enjoy the depiction of the Apostle Thomas touching the wounds of Christ (above). What I enjoy most about it is that it tells us Thomas did not lack faith in Christ, rather he did not believe the other disciples. He thought them capable of creating falsehoods. What a damning testimony to the credibility of those men.
John 20: 24-29, reads: Now Thomas, one of the Twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.”