Why Doubting Thomas?

[mfbukowski]

On 8/20/2019 at 9:06 PM, Bernard Gui said:

Interesting. Care to elaborate?

Sure!  I finally got around to answer this

Well these are just my thoughts and beliefs, and in no way “doctrines” of the church.  It is just how I put it together to enrich my experience of this scripture and the temple endowment, both at the same time.

Well we know that after the Transfiguration Peter James & John were told not to share their visions with others until after the resurrection.  There was something special about what was happening and it included a theophany.  

They built tabernacles (it was at the time of the feast of Tabernacles).   The tabernacles traditionally were temporary structures made of twigs and sticks made specifically for the feast.  I am sure there are many here who can tell us more about the festival.

I think the tabernacles might be considered as a sort of symbolic "veil'.   Why would resurrected beings need shelters? "Tabernacle" is often used also in description of the human bodies in which our spirits now dwell on a temporary basis, just as the story of the children of Israel during the exodus dwelt in temporary shelters.   The Ark of the Covenant and all that went with it were a temporary temple.   

We are now on our mortal journeys dwelling in our own tabernacles of flesh.

And so it might be a fitting teaching moment for Jesus to illustrate this symbolically after his resurrection when his "tabernacle" had become permanent, and also showing the temporary nature of the structure in which the apostles were meeting by passing through the wall to enter the meeting.   I mean the point was that he had a physical body- why didn't he walk up the stairs and knock on the door like everyone else? I propose that his intent was to demonstrate some features of the physics of a resurrected body which was now presumably a different type of matter than the temporary bodies of the apostles, a matter more refined, but nevertheless still matter.  It was a “miracle” I believe, in that he was able to perform due to physics we do not yet understand.

I think our contemplation of the wounded hands of Christ in the temple along with  Thomas, symbolically, in tracing the contours of that sacred hand, can be extremely powerful. 

In tracing those hands in our imagination, we begin in a high place, perhaps a knuckle, and then move on to a “valley” of tears, showing the transition from our First Estate into the Fall of Adam and Eve, which of course caused the need for a Savior in the first place.

Thomas, in our imagination, is able to touch the depths of those wounds caused by the depths of our sins  I am speaking here in parables about the temple here as well. Thomas with all of us is raised from the depths of a wounded world to become sons of God.  

The mark of those nails as instruments of death are transformed by the atonement of Christ to enable us to become sons and daughters of God.

From these transformed signs of death we grow symbolically and live again and grow as if we are a fetus, fed within our mothers, growing bones and muscle and sinew to inherit our new resurrected bodies as sons and daughters of God in a way we have never been able to do before.

But also remember that this symbolic reenactment of our journey through the plan of salvation which began with Thomas’ questioning, was done in front of the apostles, with all the apostles. present.   

Scripture presents, I believe, only a small, small part of what happened on that occasion, and of course only alludes to the very sacred ordinance which I believe endowed them with the power from on-high which would be required to pass on the name of Jesus and his sacrifice to all who came after.

They could not guarantee that all would get the doctrine right necessarily-  communication was virtually non-existent, and the apostasy had already started- but what a task!   Twelve men to preserve the memory of the sacrifice of Christ in the memory of all mankind for thousands of years!

Surely they were endowed with power and the power of their testimonies changed the world!