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I read in the Bible of miracles. I hear of miracles today. Some of them I've read about in the pages of this magazine. Not long ago, a close friend of mine was in a church where a woman got up during testimony time. Tearful and joyful, she praised God: only moments before, the Lord had healed her completely of an eye problem that had plagued her most her life.

I want to believe these accounts. And yet. And yet, unless I. … There is something holding back in me. There is some mental reservation, a twinge of hesitancy. There is belief, and there is doubt. Unless I see, unless I touch, I will not believe. Not entirely.

And who can fault Thomas for his own refusal? After all, though Jesus had foretold his resurrection, look who attests to it: "the other disciples." That means the likes of Peter, James, John. Thomas has seen too much fickleness in those men. Peter? He's an unstable mix of headlong rashness and fleet-footed cowardice. He dashes into things, then thrashes his way out of them. He's the one who says yes and means no. James, John? They're filled with hot-tempered brashness—wanting to call down fire on hapless Samaritan villages—and petty rivalry, spatting over who gets to sit next to Jesus in heaven. Here are Peter, James, John, words tumbling out, jumbled up, in a breathless welter of half-baked testimony: Jesus is alive! Alive! We've seen him ourselves!

Oh, really?

We live in an age of credulity, not skepticism. The cult of scientism, which itself was a sign of the age's credulity, is waning, giving way to ever new and extravagant forms of mysticism, irrationalism, fideism—just believe, anything. This is widespread in culture. And it's widespread in the church. Recently, I have heard numerous reports of people in church worship services having silver teeth turned to gold, or of gold dust sifting down, ex nihilo, onto their skin, then disappearing. (Hard to verify that.) These events are touted as miracles, a touch of God. What am I to make of them?

I question them. I doubt them. I take the position, Unless I see. Sometimes doubting is not a lack of faith but rather an expression of it. Sometimes to doubt is merely to insist that God be taken seriously, not frivolously—to insist that our faith is placed in and upheld by something other than seeming conjuring tricks. In these accounts of gold teeth and gold dust, nostalgia is at work, a longing for the old God-of-the-gaps, God as magician. Thomas stands as a bulwark against that. These things might be true occurrences. But they need to be sifted, probed, tested. We need to bite them, and see if they're fool's gold or the real thing.

Even if they are genuine occurrences, they need to unfold theologically and biblically. Most miracles in the Bible—maybe all—have a discernible social function. Even ax heads floating and water turned to wine, though not as humanly beneficial as the blind seeing and the lame walking, serve clear enough social purposes. But gold teeth, evaporating gold dust?

Biblical faith is not sentimental, not sloppy, not vague. It excludes more than it embraces. In the recent publication of "The Gospel of Jesus Christ: An Evangelical Celebration" (CT, June 14, 1999, p. 51), the authors chose a format that equally affirms some things and denies others. In other words, biblical faith progresses by an alternating rhythm of yes and no, a taking hold and a letting go, a believing and a doubting. Peter represents that part of our heritage that says "I will believe though I have not yet seen." But Thomas represents the other, equally needed part of our heritage: "Unless I see, I will not believe." More than ever, the strength of evangelical faith must draw from both sides of the heritage.

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April 3 2000, Vol. 44, No. 4