Thomas, soon to be baptized, came to faith through its skeptics

“I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” These are the words that thousands of catechumens around the world are preparing to hear on Easter night when they are baptized. Throughout Lent, Aleteia is sharing with you the stories of some of these men and women, who are happy to become children of God. Read all of the testimonies here.

“I came to faith through skepticism.” A philosophy professor teaching in Strasbourg (France), Thomas, 43, has a taste for reflection, teaching, and the search for truth. He will be baptized on April 19th in the church of Saint-Urbain in Neudorf (Bas-Rhin).

A great reader with a passion for history, archaeology, science, and the arts, he’s married and has a five-year-old son. He comes from a family that he describes as “partly culturally Catholic but in reality rather agnostic, and partly fiercely hostile to religion and Catholicism.”

Consequently, Thomas’ forthcoming baptism is the fruit of “a long intellectual journey.” Always full of questions, his curiosity led him to study religions for many years, from Judaism to Islam, including Buddhism and Taoism. At that time, he still considered the Christian faith to be “a beautiful philosophy of life,” relegating Jesus to the rank of “great sage or philosopher”—which is already quite something!

“For me it was one spirituality among others, like one philosophy among others,” he admits. He discovered Christianity through reading books skeptical of Christianity’s claims. However, contrary to the authors’ intentions, the young philosopher wasn’t convinced.

Instead, “I realized that many of these theories were very bad, as if to circumvent the truth. I found the alternative hypotheses to be much weaker than the kind people usually present.” Instead of disproving Christianity, “numerous converging clues pointed to something real. I realized that it was much more solid than what I had been presented, and that there was a historical reality at the beginning of Christianity, that it wasn’t just a set of legends.”

“What was decisive was the fact of asking myself what was the heart of Christianity, the point on which the whole edifice rested. And it is the Resurrection. That is what Christianity is based on,” he explains.

His curiosity piqued, he immersed himself in reading. He devoured books on Christian apologetics. “I could never have entered into the faith through an emotional channel alone. I don't trust my intuitions enough and I need corroborating evidence.”

As he read, he discovered a completely different face of God, far from the distant and inaccessible god of majesty he had conceived. A god compatible with his philosophical thinking. “I realized that the image of God that I had was invalidated. The one who manifests himself through the face of Christ is infinitely truer, more beautiful, and more worthy of love than all the caricatures conveyed by atheists and by Christians themselves,” he explains.

He discovered a God who is not distant, but “who joined us in our humanity. I had always told myself that the only God before whom I could kneel and to whom I could pay homage would be one who placed himself at the level of humanity. And I only found that in Christianity.”

For Thomas, emotion comes second, when he understands what the Incarnation and the Passion entail. “I couldn’t have followed my heart if my reason had disagreed, and I couldn’t have followed my reason if my heart had disagreed.” And he quotes this sentence from Saint Augustine which seems to have been tailor-made for him: “One must understand in order to believe; and believe in order to understand.”

Convinced but still full of questions, he immersed himself in the Gospels, the epistles, and commentaries, guided by this single thought: “I need to be consistent. So if I discover that something is true, if I know it and feel it, I have to follow it through to the end.”

Driven by the conviction that he had found the Truth, he asked to be baptized and then joined a group of catechumens. They taught him something else, on a human level this time.

How has faith changed his life? “The relationship I have with others and with my own inner life,” he says. “I pay more attention to my intentions and I try to conform to what Christ preached. It's an effort of attention. Before, I followed my natural inclination, my habits. My friends and family tell me that I’ve changed, that I’m more conciliatory, more understanding.”

For him, baptism is “the sacrament, but also the act of conversion, which must be carried out anew every day.”

What’s the difference between philosophical truth and Christian truth? “In philosophy, it lies in dialectic, that is to say in the ideas and concepts that are shared,” he answers. “In Christianity, it’s a person, the Incarnate Word, the Word made flesh.” And it seems that he has finally found it.