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The Gospel According to Tomàs – a novel by Oliver Peers
A journey of faith, doubt and self-discovery in the heart of Spain…
Tomàs is in trouble. He’s in seminary—training to be a priest. This may have been a mistake.
Mid-life, after years of indulgence and questionable choices, Tomàs sought clarity, a path to purity, to something true. But faith isn’t working the way it’s supposed to. His thoughts bristle—restless, relentless, even sexual. The confessional was meant to fix this. Instead, it unravels everything.
In Valladolid, Spain, under the weight of Church doctrine and his own tangled history, Tomàs wrestles with a brutal realization: if love is truth and truth is love—then the Church is wrong.
A novel of faith and failure, desire and self-deception, The Gospel According to Tomàs is an unflinching study of belief on the edge of collapse. With wry intelligence and piercing introspection, Oliver Peers delivers a vivid, fearless portrait of a man running out of places to hide.
For readers drawn to literary fiction, theological reckoning, and the uneasy intersection of faith, memory, and desire—reminiscent of the existential and philosophical fiction of Graham Greene, Rachel Cusk, and Julian Barnes.
Stylistically, Oliver Peers may be located within the traditions of Martin Amis and James Joyce.
A gripping, intelligent novel that lingers in the mind long after the final page.
Available to purchase – on Amazon.com – on Amazon.co.uk
Click to read the full text as PDF here..
Click to read the full text as PDF here..
It is not for us to adapt Jesus to our lives; it is for us to conform our lives to Jesus. This is a lesson of these Gospel verses. Once we have heard the call of God through Jesus, there must be no umming and ahhing, no by now secondary considerations interfering in our new relationship with Jesus. Our life should now be his. As and when it is proper, all else will follow. If it isn’t appropriate, then it won’t [ … ]
The temptations of Christ in the wilderness follow immediately upon his baptism by John, the descent of the Spirit upon him and the declaration of Christ as the Son of God. Jesus has offered himself to perform what is now our first act of Christian initiation, to be baptized. When we are baptized, we are born again in Christ, and we recall the rite practised by John as we imitate Christ. As we embark upon Lent, once more following Christ’s example, we are called to renew our baptismal promises through the acts of penitence we make, once more following Christ’s example [ … ]
In these Bible verses, from the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives to his people instruction regarding the three traditional works of mercy of the Jews, namely almsgiving, prayer and fasting. A key message is that, when we pray, when we fast and when we give charity, this is not supposed to be because we wish to be seen as pious by other people. Jesus satirizes those hypocrites who wish to be glorified by other people for their fasting, their giving of alms and their prayers. They sound a trumpet in the streets and strike extravagant attitudes in the synagogues. They visibly mortify their bodies and pull dismal expressions. Jesus portrays such hypocrites as ridiculous. Their piety is not to do with their love of God; it is to do with their wish to be seen as ‘pious’ by their fellow man. And such will be their reward [ … ]
