The Joe and Lenny Paradox
Father Joe is a Jesuit priest. Lenny, his brother, is an Atheist. I met them at a presentation about the Shroud of Turin I gave at a Catholic Church. Joe, the Catholic priest, does not think the shroud is genuine, though he readily admits that proof of that is illusive. Lenny, the atheist, thinks it is “the real deal, the actual burial cloth of the historical Jesus.” He went on to say, “Obviously, I don’t think the images are miraculous. They are probably some natural phenomenon that we don’t understand. Clearly, they are not manmade. You simply can’t ignore the evidence like my brother does.”
“Why do you think it is fake?” I asked of Father Joe.
“It doesn’t work in my stew,” he replied. “Lenny might be right. But he thinks it is irrelevant. I would be okay with that, if I could really see it that way.”
Stew for Father Joe, who teaches biology, was a metaphor for how he approached faith. Throw in evolution, the Big Bang, everything that science might yet discover, history, philosophy, theology, scripture, and everything the church teaches. Mix it, cook it and let it simmer. If it tastes good then Joe has a faith he can live with. “The shroud,” he said, “is too overpowering a flavor. If real, it is too close to saying something certain. Faith is trust in the absence of certainty. Certainty spoils the stew.”
I’m an Episcopalian. In the Anglican Communion we have long had a way of explaining that faith, and indeed how we act on our faith, rests upon a three-legged stool. The legs are scripture, reason and tradition. Remove any one leg and the stool will not stand. Sometimes, with a bit too much pride, we call this metaphorical stool the genius of Anglicanism. Perhaps stew is a better metaphor. But the idea is the same.
I agree with Lenny, who also teaches science, that the shroud is probably real. I agree, too, that it is irrelevant, at least in the sense that he means. It doesn’t matter to me if the shroud is real or not. I don’t see it as an essential ingredient for my stew or my three-legged stool. But in another sense it is very relevant. Think of it like a dash of salt or a pinch of pepper that doesn’t overpower the taste of the stew. A decade of studying the Shroud has enhanced my reasoning skills, given me greater appreciation for tradition, and focused my thinking about scriptural meaning and possibilities. The shroud, be it real or fake, does not affect my faith. But the study of it has.
“My brother is afraid of certainty,” said Lenny.
“My brother is afraid of faith,” said Father Joe.
They both laughed and walked away to mentally torture someone else. I walked away very much liking both brothers and wishing that we could have talked more.
“Work on your brother,” I called out to Lenny.
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Is the Shroud real? Probably.
The Shroud of Turin may be the real burial cloth of Jesus. The carbon dating, once seemingly proving it was a medieval fake, is now widely thought of as suspect and meaningless. Even the famous Atheist Richard Dawkins admits it is controversial. Christopher Ramsey, the director of the Oxford Radiocarbon Laboratory, thinks more testing is needed. So do many other scientists and archeologists. This is because there are significant scientific and non-religious reasons to doubt the validity of the tests. Chemical analysis, all nicely peer-reviewed in scientific journals and subsequently confirmed by numerous chemists, shows that samples tested are chemically unlike the whole cloth. It was probably a mixture of older threads and newer threads woven into the cloth as part of a medieval repair. Recent robust statistical studies add weight to this theory. Philip Ball, the former physical science editor for Nature when the carbon dating results were published, recently wrote: “It’s fair to say that, despite the seemingly definitive tests in 1988, the status of the Shroud of Turin is murkier than ever.” If we wish to be scientific we must admit we do not know how old the cloth is. But if the newer thread is about half of what was tested – and some evidence suggests that – it is possible that the cloth is from the time of Christ.
No one has a good idea how front and back images of a crucified man came to be on the cloth. Yes, it is possible to create images that look similar. But no one has created images that match the chemistry, peculiar superficiality and profoundly mysterious three-dimensional information content of the images on the Shroud. Again, this is all published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
We simply do not have enough reliable information to arrive at a scientifically rigorous conclusion. Years ago, as a skeptic of the Shroud, I came to realize that while I might believe it was a fake, I could not know so from the facts. Now, as someone who believes it is the real burial shroud of Jesus of Nazareth, I similarly realize that a leap of faith over unanswered questions is essential.
My name is Dan Porter. Please email me at DanielRobertPorter@gmail.com
could you direct me toward a large picture of the 3D image? I already have the post cards.
Read “The Jesus Conspiracy” by Holger Kersten and Elmar Gruber. They argue, persuasively, that the RC Church pulled off a fraud, sending 13th Century linen samples to the three labs, instead of samples from the Shroud.
Why??? Because, they say, careful analysis of the Shroud proves that the man who was wrapped in that shroud was ALIVE when the linen was folded over him!!
Pure ridiculous conspiracy theory.
If this is the shroud of Jesus than the man wrapped in it would have been alive when the image was formed – He resurrected after all. However, we wrap bodies in linen all the time and we don’t obtain such images – living or dead.
He was dead and then he came alive. That’s what the Gospels say.
Is this Joe Marino from Rosary?
No. It is another Joe.