This morning, a new posting by Andrew Dalton, Probing the Shroud for Reasons to Believe at Formation Toolbox, a Catholic resources website:
Is faith in the resurrection a blind leap into the dark, or do we have reasons to believe that Christ rose from the dead?
We may point to many signs of Christ’s historical resurrection (the empty tomb, the initial disbelief of the disciples followed by the sudden conversion of thousands, their subsequent martyrdom in defense of that faith, the steady flourishing of Christian communities despite violent and sustained persecution, the transfer of the day of worship to Sunday, etc.). This line of argument is perennially valid and often necessary, but when dealing with modern man, with his penchant for the empirical, it may be handy to call his attention to the Shroud of Turin, which substantiates the Gospel in an utterly unique way.
The best science on the Shroud today points to its authenticity. Forensic experts report precise details about the physical sufferings of a crucified man. Indeed, reason—not faith—brings us beyond the simple affirmation of a burial cloth of any old crucified man.
Who but the controversial “King of the Jews” could have been treated with such cruel and distinctive tortures—beaten, scourged, crowned with thorns, made to carry his cross, nailed to the wood, pierced in the side with a spear (and we find evidence for these on the Shroud)—and then so tenderly cared for after crucifixion, even wrapped in a pricy linen and positioned respectfully in a tomb? Besides, as one Jewish woman concluded, “Of course, it’s Jesus! Whose burial cloth but his would be vigilantly preserved and venerated down through the centuries?”
But reason carries us further still. Why are there no signs of decomposition on a cloth that clearly covered a cadaver? If rigor mortis eventually gives way to putrefaction, why is the body seen in that rigid state? Why exactly 30 to 36 hours after its initial contact with the Shroud did the blood suddenly stop soaking into the fibers? If the linen were later peeled off of Jesus’ dead body by some natural means, why do the bloodstains show no smearing whatsoever?
The mysteries continue to crescendo. Why does the image appear at all when no other corpse has ever been known to leave a mark remotely similar? Why is the ancient image a “photo-negative” best viewed with technology that would not surface until the nineteenth century? Why is three-dimensional information encoded in a centuries-old image? Finally, if even the most advanced modern technologies cannot reproduce the same effect, what in the world is the image doing there at all?
Shroud science leads me to affirm that belief in Jesus’ resurrection actually offers the most reasonable solution to this enigmatic image. That’s a conclusion worth sharing with friends.
It’s a neat summary. I just don’t like to use the shroud quite so much for propping up faith. Or is it at some point unavoidable?
For my own tastes, a faith that exists prior to facts and not held up by them, is a faith not worth having. Dalton mentions the historical reasons for believing in the resurrection, like the empty tomb, and these have been important for me too. For anyone interested, here is a piece I just wrote on a particularly important slice of those historical reasons:
http://subversivethinking.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/robert-perry-on-resurrection-body.html
Teilhard predicted a convergence of science & religion and that seems to me where we are going. I think the bias against science as a grounds for faith expressed by some represents a misunderstanding of where science is heading. Scientific and philosophical determinism dominated science until the beginning of he 20th century when the incongruities of quantum mechanics revealed destroyed the basic assumptions of determinism and revealed realty to be conscious driven and devoid of “common sense.”
The Determinists included Newton, Darwin, Freud, Marx and Adam Smith. The end result was that free will was discarded as a myth and we acted in accordance with a myriad of circumstances that determined our action. The seeds of quantum mechanics were planted around the turn of the twentieth century, at the same time that science through Pia’s photography demonstrated the image on the Shroud to be the image of a tortured and crucified man who could only be Jesus Christ.
The complaint about the Shroud is that it lacks “provenance” – a demonstrated history. But the physical facts of the Shroud demonstrate through scientific examination establish its authenticity.
When one places the collapse of determinism that is intrinsic in quantum mechanics along the side the development of Shroud Science, the question arises is not provenance, but providence.
(Some determined atheists may argue that quantum mechanics does not refute determinism, but their arguments smack more of desperation than logic.)
Thanks to all for the stimulating conversation!
The image from Blessed John Paul II’s encyclical Fides et Ratio comes to mind. “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.” These two modes of knowledge are mutually dependent in such a way that, if we eliminate either one, we get nowhere.
It seems to me that we are used to arguing that reason presupposes faith, but not so much vice versa. For example, a good scientist, if he is going to make any progress, must trust other good scientists without attempting to prove everything himself. But it is also true that every believer must first have atleast a working knowledge of the concepts he believes. You can’t believe, for example, that God is omnipotent if you don’t know what omnipotence means. In this way, we may say that faith presupposes reason.
Even the empty tomb works as an argument that appeals to human reason before calling upon faith. This is stated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
“The empty tomb was still an essential sign for all. Its discovery by the disciples was the first step toward recognizing the very fact of the Resurrection. …The disciple “whom Jesus loved” affirmed that when he entered the empty tomb and discovered “the linen cloths lying there”, “he saw and believed”. This suggests that he realized FROM THE EMPTY TOMB’S CONDITION that the absence of Jesus’ body could not have been of human doing and that Jesus had not simply returned to earthly life as had been the case with Lazarus (CCC 640).
If the Shroud helped John move from reason to faith, why shouldn’t it do the same today?