What a rich, heartfelt comment! You’ve woven together some deep thoughts, sharp apologetics, and genuine concern for the well-being of Christians and others, in a way that deserves both respect and careful consideration. Thank you for laying it all out so passionately. But I disagree somewhat. I hope you will take this in the charitable and fun way intended.
Here’s my response in three parts.
- A broad reply to your overall comment.
- A closer look at “blasting” a dead body with “life-giving energy.”
- What I believe about the Resurrection and the Shroud of Turin
Teddi’s Comment
Hi, Dan,
You wrote: “It raises the deeper question: how much of the Gospel account is history remembered, and how much is reverence mythologized? And how much of Shroud-proving involves using the Gospels to validate the Shroud, in order to use the Shroud to validate the Gospels? Why are we doing this? Is our faith really so fragile that it needs forensic confirmation?”
Well, “faith” is fragile—or else it wouldn’t be “faith.” The fragility is built into the fact that “faith” is needed due to a lack of evidence (to at least a certain degree). For people who know nothing about apologetical arguments, their faith can more easily be broken—particularly if they are critical thinkers and, especially, if they are educated critical thinkers. For people who know a lot of the big apologetical arguments for God’s existence, they have something more than mere faith helping them—they have evidence mixed with logic to fortify their belief in the Christian God. For people who have a popular-level understanding of the scientific and historical evidence for the Holy Shroud, their beliefs become far more rock-solid. But, to have a deep knowledge of the scientific, forensic and medical aspects of the Holy Shroud, then, one can have iron-clad confidence that the information contained in the Bible is True and that Jesus of Nazareth is God.
Jesus did not expect people to just blindly believe that His claim to be THE Son of God—as in DIVINE. No, He performed miracles and He made predictions that He would be killed and rise from the dead on the third day. And, well, we have the evidence in the form of the Holy Shroud to show a dead body (exhibiting rigor mortis) being blasted with life-giving energy and having the evidence to prove it. I mean, seriously, what more can people expect to get from God than all that He has given us to show us that the things which Jesus said are True? God gives us all enough rope to hang ourselves with endless doubts that seek to reject His many gifts to us. A lack of warm gratitude by someone who receives a gift typically does not go over very well with the gift giver. I think that is an important factor that few skeptics/anti-Shroudists think about. It should give one serious pause.
Let’s take an example with Eucharistic miracles. Typically, these are not studied as in-depth as the Shroud. And, who knows, maybe there are some situations where fraud is involved—and maybe not. And, while I might (hypothetically) exhibit some skepticism about some of them, I would honestly just be too scared to go on and on and on sowing doubt in people about whether they are real or not. Because, what if I’m wrong? I just would not want to take that chance. The Bible talks about how preachers need to be particularly careful about what they preach because of how bad teaching can lead people to Hell—and the preacher teaching bad theology could have some degree of culpability in helping this happen by leading people astray. Well, when people are known to have studied the Shroud for decades, whether they call themselves an “expert” or not, there is, indeed, the implication that they are one (unless the public realizes that the person is a total incompetent fool.) So, when one sows doubt in the minds of non-Christians concerning the Shroud, is there some culpability here? I’m going to guess that you think not. But, how sure can you possibly be about that?
Best regards,
Teddi
Part 1: A Broader Response
Teddi, I want to respond carefully to what you’ve written, because while your argument is heartfelt and passionate, I believe it suffers from several unfortunate flaws—both logical and theological—that deserve closer attention.
Let me begin with a statement you make early on: “Faith is fragile—or else it wouldn’t be faith.” That’s a profound-sounding claim, but it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Fragility is not what defines faith. If anything, Scripture consistently speaks of faith that can be strong or weak, tested or refined. Jesus praised those of “great faith” (Matthew 8:10) and lamented those of “little faith” (Matthew 14:31). Paul encourages believers to “stand firm in the faith” (1 Corinthians 16:13), and speaks of the “shield of faith” (Ephesians 6:16). These are not images of fragility. Faith, properly understood, is trust in what is unseen—not because it’s flimsy, but because it’s anchored in something deeper than empirical proof.
Your argument that faith is somehow bolstered into certainty by scientific and historical evidence about the Shroud of Turin also troubles me. You seem to suggest that people who have only “mere faith” are at greater risk of losing it, while those with “popular-level” or even “deep” understanding of the Shroud’s forensic claims gain something close to “iron-clad confidence.” But this raises two concerns:
First, there’s a philosophical issue here: if belief becomes “iron-clad” due to external artifacts like the Shroud, then it ceases to be faith in the biblical sense. It becomes a form of rationalist confidence, contingent on the preservation and interpretation of a physical object. That’s not how the New Testament describes Christian belief. Peter doesn’t point to linen cloths in an empty tomb to prove the resurrection; he preaches a risen Christ based on witness and transformation (Acts 2). Paul explicitly rejects the idea that faith rests on “human wisdom” or “eloquence,” instead emphasizing the foolishness of the cross and the power of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 1:17–25).
Second, there’s a methodological danger: you assert that understanding the Shroud leads people to unshakable belief, but you don’t acknowledge the legitimate questions surrounding the Shroud’s authenticity. Even many Christian scientists and historians remain unconvinced by the pro-authenticity claims, not because they lack faith, but because they understand the limits of what science can infer from ancient linen. The carbon dating results, while not the final word, remain a significant challenge. The hypothesis that radiation or “life-giving energy” blasted the image into the cloth is not only scientifically speculative, it’s theologically odd. Are we now to believe that God left behind physical residue from the Resurrection like a forensic clue, as if divine action were trackable in the same way as a lightning strike?
This leads into the real heart of the matter: your implication that doubting the Shroud—especially publicly—may place someone at spiritual risk, or worse, make them culpable for the doubts of others. That notion, if taken to its logical extreme, would have strangled the very movements that reshaped Christianity and society itself. Had Martin Luther hesitated before posting his 95 Theses—worried about “culpability”—the Reformation that renewed the Church and gave birth to Protestantism might never have happened. Without the bold spirit of inquiry that fueled the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church would still be locked into pre-modern forms of worship and thought.
And it’s not only within religion. If Galileo had been silenced for “sowing doubt” about the motion of the Earth, modern astronomy would have stalled; if Darwin had been condemned for challenging creation-only models, biology would still lack the unifying theory that underpins so much of medicine and ecology. Even in politics and human rights, from Enlightenment philosophers demanding religious tolerance to civil-rights activists confronting segregation, every major advance has depended on courageous souls willing to question the status quo.
When honest inquiry is recast as moral failing rather than intellectual bravery, institutions calcify, truth stagnates, and the breakthroughs—spiritual, scientific, or social—that we now take for granted would never see the light of day.
What you are doing here is, effectively, a spiritual version of Pascal’s Wager: “What if I’m wrong?” “What if I believe the wrong thing?” But faith cannot flourish under that kind of threat. It becomes brittle, performative, and—ironically—fragile. To equate doubt with ingratitude, or to warn that expressing skepticism could “lead others to hell,” is not only uncharitable, it presumes a theological model in which God demands that belief be maintained at the cost of intellectual integrity.
Christianity, at its best, has never feared the questions. It has never relied on relics to bear the full weight of resurrection faith. When Thomas doubted, Jesus showed him his wounds—but he also said, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29). The Beatitudes do not include, “Blessed are those who interpret the data correctly.” They are not about possessing the right artifact, but embodying the right spirit.
You also mention Eucharistic miracles, which as you know, are often confused with transubstantiation, the latter being the Church’s teaching that, in every valid Mass, the substance of the bread and wine truly becomes Christ’s Body and Blood even though the sensory “accidents” (taste, smell, appearance) remain unchanged. Eucharistic miracles, by contrast, purport to add something extra—visible flesh, bleeding Hosts, or other scientifically detectable phenomena that go beyond what the Church calls the sacramental presence. Miracle of Lanciano (8th century), which is widely regarded as the “first” and the most famous. According to tradition, a Basilian monk celebrating Mass in Lanciano, Italy, was seized by doubt about Christ’s real presence. At the Words of Consecration, the host visibly turned into flesh and the wine into blood, which coagulated into five distinct globules.
Pew Research Center’s 2019 survey shocked many observers by finding that just 31% of U.S. self-identified Catholics say that “during Catholic Mass, the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus Christ,” while 69% view them as symbolic. Yet more recent studies—using language closer to official catechesis—tell a very different story: a 2024 Vinea Research–Ignitum Today study reports that 69% of Mass-going Catholics affirm Christ’s true presence in the Eucharist, and Georgetown University’s CARA survey finds that almost two-thirds of all adult Catholics believe in the Real Presence, with belief especially strong among weekly Mass attendees.
An EWTN News/RealClear Opinion poll conducted in mid-2022 also reveals the spectrum of belief: 50% of likely Catholic voters accept the doctrine of Transubstantiation, 32% regard Communion as symbolic, and 16% remain undecided. That such figures swing from roughly one-third to two-thirds depending on question phrasing, sampling frame, or outlet underscores how openly Christian belief is discussed—and how easily someone might pass along “incorrect” statistics without real culpability. By contrast, highly specific phenomena like reported Eucharistic miracles (bleeding Hosts or visible flesh) are so far outside mainstream concerns that they haven’t even been the subject of national polls—much like public surveys on the Shroud of Turin are virtually nonexistent because they don’t rise to the level of interests to get polled.
While I don’t accept Eucharistic miracles, I wholeheartedly embrace the doctrine of Transubstantiation, which is about a 50/50 sort of belief among Anglo-Catholic Episcopalians and Anglicans.
You say that even if you’re skeptical, you’d be too afraid to speak out against Eucharistic miracles (and perhaps Transubstantiation, I imagine) because “what if I’m wrong?” But again, this isn’t faith. It’s fear. It’s superstition masquerading as piety. If our theology can’t make space for the possibility that someone might honestly disbelieve and still be loved, still be searching, and still be in the presence of God’s grace, then we’ve misunderstood both the Gospel and the nature of God.
Culpability: To my mind, knowingly and deliberately omitting information, even out of fear, carries clear moral culpability.
And finally, there’s an unfortunate tone running through your message—one that implies that critics are either spiritually careless or intellectually dishonest: “unless the public realizes the person is a total incompetent fool.” That’s not a fair or loving way to describe people who disagree. Some of the most serious scholars, including Christian believers, remain skeptical of the Shroud’s authenticity not because they’re cynical, but because they believe God does not require evidentiary shortcuts or relics to be believed. That would include, in noi particular order, mystics, fundamentalists and me.
Let’s not turn the Shroud into a theological crutch, or worse, a litmus test. Let’s have the courage to believe that truth is never afraid of questions—and that God’s grace does not hang on whether someone finds forensic evidence persuasive or interprets the data our way.
Because faith—real faith—is not fragile. It’s resilient, even when evidence is ambiguous. It can survive questions, setbacks, and even silence. It survives because it is grounded not in cloth, but in Christ, even when questions remain.
Part 2: Unpacking “Life-Giving Energy”
With that broader context in place, let’s zero in on the image-blasting phrase you used.
“And, well, we have the evidence in the form of the Holy Shroud to show a dead body (exhibiting rigor mortis) being blasted with life-giving energy and having the evidence to prove it.”
I must defer to Hugh Farey’s careful critique of your paper, Rigor Mortis – Peer Reviewed!. As he bluntly observes, “I’m afraid I don’t agree. I think the details pointing to rigor mortis are inconspicuous because they don’t exist.”
For argument’s sake, let’s assume the Man of the Shroud really is the imprint of a dead person. That may be a fair working hypothesis, though by no means proven. If the reader wants to see this debate in full, they should read your original paper, Beyond Imagination, Evidence of Rigor Mortis and Cadaveric Spasm on the Shroud of Turin, then Hugh’s thorough analysis, and the ensuing back-and-forth in his post.
Now, on to the phrase “being blasted with life-giving energy…” My first thought on seeing such wording is vitamin ads, a dip in Saratoga Springs, or an ocean swim at sunrise—hardly quantum physics or anything else. Are you picturing ionizing radiation, or some mysterious “miracle blast” that is beyond scientific definition? Do you mean that this energy transforms the body into a glorified state? Could the same burst both revive or perhaps transform a corpse, create the Shroud image, and—even more perplexingly—alter the cloth’s radiocarbon signature? Does it imply Jesus then opened his eyes, dressed in clean robes, and walked out of the tomb? Those are enormous claims requiring equally enormous evidence.
I sometimes wonder if the Gospels are not so completely silent on what happened between Good Friday and Easter morning on purpose. I don’t say this in a skeptical way. I say this from a faith-based perspective that perhaps God’s power is not something we should be trying to reverse-engineer.
When I first began studying the Shroud in 2001, our conversations were pragmatic: Ray Rogers was refining chemical analyses, and Barrie Schwortz later helped publish his unfinished work. Both of these men were very helpful in my understanding of the image’s chemistry. By the 2005 conference in Dallas, many of us had realized that the original STURP conclusions weren’t ironclad and that a fresh investigation was warranted. Fast-forward to the 2014 St. Louis meeting: “radiation” had become the darling hypothetical—neutrons were “running amok” in the PowerPoints. Some claimed they “caused” the image and/or “shifted” the C-14 results. Was radiation a by-product of resurrection or its catalyst? Linked to this was the question of how Jesus exited the tomb. In truth, much of this bordered on pseudoscience—bold speculation without a plausible mechanism.
The “how did Jesus exit the tomb” question veered into outright magical thinking. Mark Antonacci suggested a wormhole; Bob Rucker proposed a transition to another dimension; Frank Tipler had written that Jesus’ body decayed into neutrinos and antineutrinos before reassembling for the post-Resurrection appearances; John Jackson floated a “mechanically transparent” body hypothesis that let Christ pass through the Shroud—and presumably the earth—unimpeded.
None of these ideas is supported by hard evidence. Yet you claim not just evidence, but proof. I struggle to imagine what form that proof could take. By 2014, we were actively questioning if the VP-8 images of the Shroud meant that its image data was spatial data or not. Barrie said yes. I sometimes said no. During more sane moments, I said we can’t know. Joe Accetta said it might be something else altogether. Colin Berry, who was not at the conference, proved that Joe was right from across the Atlantic.
Is the negative image a negative image? That was another assumption turning into a question. What about the hair? Barrie was repeatedly quoting Ray Rogers: “I think I see is not evidence.” Flowers, coins, ponytails, rigor mortis?
You say you have evidence by which to prove what you claim. By what criteria are we judging this claim: historical precedent, courtroom-style legal standards, or rigorous scientific methodology?
Absent some details, “life-giving energy” sounds like a grandiose claim, not a scientific finding. Please share. That’s the only way to distinguish evocative imagery from an extraordinary physical assertion or an inexplicable miracle.
Teddi, I value your enthusiasm for the Shroud and your desire to bolster faith. But let’s keep faith anchored in the resurrection itself—seen in transformed lives and the faithful testimony of the early church—rather than in relics that can be so easily reinterpreted, contested, or misunderstood.
If we claim to have “proof,” let us present it with the rigor it demands. And if we’re speaking in metaphor, let’s give our readers the courtesy of knowing it’s poetry, not physics.
Part 3: What I Believe
The ship rolled gently in the Atlantic swells as Dr. Meany reached into his pocket, producing a Franklin half-dollar that caught the late afternoon light in the dining room. It was 1963, and I was twenty, bound for Morocco on a Yugoslavian freighter, taking a rebellious leave from college for what I hoped would be a transformative and inspiring semester abroad. Dr. Meany was a science teacher contemplating a religious vocation—a man caught between the empirical world he taught and the mystical realm he felt called to explore. He was travelling or more precisiely “bumming around” to have time to think and pray.
“Imagine,” he said, while placing the coin deliberately on our table,” a ship in the Indian Ocean, at the exact opposite point on the earth from where we sit now. Picture a similar dining room, a similar table on that ship.” His eyes held a peculiar intensity, as if he were wrestling with profound questions. “Now, if we truly believe God is omnipotent, can He move this coin from here to there—instantly?”
“You mean like can God create a stone so large he can’t move it?”
“No, that is a paradox. I’m proposing a hypothetical miracle.”
I stared at the coin, Benjamin Franklin’s profile worn smooth by countless transactions.
“Think about it,” Dr. Meany continued. “Could He send it through the Earth’s core? Even at light speed, that takes time. Could He fly it through the air around the globe? It would still be bound by physical laws, still requiring duration. But what if—” he paused, his finger hovering over Franklin’s silver face—”what if God simply wills it to be there? Not moving it, not transporting it, but ending its existence here and beginning its existence there, in the same eternal instant?”
The concept hung in the salt air between us like a challenge to everything I thought I understood about God
Dr. Meany went on: “He could make it appear heads up or tails up, whatever He chooses. He could transform its base metals into gold—not just any gold, but gold that gleams brighter than any earthly substance has ever shone. He could place it beyond the bounds of space and time itself, then restore it anywhere, anytime, in whatever state of glory He desires.”
“Could He make it disappear entirely?” I asked.
“Of course. Complete annihilation or complete translation—both are within His power if we truly believe in God’s omnipotence.”
I carried that image with me: the coin existing in two states, two realities, the gap between them bridged not by journey but by divine will. It seemed like theological speculation, an intellectual exercise between a teacher and student on a slow boat to Africa. I promptly forgot about it.
But two years later, in a small restaurant off Tu Do Street in Saigon, a corporal known as Alamo—a chaplain’s assistant (a chapass is what we called him), barstool theologian, and perpetual wannabe cowboy in a ten-gallon hat—would give me another way to see it.
“Imagine,” Alamo had said, straddling his chair backward like a horse and saddle, “you’ve just sunk the 8-ball into the corner pocket. Perfect shot. Everyone’s watching. But when you go to rack up for the next game, the 8-ball isn’t there. Then suddenly it appears in the center of the table—not rolling, not moving, just there. Then gone again.”
He tapped his finger on the table’s surface. “That’s how I think miracles work. The 8-ball doesn’t travel from the pocket to the center. It doesn’t pass through the space between. Time has nothing to do with it. It simply is where it needs to be, when it needs to be there.”
“That’s nonsense,” I had said.
“Maybe,” Alamo grinned. “But it’s the nonsense I believe in.”
Years later, while discussing the Shroud of Turin with Barrie Schwortz, the question resurfaced. Barrie—ever meticulous in his scientific rigor—reminded me that no physical artifact could ever prove the Resurrection. “If I thought it could,” he quipped, “I’d be a Christian.”
Here are a couple of published Barrie Schwortz quotations:
“People often ask me, ‘Does this prove the Resurrection?’ The Shroud did not come with a book of instructions. So the answer to faith isn’t on that cloth, but in the eyes and hearts of those who behold it.”
—National Catholic Reporter“However, he said it is not proof of the Resurrection—and this is where faith comes in. ‘It’s a pre-Resurrection image, because if it were a post-Resurrection image, it would be a living man, not a dead man.’”
—Catholic News Agency
But Barrie also pointed me to Father Kim Dreisbach—an Episcopal priest whose perspective reshaped my understanding. When I asked, “Where was Christ’s body at the precise moment of Resurrection?” Kim replied simply, “Already in heaven.” No earthly passage, no lingering process—just a before and an after.
That answer echoed two earlier analogies from the 1960s:
Dr. Meany’s coin and Alamo’s eight-ball.
These images found their theological mate in Thomas Aquinas’s insight on angels. He pondered how spiritual beings move: not by traversing space or enduring time, but by the sheer exercise of will. An angel doesn’t journey; it simply appears where it intends to be.
If angels transcend space and time, might the Resurrection likewise occur outside temporal sequence? Jesus dead in the tomb, then Jesus risen—not by radiation or rematerialization of inexplicable bursts of energy, but by divine will alone. No process, no mechanism—just a state change beyond human narrative.
This isn’t science-fiction teleportation—those imply disassembly, transit, reassembly. It’s something altogether different: the Franklin coin that exists here and then there without ever being in between; the eight-ball that disappears and reappears; the angel who is simply where it wills to be.
Perhaps that explains why the Gospels are silent on the moment itself. They give us a before and an after, but the transition remains hidden—unknowable—because “between” holds no meaning in the realm of miracles.
Standing now at the far end of a journey that began in a ship’s dining room and wound through countless conversations—over an ancient cloth in Turin and across theological debates—I rest in one unchanging truth: the measure of a miracle is not its method but its result. The Resurrection needs no forensic data, no quantum blueprint—only the simple fact of divine will triumphing over death.
Across the decades, the Franklin coin still gleams, asking the same question: if God is truly omnipotent, why would His greatest miracle be anything less than limitless?
Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight
— (Luke 24:31 NRSV)
Luke’s choice of the verb “vanished” (Greek ἀφανίζομαι, aphanizomai) is telling. Unlike ordinary words for disappearing (like ἀποχωρέω, apokhōreō, “to depart”), aphanizomai carries the sense of something becoming unseen, not by walking away but by a sudden removal from perception. Early Church Fathers—such as Hilary of Poitiers and Gregory of Nyssa—understood this to emphasize divine agency rather than human motion: the risen Lord is not receding into the background but is withdrawn by the power of his own will. Modern theologians, like N.T. Wright, note that this verb underlines the wholly “new mode of existence” in the resurrection: Jesus is no longer confined to spacetime horizons and therefore does not “travel” in the normal sense. “Vanished” thus becomes a theological clue—a word that points beyond absence to transformation into a transcendent existence.
Our impulse to seek proof—archaeologists unearthing artifacts, translators refining every nuance of sacred texts, philosophers pondering the nature of reality—speaks to a deep, universal yearning for certainty. I have walked that path, convinced for years that the Shroud’s scientific data would definitively answer the greatest question of all.
But in stepping back, I’ve caught myself chasing relics when the deeper proof resides not in linen or lab reports, but in transformed hearts and lives. Perhaps God truly answers our desire for evidence by giving us just enough rope to search, while offering faith enough to transcend our need for it.
And that, more than any forensic finding, is the miracle that endures. at the far end of a journey that began in a ship’s dining room and wound through countless conversations—over an ancient cloth in Turin and across theological debates—I rest in one unchanging truth: the measure of a miracle is not its method but its result. The Resurrection needs no forensic data, no quantum blueprint—only the simple fact of divine will triumphing over death.
A Final Thought
I don’t believe that proving authenticity is possible for the Shroud, at least in anything like the sense that would settle the matter definitively. One key reason is the 1988 carbon-14 testing, which dated the cloth to the medieval period. Numerous efforts at examination, including recent reanalysis by Tristan Casabianca et al., and the subsequent critique of it by Hugh Farey, only reinforces my conviction that the original conclusion, that the cloth dates from the 13th or 14th century, remains valid. But even if that conclusion were wrong—and I admit it could be—I still don’t believe authenticity is provable. At most, we might show the cloth dates to the first century, but that alone would not establish it as the actual burial shroud of Jesus. It could just as easily have been a bier cloth used temporarily before burial. And the lack of any clear mention of an image in the Gospels is an enduring and significant problem. I can’t imagine any evidence, no matter how compelling, that could completely overcome these skeptical arguments.
Teddi, thanks for the chance to debate with you. God bless.
Hi, Dan,
Just a partial response right now, as I’ve only had time for a partial reading of your newest opinion piece. The Greek word “pistis”/”pisteo” can mean a variety of things, especially depending upon the context that it is used in a sentences. Sometimes, it can mean “belief,” sometimes it can mean “faith” or “trust.” But, there all three of these meanings can be on a spectrum going from belief/faith/trust that is blind or belief/faith/trust that just goes from, perhaps, having evidence beyond a reasonable doubt and taking the other, perhaps, 4% or less on faith/trust.
When I speak of the “iron-clad” confidence that I have in God’s existence, and that a huge part of why my belief in God’s existence is so incredibly iron-clad, it’s because of the extremely persuasive evidence that we have that the Holy Shroud is authentic PLUS that it does, indeed, contain forensic clues of Jesus’ resurrection. I really like the question you asked me here:
“Are we now to believe that God left behind physical residue from the Resurrection like a forensic clue, as if divine action were trackable in the same way as a lightning strike?”
Yes, Dan, yes, indeed–God left behind physical residue from the Resurrection (His blood on the Shroud, at minimum) AND His unreproducible (at least thus far, but I have “faith” that it will never be successfully reproduced, because I think God designed it that way) body image. Yes, yes, God is so benevolent to us in that He is enabling us to (as you put it) “track” His divine action. WOW.
WOW!
Where’s the gratitude for that? Where is the faith IN THAT? I very strongly suspect that God is thinking with regard to those who know the Shroud evidence and deny it: YE OF LITTLE FAITH DESPITE GREAT EVIDENCE THAT I GIVE YOU! No piece of evidence is perfect. There will always be a problem with proving anything to a 100% certainty other than knowledge in one’s one consciousness. But, it’s the body of evidence–my God, a thought just came to me right now–the Holy Shroud gives us both the BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST! Sure, I’ve always known that in a different way, but I never before thought of it in a Eucharistic way.
When we gaze into that glorious Holy Face, perhaps almost through osmosis we take into ourselves the body and blood of Christ–in a different way than with the Holy Eucharist, but, perhaps, not so different. I don’t know. I’m wading into the deep end here, but my heart tells me that I am right.
There is a DIFFERENT type of relationship that one can have with the Father and the Son when one deeply internalizes the Truth contained within the message and GIFT of the Holy Shroud.
And, I would urge you to not concern yourself with Luther and/or taking things to their logical extreme. Just think about whether what the Bible teaches about the culpability of, especially, pastors who lead people astray and the sowing of doubt in people about the Holy Shroud. While it might not be as big of a deal if a Christian does not believe in the Holy Shroud’s evidence of Jesus’ resurrection (and, that’s REALLY what the Holy Shroud is about–not Its just being something that wrapped a historical figure [divine or not]), it IS a big deal when an atheist might have come to Christ for his/her salvation (through the information regarding the Holy Shroud) but then does not (because of doubts that they have because of what skeptics have said about it.)
Our freedom of speech carries with it a responsibility for the things that we say–and, also, there can be a responsibility for things that we don’t say when we should.
Also, with regard to blind faith, critical thinkers and those who are the more objective types can easily be moved away from their blind faith by clever arguments. Don’t believe me? Look at the stats for how many incoming freshman in college who are Christians become atheists or agnostics so quickly after having interactions with clever atheists. They don’t know how to defend their beliefs, and so when they get challenged and when people make it appear that what they are believing in is ridiculous and/or unfounded/unsubstantiated, then a lot of people drop their “faith” like a hot potato! But, it’s not because they really want to (or maybe they do–there’s a lot of freedom in being a godless atheist.) Regardless, they’d be more likely to remain Christians if they knew how to DEFEND their faith.
And, again, Jesus did not ask us all to “just believe” to just “trust” Him. He performed miracles in both public and more private settings. With regard to His resurrection, Jesus SHOWED HIMSELF to others–He didn’t just expect His disciples to believe that He would be resurrected as a risen “ghost.” No, He showed them that He was bodily resurrected, and He ate with them and showed Himself to many of them. So, let’s not be mistaken that God has ever expected blind faith, because He never has. He gives us ENOUGH evidence to draw in the ones who are receptive to being drawn in, and He leaves enough room for those to deny Him when that’s really what they want to do.
I’ll try to get to the rest of your post with some additional comments a bit later.
Thank you for the blessing, and God bless you, as well,
Teddi
The strating point for this is the question of the foundation of knowledge/science. Has God been proved beyond reasonable doubt? Feel free to read my booklet Science Proves God wherein the existence of God is proven beyond reasonable doubt using juridical science and statistical science.
Just as Copernicus proved the world was a globe, and there are still people who disagree, there are still people who unreasonably say there is no God.
The foundation of the science of God is strong. Like all sciences, details continually need to be discovered. The details of the Shroud are part of this process.
Just as there are still people who believe Leonardo Da Vinci painted the Shroud there are still those who can’t change their minds when the C14 date has been shown to be so unreliable that it would be rejected in the courtroom.
The Leonardian’s challenge is based on a challenge to “change their minds” not on the need to come to the truth.
Of course you mean Copernicus proposed that the world circles around the Sun…
The value of a “reasonable” conclusion means less faith will be required i.e. not much faith is needed to believe the earth is a globe.
Barrie Schwortz had extensive knowledge and through reason this led Barrie to the accept that Jesus is the man of the Shroud. Yet Barrie still did not have the faith to become a Christian.
On faith being “fragile”: as I understand, Teddi meant to say that if you were 100% sure, then it would be “certainty” rather than “faith”. But there are definitely people who are 100% sure that God exists — then don’t them have “faith”? I’d say quite the opposite.
In fact, faith is a *way* of knowledge rather than a measure of “for how sure” you know. Theologian Luigi Giussani defined “knowledge by faith” specifically as knowing something because somebody is telling you that *and* you have good reasons to believe that he’s telling the truth, namely, you’re positive that he knows what he’s talking about and isn’t trying to deceive you. In that sense “faith” is almost synonymous with “trust”. Giussani made this example: you meet an old friend that you hadn’t seen for many years. You start chatting and your friend tells you about another friend who has moved to another country. That other friend got married and had two children. When he tells you that, you believe him, because you know him and trust his word. If it was a complete stranger who told you that, you’d be much less sure.
In the specific case of religious faith, you can have “faith” in Christ because the Church tells you that he is the Lord *and* you believe that she’s telling the truth (if you’re a Protestant you might want to replace Church with Scripture). If you think you can have faith “by yourself”, that is, without relying on witnesses, you’re trying to lift yourself by pulling up your bootstraps. In this sense, faith indeed needs reasons: specifically, reasons to trust the witness. Those reasons don’t *substitute* faith, they *sustain* it.
I think you’re spot-on with your eight-ball metaphor, and I agree completely with Dreisbach. Just think that: the Gospels tell us that Jesus kept appearing to the Apostles for 40 days after the resurrection. However, he didn’t stay with them *all* the time. He appeared to them on the evening of resurrection Sunday, then he appeared again after a week, and then for a third time while they were fishing on the Sea of Galilee. Where was he between those appearances? “In heaven” is the only answer that makes sense. Thinking that he spent those 40 nights in some hostel in Jerusalem under a false identity is simply ridiculous. He wasn’t anywhere on this Earth and didn’t need to “move” from a place to another, he simply appeared where and when he wanted to be.
So, he could also simply vanish from within the Shroud, and didn’t need to leave any physical traces of his resurrection. But that doesn’t mean that he *couldn’t*. As Teddi wrote, Jesus always performed miracles for a purpose: to make people believe in him. If he chose to leave the Shroud behind him as a sign of the resurrection — because he wanted to, not because he needed –, who are you to tell him he was wrong?
Hi, Gerardo,
Thank you for your very interesting comments! Among them, you mentioned this:
“On faith being “fragile”: as I understand, Teddi meant to say that if you were 100% sure, then it would be “certainty” rather than “faith”. But there are definitely people who are 100% sure that God exists — then don’t them have “faith”? I’d say quite the opposite.”
I think that we need to specify here that there needs to be a RATIONAL BASIS for certainty. I stand very firm in my assertion that there can be no rational basis for a 100% confidence level in the existence of God. Even if it is less than 1%, for rational minds, the preservation of the principle that “anything is possible” must still be retained. Of course, just because something is “possible” does not mean that it is probable. But, for example, people who have religious experiences will, naturally, have a much higher degree of confidence in God’s existence. But, a rational mind cannot be 100% confident that their religious experience was, precisely, just that–after all, people with mental illness can have visual and/or auditory hallucinations that seem real to them. Or, there is the possibility of coincidence or other unexplained reasons as to why something might have seemed like a religious experience (but, in fact, was not.)
Now, I am not trying to say that people do not have religious experiences. I firmly do believe that these can AND DO exist. But, my point is just that rational, critical thinkers will not ever say with 100% certainty that they KNOW that something (besides their own consciousness) exists.
So, when I hear someone say that they are 100% certain that God exists, I think that they are not as rational or as critical with their thinking as they might think. If it’s even 99.999%, I can accept that, but I’d like to hear their reasons for being that certain. If they have that level of certainty without either a religious experience and/or the evidence for the Holy Shroud, I’m afraid that I think that they’re almost certainly over-estimating how much confidence that they can rationally have with that. Emotional confidence is something entirely different, because it can be outside of what is rational. But, by its very nature, it becomes far more likely to be wrong. For example, you can trust what your good friend tells you–but, what if your good friend is honestly mistaken? Then, there’s a problem there, yes?
As a 15 year old, before I learned about the Holy Shroud, I was confident that God exists, but it wasn’t at the level that I think now–which I would put at 98% or higher. But, I’d never say 100%. Anyhow, that’s just my two-cents worth.
All the best,
Teddi
Well — technically, you’re correct. In practice, you’re hair-splitting.
It wasn’t my point to claim that “100% certainty” is a thing, and I don’t want to go off into a discussion of how much less than 100% is “enough” (although 2% less is quite too much for me — would you play Russian roulette with a 50-slots revolver?). What I meant to say is that “having faith” isn’t antitethical to “being certain”. I absolutely agree that there needs to be a rational basis for certainty. And I also believe that there needs to be a rational basis for faith.
Had Martin Luther hesitated before posting his 95 Theses—worried about “culpability”—the Reformation that renewed the Church and gave birth to Protestantism might never have happened.
And as a Catholic I would say: better he had so.
The last thing I would like to do is to start another confessional war. But reading this long post of yours (as well as many others) packed with half-truths, I think the problem is your a priori approach filled with presumption due to your social and religious background (as an Anglican), you may not even be aware of. There are many great Anglican scholars and thinkers I can praise, as a Catholic (C.S. Lewis, J.A.T. Robinson, C.P. Thiede, , R. A. Burridge’s “For Gospels, One Jesus?” is one of my favorite readings, Anglican “The Lion Handbook to the Bible” got Catholic Imprimatur in Poland, after being supplemented with information about deuterocanonical books), and you are in that company. However, there is still some factor of misunderstanding or prejudice, preconviction against Catholic approach, and typical Anglican/Protestant attitude “I wish to go my way”. Rejecting those “bizarre” and “superstitious”, misunderstood extra-biblical Catholic customs, like the veneration of relics.
You wrote in one post:
And how much of Shroud-proving involves using the Gospels to validate the Shroud, in order to use the Shroud to validate the Gospels? Why are we doing this? Is our faith really so fragile that it needs forensic confirmation?
And I did respond shortly:
Because we have the Shroud. And we have the Gospels. And they cross-validate each other.
This is typical Protestant attitude of yours, maintained since Reformation to treat Biblical and extrabiblical testimonies as antagonistic -instead of complementary in a Catholic way. “The Bible” vs “tradition” (as opposites), instead “The Bible” & “tradition” (as complementary). So, the typical Protestant approach is (taken to less or more extreme): The Bible doesn’t mention this? So it is irrelevant/ we reject this.
While for Catholics it is no problem, as far as they can reconcile this with the Bible and doctrine. I really don’t have a slighest problem with accepting the Shroud of Turin as a genuine original burial cloth of Jesus Christ (even thought it is no dogma whatsoever). It happened to survive all those centuries? Well, interesting. It contains a possibly miraculous imprint of real likeness of Jesus? Good. Another miracle to the endless list of miracles that do happen regularly (no matter whether they are biblical or extrabiblical). It may have profound impact on someone, yes. Very nice. But life goes on, anyway. But for some Protestants/Anglican this may cause dilemma: why had God perform this? What is the purpose? Why isn’t it mentioned in the Bible? Does it really matter? Should we accept it or reject? Do we really need it to validate the Bible? Or is it just a silly irrelevant Catholic tradition?
It seems to me that you are just looking by default, by your religious upbringing and installed preconvictions, for the ways to undermine the material testimony of a purported relic, the Shroud of Turin. Seeing it as incredible and not worthy of rational analysis by any “reasonable” person. A Catholic naivety, like any relic, they would buy any bloodstained cloth as coming from Jesus or any bones from nearest graveyard could be of some important saint.
This attitude comes down from the Reformation era and the attacks of Luther and others knowing-better, on the Church’s authority and tradition, which in their eyes, was just a way to scam gullible people for money. They did not have the imagination, that while some relics may be fake, some others may be indeed authentic (and worthy of preservation). There were no means to check this in those times, thus the Church (understanding the value of relics as material testimonies) preserved all of them for posterity, and allowed their veneration (for pious reasons), no matter their real status. But the Protestants (who did not understand this neither wished to) not only rejected the veneration of relics (less a problem) but in many cases, they actively destroyed them in their hate for anything associated with Catholicism (which was barbaric).
It is fortunate that people like Calvin never had their hands on the Shroud of Turin or other similar relics!