St. Thomas and the Shroud of Turin

By Eric Von Salzen







Over Easter weekend, the Wall Street Journal carried an interesting piece about the Shroud of Turin. I was surprised to see this, because I had thought that scientists had thoroughly debunked the claim that the Shroud was the cloth in which the body of the crucified Jesus was wrapped before being laid in the tomb. Indeed, the Journal article mentions that in 1988 several teams of scientists dated the cloth of the Shroud to between 1260 and 1390.

Yet the Shroud won’t go away. The Journal tells us that a Vatican researcher has found medieval documentation that the Shroud was in the possession of the Knights Templar between 1204 and 1353 (before the cloth was made, according to the 20th Century scientists). The article reminds us that no one has yet come up with a scientific explanation of how the image on the cloth was made, an image of a crucified man.

Interest in the Shroud is understandable. To those who claim that it is the burial cloth of Jesus, the Shroud is scientific evidence of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. Evidence of these events seems important to Christians because our religion is based on the belief that the Crucifixion and Resurrection actually happened as events in the real world. So far as I know, no other major religion is so dependent on the truth of a particular event.

I’m no expert on comparative religion, but my impression is that if you were to persuade a devout Jew that the Exodus didn’t really happen, he might be disappointed, but he would not have to abandon his faith; he could accept that the Exodus was a myth or an allegory about God’s relationship to the Jewish people, rather than an historical account, because the relationship between God and the Jews is what counts, not the historicity of the Exodus. If you persuaded a faithful Muslim that what he had been taught about the life of Muhammad was wrong, he would not have to abandon his faith, because it is the teachings of the Qur’an that really count. A Buddhist could be a Buddhist even if you persuaded him that there had been no Buddha.

But if you persuaded a Christian that on the third day Jesus of Nazareth stayed dead, that on the second day his followers stole his body and hid it where it has never been found, that there was no Resurrection, no Easter, how could he remain a Christian? As Paul told the Corinthian Christians, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.”

But what, you ask, about the story of Thomas, “Doubting” Thomas, as he is known in popular culture (or was so known when popular culture was still Biblically literate)? After the Risen Lord displayed to Thomas the wounds of the crucifixion, and Thomas acknowledged him as “My Lord and my God”, Jesus said, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” Doesn’t that mean that we are wrong to want evidence, that we should just suspend our rational faculties and believe?

Well, certainly it is true that belief is, in the end, a decision (as well as a gift). We decide whether we will believe or not. But I don’t think the writer of the Fourth Gospel meant us to think that evidence is irrelevant. The very next verses of his Gospel, after Jesus’ remark to Thomas, are: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.” The writer we call John devoted all his skill as a writer and a theologian to tell the story of Jesus in a way that would persuade those who read his Gospel, or heard it read aloud, to come to believe.

Similarly, Luke says that his objective in writing his Gospel was to “write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed.” Luke used his wonderful skills as a story-teller to persuade Theophilus and all other readers and hearers of his Gospel that it was true. Matthew’s approach is different, but his constant references to the Hebrew Scriptures, tying the events of the life and ministry of Jesus to Psalms and Prophets, were clearly intended to persuade his Jewish Christian audience that the story was true. Mark’s style is spare and unadorned compared to the other Gospel writers, and he doesn’t tell us what his motivation was in writing, but isn’t Luke referring to Mark’s Gospel (and other now-lost writings) when he refers to predecessors who have “undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word”?

The Gospels and the other writings we call the New Testament were created so that those who read and hear them – us – may know the truth, may come to believe. When John set down the story of Thomas, he knew that his readers could not have the experience that Thomas had, to see the Risen Lord in the flesh and examine his wounds. We are the ones who must “come to believe” without seeing, if we are to come to believe at all. We are the ones who are blessed if we do so.

When I first heard about the Shroud of Turin I thought it would be cool if it were true. The Shroud would not only be contemporary evidence of the Crucifixion and Resurrection, it would be evidence in a form that could not have been meaningful until the modern era, almost 1,900 years after the event. The image on the cloth could not be appreciated until it was photographed in 1898 and was seen in the photographic negative. Until the modern era, tests didn’t exist to show how the image on the cloth was created, so only now do we understand that it was not produced by any known, non-miraculous, process.

Now, though, I’m less excited about the Shroud as evidence. When scientists concluded twenty years ago that the cloth of the Shroud was woven in the Middle Ages, that didn’t prove that the Crucifixion and Resurrection didn’t happen, and if the scientists change their minds after further tests and conclude that it was woven in Jerusalem in 30 AD, that would not prove that the Crucifixion and Resurrection did happen. Even if science never figures out how the image was formed, that wouldn’t prove that it was formed by a miracle.

We don’t need more evidence that the Resurrection and Crucifixion happened. We have the evidence of scripture, and each one of us has the evidence of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and lives. We have all the evidence we need if we choose to believe.

Which brings us back to Thomas. He is mentioned in John 20 for two reasons. First, he was apparently harder to persuade than the other disciples. Second, once persuaded, he declared that Jesus was “My Lord and My God!”, the first disciple to do so (Mary Magdalene called Jesus “Teacher”). In a sense it’s a shame that we remember Thomas more for his doubt that for his eventual belief. But on the other hand, when we are troubled in our own belief, Thomas gives us hope. Recall that in scripture Thomas is not referred to as “Doubting” Thomas, he is called Thomas the Twin. We aren’t told anything about his twin, but I often feel as though I were Thomas’s twin. Don't you?