Shoulder Pads and the Shroud of Turin
Two things the 1980s got wrong
Well, whaddaya know? Turns out, the Shroud of Turin might date from the first century after all. We’ve heard since the 1980s that it dates from the medieval era. The internet is all abuzz with stories about the shroud today. According to a story in Newsweek,
Among the research indicating a medieval origin for the Shroud is pivotal radiocarbon study conducted in the late 1980s, which concluded that the linen dates to between A.D. 1260 and A.D. 1390—corresponding with the artifact's first documented appearance in France in the 1350s. These results indicated that it was not the burial cloth of Jesus.
The problem was, no one could figure out how the shroud was made, particularly using 14th-century technology. More recent scientific analysis, however, indicates the shroud may be much older than these scientists from the 1980s told us. Are we surprised? Look at all the things we got wrong in the 80’s. Why did we wear acid-washed jeans? Who thought parachute pants were a good idea? How did we ever use that much hair product? How did we survive with four channels on TV? Did leg warmers even work? Why did so many people buy Cabbage Patch Kids? Why did we think shoulder pads looked good? How was Max Headroom a thing? How did we not know how every John Hughes movie was going to end? How did a group called Wang Chung ever make it to the radio?
Back to the shroud: contamination of the sample may have thrown off the carbon-dating process used in the 1980s. The Newsweek report continues:
[L]ead researcher Liberato De Caro, from the Institute of Crystallography in Italy, and colleagues employed a novel method for dating ancient linen threads by inspecting their structural degradations using a technique known as Wide-Angle X-ray Scattering. This was applied to a small sample from the Shroud, which currently resides in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Turin, Italy.
The authors said the results of their analysis were "fully compatible" with analogous measurements obtained from a linen sample whose dating, according to historical records, is A.D. 55-74, and consistent with the hypothesis that the Shroud is a 2,000-year-old relic.
It appears, then, that the shroud dates from the time of Jesus. This doesn’t prove the shroud was Jesus’ burial cloth, but it does remove a major obstacle to identifying it as such.
I was thinking about this on my morning drive today. The shroud may very well be authentic. But what’s the payoff of such a claim? What does it mean, both for people of faith and unbelievers? Put simply: so what?
Christians have always valued material connections to the work of God. The veneration of relics and icons is important in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions. The shroud is in some ways like these kinds of objects: it’s a material connection to the saving work of God.
Before Protestants scoff at icons and relics, we should think about how many vials of water we’ve brought back from the Jordan River. It’s a wonder there’s any water left in it. We bring back olive-wood crosses from the Holy Land that simply wouldn’t have the same significance for us if they were made in Cleveland. I once had a student attempt to bring back over a pound of soil from Israel. Homeland Security was not impressed by his piety. In other words, we have our own ways of reaching upward to God through material objects connected with his saving work in the world.
We do believe, after all, that God entered into history. God’s saving work took place first through a particular people—Israel—in a particular place, at particular times. In Jesus Christ, God became flesh. He lived and walked around and sneezed and bled. He really lived and really died. In the early church, some people, called Docetists, believed that Jesus only seemed to have a real body, but in fact was entirely spirit. Others, called Nestorians, distinguished between the human Jesus and the divine Christ. Fortunately for us, orthodox Christians rejected both Docetism and Nestorianism. They insisted that Jesus was God incarnate. Materiality matters. In fact, the material world is good. We’re not Platonists or their cousins, the Gnostics. Material objects, we believe, can turn our hearts and minds toward God and draw us into awe and wonder. That’s why objects like the shroud pique our interest and, at times, bolster our faith.
Although there are cases of people becoming Christian by encountering the shroud, in most cases this isn’t where its value lies. How we interpret the significance of the shroud will depend upon our background beliefs. Those philosophically committed to “materialism” will necessarily reject any miraculous explanation of the shroud’s origin. Put differently, if you don’t believe there is a God, or that God actually does anything, then coherence compels you to come up with an explanation that doesn’t involve God. You may conclude we can’t identify a scientific explanation yet, but someday we will. Never mind that this is a faith claim in science, or an example of what is called “scientism.” We interpret the world based on what we believe possible.
Of course, something could happen so powerful that it could change what we think possible. If a committed atheist is healed of terminal cancer after prayer, she might reconsider her atheism. Beliefs, including broad presuppositions about the way the world works, can change. This normally doesn’t happen overnight, though, and if it does, the precipitating cause may be quite dramatic.
All this is to say, the new dating of the Shroud of Turin is, as we said in the 80s, totally awesome. It lends credence, if only a bit, to what many of us already believed: that God is powerfully at work in the world. Contemplation of what the shroud represents—the power of God and the resurrection of Christ—can turn our hearts upward toward God and deepen our faith. The shroud isn’t an apologetic checkmate, but another point of entry into the mystery of God, and for that, we can give thanks.