Why Does The Shroud of Turin Still Exist?

In an imaginary “ranking” of Christian topics that elicit the most fervent discussions, Jesus Christ is No. 1. But near the top is the Shroud of Turin — believed by millions of Christians to be the authentic burial cloth of Jesus. This “ranking” was inspired by you — Townhall readers who wrote over 500 impassioned comments in response to my July 21 piece, “Shroud of Turin: New Test Concludes 1988 ‘Medieval Hoax’ Dating Was a Fraud.”

I purposely read all your comments to gain insight into my role as an adviser and fundraiser for a groundbreaking exhibition about the Shroud of Turin at the Museum of the Bible in Washington D.C. This spectacular museum, among the largest and highest rated in the city, is located only three blocks from the Capitol. And just prior to the January 20, 2021, presidential inauguration is when this high-tech Shroud exhibit is scheduled to open.

Threaded throughout hundreds of your responses about all aspects of the Shroud was one overarching theme summarized by these three comments:

“Anyone who requires physical evidence to underpin their faith doesn’t understand the concept of faith.”

“JESUS CHRIST died for all. HE is what is important. Making such a fuss about this piece of cloth is a distraction from HIS work of SALVATION.”

“I respectfully submit that the only ‘relic’ which really matters is the one which was left us on that first Easter morning: The tomb is empty! He is Risen! He is Risen indeed! Alleluia!”

Of course, “He is Risen” is also the foundation of my Christian faith, (made slightly more complicated by having been born Jewish). But I feel compelled to discuss and explore the comment that reads in part, “…such a fuss about this piece of cloth...”

And my response is simple: The Shroud of Turin exists because HE exists. An answer that echoes what God said to Moses, “I Am Who I Am. Say this to the people of Israel: I Am has sent me to you” (Exodus 3:14).

Thus, the existence of the Shroud of Turin raises two questions that I will attempt to address: First, what exactly is the Shroud? And second, a deeper dive into “Why does the cloth exist?”

The Shroud of Turin is a 14.5-by-3.5-foot linen cloth with a linear front to back mirror image of a crucified man. The Shroud has the distinction of being the most studied artifact in the world, yet the cloth’s numerous mysteries remained unexplained by modern science.

At this moment the Shroud lies in a fireproof box in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Turin, Italy, as it has continuously since 1578. (But secretly relocated between 1939 and 1946 when Italian authorities feared Hitler was seeking possession.)

Among Shroud historians, there is no dispute that in 1352, over 200 years before the Shroud was housed in Turin, Geoffrey DeCharney displayed the cloth in Lirey, France marking the beginning of the Shroud’s documented "modern" dating.

There is also much circumstantial Shroud evidence through art, artifacts, and coins that pre-dates 1352. Moreover, scientifically verified botanical evidence found on the cloth in the form of pollen, dust, flowers, and even the weave and type of linen traces the Shroud back to first-century Jerusalem.

The cloth with its mysterious properties has survived wars, invasions and the ravages of time including numerous fires — most recently in 1997 at its home cathedral in Turin.

Most harrowing was the 1532 fire in Chambéry, France. Miraculously the entire cloth was not destroyed but left those distinctive linear markings along both sides of the Shroud that we see today. Hard to imagine, but the linen cloth was stored in a silver box, folded in 48 layers, when drops of molten silver burned through the cloth’s outer folded edges.

The point is, against all the odds, the Shroud exists. And, as stated earlier, because He exists. There is also a significant Bible-based reason found in the Gospel of John known as “Doubting Thomas” (John 20:24-31).

But first, a “guest” who will explain this passage needs a proper introduction:

It turns out that the many Townhall readers who commented about not needing the Shroud’s “physical evidence to underpin their faith,” represent a large swath of Christian believers. I learned this when asking Russ Breault— my fellow Shroud exhibit team colleague, and a world-renowned Shroud expert and speaker — if he had experienced similar attitudes after over 30 years of hosting his popular “Shroud Encounters” to sell-out crowds.

“I get that statement all the time! When someone says, ‘I don't need the Shroud for my faith,’ I usually say, ‘That is fantastic! But that doesn't mean the Shroud was not meant for someone else.’ ”

Breault continued: “In the Doubting Thomas story, Jesus pronounced a blessing on those who ‘believe yet have not seen,’ but Jesus did not condemn Thomas for his unbelief. In fact, a week after the Resurrection, Jesus appeared a second time, and the first person he spoke to was Thomas, who was not there to witness Jesus’ first appearance. Jesus then quotes Thomas' words back to him, ‘Thomas, thrust your hand into my side and place your fingers into my nail wounds and be not faithless but believe.’

At this point, Thomas — forever known as "Doubting Thomas" — makes the strongest profession of faith in the New Testament saying, "My Lord and my God." Then Jesus pronounced a blessing on those who can believe without seeing. So we are blessed if we can believe without seeing, but we are not cursed if we can't get there without some additional evidence.

Therefore, perhaps the Shroud is a silent witness to the world offering all of humanity the same opportunity Jesus gave to Thomas. In some proverbial sense by looking at the Shroud, we too can thrust our hand into His side and place our fingers into His nail wound and find our faith in the process.”

If blessed with great faith, you are free to ignore or downplay the image on the Shroud showing Christ’s great suffering and victory over death. Yet, take comfort in knowing that the Shroud is there to supplement or reinforce the faith of others while potentially witnessing to the ever-increasing number of Doubting Thomases found throughout the world.

In the end, I believe that the Shroud exists as proof of God’s greatest gift to mankind —the Lord Jesus Christ — who lives and reigns forever and ever. Alleluia!

he difference, as I understand it, is that an evangelical of the "Once Saved, Always Saved" variety, would say that once you're saved, you're good to go, no matter what you thoughts, words and deeds subsequently may be. You can stop believing, stop praying, and stop walking in the way of the Lord and still be saved: Blessed Assurance.

That is held by a few too many in the present, but it is not what either Luther or evangelicals have historically taught. And substitute "once you are baptized as a Catholic" for "once you're saved" and you pretty much have what Rome conveys via her treatment of even proabortion, homosexual public figures, who at least die identifying as a RC.

Sola Fide is to refer to effectual faith being what is counted for righteousness. Luther stated that saving faith is,

a living, creative, active and powerful thing, this faith. Faith cannot help doing good works constantly. It doesn’t stop to ask if good works ought to be done, but before anyone asks, it already has done them and continues to do them without ceasing. Anyone who does not do good works in this manner is an unbeliever...Thus, it is just as impossible to separate faith and works as it is to separate heat and light from fire! [http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/luther-faith.txt]

This is what I have often said, if faith be true, it will break forth and bear fruit. If the tree is green and good, it will not cease to blossom forth in leaves and fruit. It does this by nature. I need not first command it and say: Look here, tree, bear apples. For if the tree is there and is good, the fruit will follow unbidden. If faith is present works must follow.” [Sermons of Martin Luther 2.2:340-341]

“We must therefore most certainly maintain that where there is no faith there also can be no good works; and conversely, that there is no faith where there are no good works. Therefore faith and good works should be so closely joined together that the essence of the entire Christian life consists in both.” [Martin Luther, as cited by Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1963], 246, footnote 99]

All believers are like poor Lazarus; and every believer is a true Lazarus, for he is of the same faith, mind and will, as Lazarus. And whoever will not be a Lazarus, will surely have his portion with the rich glutton in the flames of hell. For we all must like Lazarus trust in God, surrender ourselves to him to work in us according to his own good pleasure, and be ready to serve all men.. And although we all do not suffer from such sores and poverty, yet the same mind and will must be in us, that were in Lazarus, cheerfully to bear such things, wherever God wills it.” [Sermons of Martin Luther 2.2:25]

“This is why St. Luke and St. James have so much to say about works, so that one says: Yes, I will now believe, and then he goes and fabricates for himself a fictitious delusion, which hovers only on the lips as the foam on the water. No, no; faith is a living and an essential thing, which makes a new creature of man, changes his spirit and wholly and completely converts him. It goes to the foundation and there accomplishes a renewal of the entire man; so, if I have previously seen a sinner, I now see in his changed conduct, manner and life, that he believes. So high and great a thing is faith.”[Sermons of Martin Luther 2.2:341]

“For it is impossible for him who believes in Christ, as a just Savior, not to love and to do good. If, however, he does not do good nor love, it is sure that faith is not present. Therefore man knows by the fruits what kind of a tree it is, and it is proved by love and deed whether Christ is in him and he believes in Christ...” [Sermons of Martin Luther 1:40]

“For if your heart is in the state of faith that you know your God has revealed himself to you to be so good and merciful, without thy merit, and purely gratuitously, while you were still his enemy and a child of eternal wrath; if you believe this, you cannot refrain from showing yourself so to your neighbor; and do all out of love to God and for the welfare of your neighbor. Therefore, see to it that you make no distinction between friend and foe, the worthy and the unworthy; for you see that all who were here mentioned, have merited from us something different than that we should love and do them good. And the Lord also teaches this, when in Luke 6:35 he says: "But love your enemies, and do good unto them, and lend, never despairing; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be sons of the Most High: for he is kind toward the unthankful and evil." [Sermons of Martin Luther 2.2:101]

...if obedience and God’s commandments do not dominate you, then the work is not right, but damnable, surely the devil’s own doings, although it were even so great a work as to raise the dead......Peter says the grace and gifts of God are not one but manifold, and each is to tend to his own, develop the same and through them be of service to others.” [Sermons of Martin Luther 1:244]

In addition, upon hearing that he was being charged with rejection of the Old Testament moral law, Luther responded,

And truly, I wonder exceedingly, how it came to be imputed to me, that I should reject the Law or ten Commandments, there being extant so many of my own expositions (and those of several sorts) upon the Commandments, which also are daily expounded, and used in our Churches, to say nothing of the Confession and Apology, and other books of ours. Martin Luther, ["A Treatise against Antinomians, written in an Epistolary way", http://www.truecovenanter.com/truelutheran/luther_against_the_antinomians.html]
wrote:

Rather than the easy believism Catholics (with a church half full of liberal members) associates with sola fide, in Puritan Protestantism there was often a tendency to make the way to the cross too narrow, perhaps in reaction against the Antinomian controversy, as described in an account (http://www.the-highway.com/Early_American_Bauckham.html) of Puritans during the early American period:

“They had, like most preachers of the Gospel, a certain difficulty in determining what we might call the ‘conversion level’, the level of difficulty above which the preacher may be said to be erecting barriers to the Gospel and below which he may be said to be encouraging men to enter too easily into a mere delusion of salvation. Contemporary critics, however, agree that the New England pastors set the level high. Nathaniel Ward, who was step-son to Richard Rogers and a distinguished Puritan preacher himself, is recorded as responding to Thomas Hooker’s sermons on preparation for receiving Christ in conversion with, ‘Mr. Hooker, you make as good Christians before men are in Christ as ever they are after’, and wishing, ‘Would I were but as good a Christian now as you make men while they are preparing for Christ.’”

Among evangelicals today who profess OSAS, Reformed evangelicals affirm the Westminster Confession which states that faith,

it is not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but works by love. - Westminster Confession of Faith, CHAPTER XI. Of Justification

And the "P" in their TULIP acronym stands for Final perseverance of faith, so that those who die in impenitent sinful lives are relegated to having never been saved (However, I believe believers are warned against falling away: Gal. 5:1-4; Heb. 3:12; 10:35-39).

The SBC states that faith,

In its broadest sense salvation includes regeneration, justification, sanctification, and glorification.All true believers endure to the end...All Christians are under obligation to seek to make the will of Christ supreme in our own lives and in human society...

And the testimony of survey statistics from many sources invariably show that it is evangelicals, and not Catholics, who most strongly believe that faith without works is dead.

...what’s that in Hebrews about “the spirits of just men made perfect” ?

Good question.

Here's how it looks in CONTEXT...

Let's see; we've just left the FAITH chapter, and now the writer gives us the 12th...

Hebrews 12 Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition (DRA)

1 And therefore we also having so great a cloud of witnesses over our head, laying aside every weight and sin which surrounds us, let us run by patience to the fight proposed to us:
2 Looking on Jesus, the author and finisher of faith, who having joy set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and now sitteth on the right hand of the throne of God.
3 For think diligently upon him that endured such opposition from sinners against himself; that you be not wearied, fainting in your minds.
4 For you have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin:
5 And you have forgotten the consolation, which speaketh to you, as unto children, saying: My son, neglect not the discipline of the Lord; neither be thou wearied whilst thou art rebuked by him.
6 For whom the Lord loveth, he chastiseth; and he scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.
7 Persevere under discipline. God dealeth with you as with his sons; for what son is there, whom the father doth not correct?
8 But if you be without chastisement, whereof all are made partakers, then are you bastards, and not sons.
9 Moreover we have had fathers of our flesh, for instructors, and we reverenced them: shall we not much more obey the Father of spirits, and live?
10 And they indeed for a few days, according to their own pleasure, instructed us: but he, for our profit, that we might receive his sanctification.
11 Now all chastisement for the present indeed seemeth not to bring with it joy, but sorrow: but afterwards it will yield, to them that are exercised by it, the most peaceable fruit of justice.
12 Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees,
13 And make straight steps with your feet: that no one, halting, may go out of the way; but rather be healed.
14 Follow peace with all men, and holiness: without which no man shall see God.
15 Looking diligently, lest any man be wanting to the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up do hinder, and by it many be defiled.
16 Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau; who for one mess, sold his first birthright.
17 For know ye that afterwards, when he desired to inherit the benediction, he was rejected; for he found no place of repentance, although with tears he had sought it.
18 For you are not come to a mountain that might be touched, and a burning fire, and a whirlwind, and darkness, and storm,
19 And the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words, which they that heard excused themselves, that the word might not be spoken to them:
20 For they did not endure that which was said: And if so much as a beast shall touch the mount, it shall be stoned.
21 And so terrible was that which was seen, Moses said: I am frighted, and tremble.
22 But you are come to mount Sion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to the company of many thousands of angels,
23 And to the church of the firstborn, who are written in the heavens, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the just made perfect,
24 And to Jesus the mediator of the new testament, and to the sprinkling of blood which speaketh better than that of Abel.
25 See that you refuse him not that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spoke upon the earth, much more shall not we, that turn away from him that speaketh to us from heaven.
26 Whose voice then moved the earth; but now he promiseth, saying: Yet once more, and I will move not only the earth, but heaven also.
27 And in that he saith, Yet once more, he signifieth the translation of the moveable things as made, that those things may remain which are immoveable.
28 Therefore receiving an immoveable kingdom, we have grace; whereby let us serve, pleasing God, with fear and reverence.
29 For our God is a consuming fire.

So; what does Rome say about it?

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