Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Shrouded in Methodology

If you've read the articles I sent out by Gary Habermas and the Basingers regarding the Shroud of Turin, you now know that their discussion isn't about the general authenticity of the Shroud, as I had hoped. Rather, their discussion is about how certain we can be the that the Shroud is the actual Shroud of Jesus — or whether it belongs to some other beaten, crowned with thorns, forced to carry his cross, crucified and stabbed first-century guy who escaped from the cloth without it being unwrapped or torn away from his bloody skin and who left a light/heat imprint of his face on it — and whether it should make any difference in our resurrection apologetic. Nonetheless, we'll talk in depth about who's made the better case on Thursday, October 18, 7:00 PM, at the Oldenburg apartment. Hopefully, Jason will provide us with a video on the Shroud that can provide some controversy and intruigue.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from our combatants:

"When the scientific shroud evidence is combined with the previously and independently validated gospels, the result is more than the probable identification of Jesus with the man of the shroud."
-Gary R. Habermas

"Scientific evidence is relevant to Christian belief, but the move from scientific evidence to significant religious conslusions is more difficult than Habermas seems to recognize."
-Randall and David Basinger

See you tomorrow!

1 comment:

Donna said...

I hope you guys had a good discussion and time of fellowship. I miss the interaction. I skimmed the articles. It seems to me that since the historicity of the Biblical events is so important, we must be open to the possibility of discovering artifacts and remains from those events. They actually occurred in time and space on this earth, and so would have left a mark. But I would put the shroud into the same category as the James ossuary: not ultimately verifiable. Habermas tries to narrow the range so that only Jesus could be the man in the shroud. I am just not convinced that he succeeds. But it is possible.