The Shroud Of Turin And Apologetics: A Response To Gary Habermas -- By: Randall Basinger

Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 25:2 (Jun 1982)
Article: The Shroud Of Turin And Apologetics: A Response To Gary Habermas
Author: Randall Basinger


The Shroud Of Turin And Apologetics:
A Response To Gary Habermas

Randall Basinger

David Basinger*

In a recent discussion of the Shroud of Turin in this Journal, Gary Habermas makes four claims: (1) The shroud probably originated in Israel in the first century A.D., and the image on it is not a fake. (2) There is no inconsistency between the NT account of Jesus’ death and burial and the type of burial depicted in the shroud. (3) There are strong reasons to believe that the man wrapped in the shroud was Jesus. (4) The shroud furnishes strong scientific evidence for the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection.1

We are neither scientists, historians nor Biblical scholars, so we do not wish to challenge (1) and (2). But we, like Habermas, are interested in “the philosophical questions surrounding the shroud and any possible evidence for the resurrection of Jesus in particular,2 and it seems to us that his arguments for both (3) and (4) are subject to criticism on philosophical grounds.

We shall first discuss (4). According to Habermas, three pieces of scientific evidence provide “some exciting new evidence for [Jesus’] resurrection”:3 (5) The body had not begun to decompose, so the individual wrapped in the shroud could only have been covered for a few days. (6) The body was not unwrapped; it was separated from the cloth in some other manner. (7) The image was caused by a burst of light/heat (radiation).4

One of the difficulties in evaluating Habermas’ argument at this point is determining exactly what he is arguing. At one point in the argument he concludes: “In fact the evidence from the shroud is strong enough that if Jesus was not buried in this garment, then we might have a problem, for it would seem that someone else would have appeared to have risen from the dead.”5 Habermas is clearly implying that the shroud is evidence for a resurrection from the dead—i.e., evidence for the fact that the man in the shroud (whoever he was) was resurrected. When this is added to the claim (established earlier in his article and assumed here) that Jesus was in fact the man in the shroud, Habermas’ overall argument takes the following form: (8) The man in the shroud (whoever he was) was resurrected (established by the scientific evidence—i.e., premises 5–7). (9) Jesus was

*Randall Basinger is associate professor of philosophy and religion at Tabor College in Hillsboro, Kansas, and David Basinger is associate professor of philosophy at Robert...

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