Theological Reflections prompted by Thomas de Wesselow’s The Sign

Wesselow argues eloquently as an art historian for the genuineness of the Shroud but his treatment of the Gospel and related matters reveal him as “post-Christian.” Though he believes that the Shroud is that of Jesus, he does not believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. The resultant confusion is the reason for the mixed reviews that he has had. Behind his book is a self-questioning experience he had lying on the grass in his Cambridge garden, early in the summer of 2004 and which he describes as a novelist rather than an academic might. “……if the shroud is authentic, why do none of the gospels mention its discovery in the empty tomb? And then it struck me: maybe they do. Maybe the Gospels contain descriptions of the Shroud that no-one has recognised as such since the days of the apostles, because it appears in their legendary narratives not as an image but as a supernatural person. Seized by this stunning thought, I leapt from the grass and bounded indoors to check the biblical stories of the empty tomb.” [p.192f.] De Wesselow had had an epiphany not so much of God as of the Holy Shroud. That said, his book inevitably leads the reader to ask God-centred, religious questions. These concern, firstly, the nature and authority of Canonical Scripture and its witness; secondly, the nature of Jesus’s resurrection; and, thirdly, as we reflect on the resurrection event, the precise nature of the person to whom it is said to have occurred. Our answers to these questions inform our Christian belief or lack of it and lead to our various opinions of the Shroud and/or its significance. Dismissal of Christian claims on these questions seems to have lain behind Professor Edward Hall’s failure to admit that the carbon dating of the Shroud to the Middle Ages posed more questions than it answered. With my background, trained in History and Theology and as a believing Christian and Anglican priest, my views and approach are very different from those of Hall the atheist scientist and different too from those of de Wesselow, the art historian sceptic - on canonical scripture, and our use of it, on the nature of the resurrection and the nature of the Christ. These are the matters which this article explores.