Faith, Proof and Relics

Excerpt from Peter Manseau's article in the Wall Street Journal on the mystery behind the shroud of Turin (April 11, 2009)

(http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123940218130209621.html)

This is not to say the puzzle has been solved. Even if it was created by an artist or charlatan several hundred years ago, as of yet there has been no explanation how such an ingenious rendering could have been created with the technologies of the day.

But maybe so much focus on explanation misses the point. Belief -- any belief, whether in God, the Resurrection, even the Force -- requires a partial abandonment of the rational. This does not mean that faith is irrational, only that it involves a recognition that there are some things that can be explained only through acknowledgment that proof is not always the highest good.

Faith fashions itself as a challenge to our assumptions, our expectations -- and relics are an embodiment of that challenge. As the early Christian author Tertullian said in defense of his belief that Jesus rose from the dead, "it is certain because it is impossible."


As much as it is a tradition passed down through the generations, an inherited vocabulary for describing the inexplicable, belief is also an act of the will. Despite scientific investigations, the beliefs that make phenomena like the Shroud relevant are not something required by the rules of logic. There is no rational need to write a poem or to paint a picture, and there is no rational need to believe, which is to search for something meaningful in the enigmatic markings that define our lives.

Yet the tension remains: the will to believe, the need for proof. Perhaps this is what the Shroud is really about: our divine aspirations bound up with our mortal concerns.