Why an Atheist Thinks the Shroud of Turin is the Real Deal

N. T. Wright in The Resurrection of the Son of God

The challenge for any historian, when faced with the question of the rise of Christianity, is much more sharply focused than is often supposed. It is not simply a matter of whether one believes in 'miracles', or in the supernatural, in general, in which case (it is supposed) the resurrection will be no problem. If anyone ever reaches the stage where the resurrection is in that sense no problem, we can be sure that they have made a mis-take somewhere, that they have constructed a world in which this most explosive and subversive of events - supposing it to have occurred - can be domesticated and put on show, like a circus elephant or clever typing monkey, as a key exhibit in the church's collection of supernatural trophies. The resurrection of Jesus then becomes either 'a trip to a garden and a lovely surprise', a happy ending to a fairy story', or a way of legi-timating different types of Christianity or different leaders within it. No: the challenge comes down to a much narrower point, not simply to do with worldviews in general, or with 'the supernatural' in par-ticular, but with the direct question of death and life, of the world of space, time and matter and its relation to whatever being there may be for whom the word 'god', or even 'God', might be appropriate. Here there is, of course, no neutrality. Any who pretend to it are merely showing that they have not understood the question.