How the Shroud of Turin affected Orthodox Worship

July 29, 2007

johnchan wrote:

Thanks for this informative post. From my protestant background, I was led to believe that the shroud was not necessarily authentic, but just one of those odd inexplicable things - either a hoax, or else not the image of Christ.

Now that I look back on why I held such a belief, it had stemmed from the widespread phobia that ANY image of Christ is "out of bounds" for Protestants.

But since my conversion, I no longer have this aversion to icons and images. I haven't thought about the shroud of Turin or the Sudarium of Oviedo for quite awhile. Thanks for pointing me back to things I had overlooked.

I think one of the things we have to remember when we are talking about holy images of any sort, whether it is the Shroud or icons, is that even though it is written that \"no man has ever seen God\" and that we are to make no graven (carved) images, Christ came to us in a body of flesh and blood. People saw Him. People talked with Him, people knew Him, they watched Him die on the Cross and witnessed His holy Resurrection. That is why, IMHO, that Protestantism in general and iconoclasts in particular, in a sense denies the Incarnation. God is a God that we can see, touch, feel, hear, speak with, and even taste. That is one reason why Orthodoxy appeals to me so much even though I am a \"cradle\" Orthodox. The Liturgy lives for me. It appeals to all of man\'s senses because we are to worship by using all of them!! That is what the Bible teaches, BTW.

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