Questioning details of the life and death of Christ, explicit in Scripture or implied by good and necessary consequence, leads almost invariably to questioning details of his resurrection and ascension. The worst heresies are couched in smug hyper-biblicism (e.g., Socinianism). That tendency was first workshopped in the Garden and has plagued the church ever since.

Last week, while the rest of us were preparing to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord, Christianity Today saw fit to tempt its readers to doubt the veracity of Scripture. Was Jesus Christ really pierced by nails when he was crucified? CT highlights new, cutting-edge “scholarship” that answers, no…just ropes, probably.

In case you’ve forgotten—it would be excusable given the once venerable magazine’s recent record—CT was founded by none other than Billy Graham. Carl F. H. Henry was its first editor. The whole point of the venture in 1956 was to combat The Christian Century, the standard bearer of liberal Protestantism. Between Henry and his successor, Harold Lindsell, the battle for biblical inerrancy dominated CT’s pages. They wanted to instill confidence in evangelicals in the face of the cultural onslaught against the Bible.

The very first CT editorial dedicated its editorial policy to unreserved acceptance of “the complete reliability and authority of the written Word of God.” In 1981, an editorial recounted a letter from a reader demanding the cancelation of his subscription because he had “heard enough about inerrancy.”

Speaking to Christian Century in 2012, David Hollinger perhaps triumphantly observed that despite the decline of the Protestant mainline, “the fact remains that the public life of the United States moved farther in the directions advocated in 1960 by the Christian Century than in the directions then advocated by Christianity Today.” The same year as the Hollinger interview, Christian Century ran a piece covering “fresh evidence” from a Harvard Divinity School professor that Jesus was married.

It’s not as if Henry, Graham, and Lindsell didn’t know what they were up against, but they stood athwart heterodoxy and liberalism all the same, stubbornly so. That Christianity Today of 2025 has effectively become Christian Century of 1965 surely has them spinning in their graves. That Richard John Neuhaus once, probably unwittingly, referred to CT as a “mainline evangelical publication” is more appropriate now than he could have imagined.

The article in question, published last Monday, “Was Jesus Crucified with Nails?” presents the theory of Jeffrey Garcia, who teaches at Gordon College, that neither the Bible nor historical evidence confirms that Jesus was hung on the cross by nails. Garcia thinks that, for example, Josephus is describing a later development when he refers to mass crucifixions involving nails.

That there is little extant source material describing crucifixions—Caesar had banned discussion of the affair amongst Romans in the first century B.C.—in detail at all is acknowledged by Garcia, but this just gives him room to cast more doubt on the Biblical narrative. “We don’t really know,” serves as the constant refrain in the piece. No matter too that crucifixions were at their height during the life of Christ even as Roman citizens were protected from the same—a detail that might have some bearing on the question here.

One problem: What to do with Thomas requesting to touch the marks of the nails in John 20:25 and Jesus responding in verse 27 by telling him to examine his hands? No problem.

“Jesus doesn’t explicitly say “nails,” and the Bible does not say Thomas touches Christ’s hands or his feet. Many scholars think John was written later—perhaps after crucifixion with nails had become more common, García said.”

This is the only subtle admission in the article that the “research” in view is entirely predicated on a late publication date of the Gospel of John. Unmentioned is that John was the only apostle present at the crucifixion. Did he confuse later practice with his own observations at the most pivotal point in his life? Or did the Holy Spirit just fail him in this regard? Further, did Jesus fail to deliver the proof sufficient to shame Thomas for his doubt? Scripture doesn’t tell us that Thomas had good eyesight, nor does it confirm that the nerve endings in his fingers were undamaged. Did Romans suddenly discover the utility of nails four decades after the crucifixion of Christ? Is Luke 24:39 equally suspect? Perhaps, the physician turned evangelist had forgotten his ability to distinguish between holes bored by a seven-inch spike and rope burns.

Read More