Christianity Today apologizes

Recently, CT published a piece surveying the theories of an evangelical scholar who downplays the idea that the Romans used nails for the crucifixion. After a lot of criticism, the author of the article published an apology:

Nailing Down the Truth of Christ’s Crucifixion – Christianity Today

My curiosity took me to the descriptions of Christ’s death and the details in those accounts. I didn’t think about John 20:25 and the implication of the idea that Thomas was mistaken to think the resurrected Jesus would have nail marks in his hands. Thomas clearly would not have said that if the Romans at that time used ropes.

My article implicitly called into question the inerrancy of Scripture. In my eagerness to explore the historical context of Christ’s death, I missed that, and I’m sorry.

Here is a link to the original article:

Was Jesus Crucified with Nails? – Christianity Today

The controversy over this article points to the need to examine every theory with care. Sometimes someone gets a “bright idea” that on first reading seems intriguing or even plausible. In this case, the author of the article forgot a key passage of Scripture that blew the theory to smithereens (high-falutin’ theological term). It behooves us all to be careful when novel ideas come up. Often the novelty means there is an error somewhere.