Somewhere between the archeological dust of Jerusalem and the theological smog of Gordon College, a man named Jeffrey P. Arroyo Garcia stumbled onto a theory so feeble, it could barely support the weight of a soggy Sunday school flannelgraph, let alone the entire crucifixion of Christ.

And naturally, where does such a soggy notion find a warm and welcoming pulpit? Christianity Today, of course—the modern-day Mecca for confused clerics and highbrow heretics, where conviction goes to die a quiet, ambiguous death under fluorescent lights and peer-reviewed pieties.

Enter Daniel Silliman, a man who apparently believes that journalism without spine counts as objectivity. In his recent article, Silliman lends his platform to Garcia, who peddles the curious notion that perhaps Jesus wasn't nailed to the cross after all—perhaps he was simply tied there, secured with a bit of rope and Roman ingenuity.

Forget the blood-stained depictions and age-old hymns singing of nail-pierced hands and feet, forget the centuries of Christian testimony, the accounts of martyrs, the historical consensus, and, especially, the explicit reference in John 20. No, Garcia assures us, we mustn't jump to conclusions. Maybe it was just knots. Maybe.

Silliman is a silly man. Not because he dares to report on a controversial idea, but because he plays the tired game of “plausible deniability neutrality” while subtly ushering the reader to adopt doubt dressed in a scholar's tweed. He doesn't come out and endorse Garcia's theory outright—of course not—but his article is built like a buffet for the curious skeptic, serving up Garcia speculations with a side of archaeological innuendo and a sprinkle of Roman trivia. It's not journalism. It's a theological trust fall into a pit of fog.

To catch you up: Garcia, a professor at Gordon College, published a piece in Biblical Archaeology Review titled "Nails or Knots—How Was Jesus Crucified?" in which he posits that maybe the Gospels don't say enough about how Jesus was affixed to the cross to conclude it was with nails. He notes that the Greek word stauroō means to crucify or impale but doesn't specify method. And since the Synoptic Gospels don't explicitly mention nails, he floats the idea that ropes could've done the job.

Never mind that the Gospel of John records Thomas explicitly demanding to see the "marks of the nails" in Jesus' hands—a detail Garcia waves off as possibly influenced by later Roman methods, as if John was cribbing from the culture instead of being inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Convenient, isn't it? When Scripture contradicts the theory, downgrade the Scripture.

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