Christianity Today tries to rewrite the crucifixion with bizarre theory — but it goes horribly wrong

Christianity Today went viral over the Easter weekend for all the wrong reasons.

Last week, the Christian magazine asked a provocative question: Was Jesus crucified with nails?

The query stemmed from a novel theory created by Bible scholar Jeffrey P. Arroyo García, who recently published a paper in an academic journal titled, “Nails or Knots — How Was Jesus Crucified?”

The theory goes like this: The Gospel accounts in the New Testament do not explicitly say that Jesus was affixed to the cross with nails, neither do the earliest accounts of Roman crucifixion mention nails, so Jesus could have been hung to the cross with rope, right? After all, being nailed to a cross is not what kills the condemned; death comes through suffocation, caused by suspension on the cross. And that passage in John’s Gospel about doubting Thomas? It was probably written in the late first century after crucifixion with nails had become more common — allegedly.

On Holy Saturday — the day between Good Friday, which marks the day Jesus died, and Easter Sunday, the day of His resurrection — Christianity Today posted its story on X.

By Monday, the post had more than 2.4 million views, it had been slapped with a community note, and it had drawn outrage from every corner of Christianity.

• “Dear CT, there’s a grammatical error in paragraph 31 (‘the Romans use of nails’ requires a possessive apostrophe), and there’s a historical error from paragraphs 1-43,” Wheaton College professor John Dickson said.
• “Guys, having read it, this whole piece is built upon the assumption the Gospel of John is an after-the-fact fabricated account.
  Please remember, you are *Christianity* Today,” pastor Josh Howerton
  replied.
• “And Thomas said, ‘Unless I see the rope burns I will not believe,'” pastor Mike Stone mocked.
• “Christianity Today has outdone our @TheBabylonBee writers once again. We really should just buy them to eliminate the competition,” Kyle Mann, editor in chief of the Babylon Bee, mocked.
• “‘You can ignore the clear witness of the Christian Gospel of John today because we think it was written late.’ -Christianity Today,” Theologian Colin Smothers mocked.
• “The Greek word for ‘nail’ can also mean ‘to affix’ or ‘to press firmly,’ leading some Greek scholars to suggest Jesus may have simply been adhered to the cross with first-century duct tape,” Andrew Walker, professor at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, mocked.

Not only did Christianity Today earn the ire of Christians everywhere, but even atheist James Lindsay got in on the action — observing how Christianity Today could have avoided controversy.

“Christianity Today could have avoided this embarrassment by reading their Bibles,” Lindsay said.

Biblical scholar Ben Gladd, though he didn’t directly cite Christianity Today, published an article on Good Friday explaining “why nails matter.”

Beyond the internal textual evidence and fulfillment of prophecies — citing Psalm 22, Isaiah 53, and Zechariah 12 — Gladd explained that the instruments with which Jesus was affixed to the cross matter because they shine a light on the heart of the gospel.

Gladd wrote:

If you consult the cross-references in your Bible’s margins, you’ll see all four Gospels allude to Psalm 22 as they narrate the crucifixion (see Matt. 27:35, 39, 41, 42, 43; Mark 15:24, 29, 31; Luke 23:34, 35, 36; John 19:23, 24). Jesus even quotes verse 1 (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”) in Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34. Three of the four evangelists possibly allude to verse 16 as they describe Jesus being crucified between two criminals (Matt. 27:38; Luke 23:33; John 19:18). So when Jesus commands Thomas and the disciples to look at his “hands” and “feet” (Luke 24:39; John 20:20, 25), he could subtly be alluding to verse 16 since Psalm 22 features so prominently at the crucifixion.

The early church was convinced that Jesus was nailed to the cross (e.g., Justin Martyr, Ignatius, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Origen), and so are most contemporary commentators (e.g., Raymond Brown, I. Howard Marshall, Craig Keener, and Eckhard Schnabel). By preserving the details about nails that pierced Jesus’s hands and feet, we’re reminded that at the gospel’s heart lies One who is pierced, One who bore God’s wrath, so you and I can enjoy God’s favor.

Theologian Andrew Snyder, meanwhile, hit the nail on the head (pun intended).

Snyder observed that such a theory as this — that perhaps Jesus was affixed to the cross with rope, not nails, because the Gospels do not explicitly state that Jesus was nailed to the cross — arose out of a problem with the state of scholarship, namely that the pressure to publish new journal articles contributes to “innovation,” a desire that Snyder described as “antithetical to true scholarship.”

He added, “‘I want to say something true’ is always superior to ‘I want to say something new.'”

Amen.