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.

And so the article drifts into a morass of “maybes”: maybe the Romans used ropes, maybe they borrowed the method from Carthaginians, maybe the nails were just to fasten the cross together, maybe ancient writers were squeamish and didn’t like to talk about nails, maybe John was late, maybe Thomas was figurative, maybe the whole thing is just symbolic.

Maybe, maybe, maybe—the eternal incense burned at the altar of liberal theology. One might expect this from a secular archaeologist desperate to land a documentary deal on the History Channel, but not from someone calling himself an evangelical Bible scholar.

The entire argument hinges on silence—an argument from omission so egregious, it would make a Jehovah’s Witness blush. Because Matthew doesn’t spell out the exact method of affixation, we’re expected to entertain the notion that centuries of Christian tradition and explicit Scripture got it wrong? But that’s not scholarship. It’s theological improv.

And then, like clockwork, the appeal to ambiguity is baptized in pseudo-piety. Garcia solemnly concludes that “asking the question” can turn our attention to the Word and the Cross.

That sounds deep until you realize how shallow it really is.

Asking whether Jesus was nailed or tied isn’t an attempt to deepen faith. It’s a subtle invitation to question the integrity of the text under the guise of intellectual honesty. In reality, it’s just liberalism in a lab coat.

Let us not forget that the gospel writers did not list every splinter in the cross or every fly that buzzed near Golgotha. They didn’t need to. Yet John’s account of Thomas is not a footnote—it’s a spiritual mic drop to Garcia’s nonsensical assertion. The risen Christ invites the doubter to touch the wounds left by nails. And instead of marveling at the bodily resurrection of our pierced Lord, modern scholars like Garcia prefer to turn the moment into a debate over hardware.

Worse still is the broader pattern this reveals. At Christianity Today…Astray, biblical clarity is treated as a liability, and certainty is regarded with suspicion. They clothe every questioning in the robes of academic humility while quietly sawing away at the floorboards of faith.

They do not build. They unbuild. They do not guard the truth. They file it down, reshape it, wrap it in scholarly gauze, and send it off with a polite nod to tradition. Their creed is doubt, their liturgy is deconstruction, and their altar is erected to the god of “nuance.”

And here, in this latest entry, they have given us a tale of nails that might not have been nails, a crucifixion that might not have been quite so crucifying, and a Savior whose very suffering is now open to interpretation depending on how you read the silence. The Cross, we are told, might not have left marks. Just impressions. Just shadows. Just guesses.

But make no mistake, this is not academic curiosity. It is not noble skepticism. It is theological rot. It is the same old liberalism with a new lexicon, the same soft assault on Scripture dressed in footnotes and archaeology.

And if it gets to run its course unchallenged, there won’t be much left to nail down at all.