Program / Course 7: New Testament Theology and History / Lesson 2.4
What you will learn
- Distinguish what historical method can establish from what Christian confession claims.
- Describe the main ways Christian thinkers relate the two.
- Discuss the resurrection as both a historical question and a confession of faith.
- Write about historical study of Jesus fairly, without treating it as either a threat or a proof.
The big idea
Historians work with evidence, comparison and probability, and they can say what is likely to have happened. Christians confess that Jesus is the Son of God, risen and Lord. These are different kinds of statement. Historical study can clarify the setting, sources and events behind the confession, and can sometimes challenge particular beliefs about them. It cannot by itself establish or refute a confession of faith. Churches and scholars differ about how closely the two should be tied.
Key terms
- Confession
- A statement of what a person or church believes, such as the creed. In this lesson it means the Christian claim that Jesus is Lord and Son of God.
- Historical method
- The way historians weigh evidence from the past to reach probable conclusions about what happened.
- Christ of faith
- A phrase used since the nineteenth century for Jesus as confessed and worshiped by the church, set against the ‘Jesus of history’ reconstructed by scholars. Many thinkers say the contrast is overdrawn.
- Incarnation
- The Christian teaching that the eternal Son of God became a human being in Jesus.
- Resurrection
- The Christian claim that God raised Jesus bodily from death on the third day.
- Apologetics
- The reasoned defense of the Christian faith.
- Methodological naturalism
- A rule of research that explains events by natural causes only. Whether it can settle the question of miracles is itself debated.
Background
The creeds name two kinds of fact together. Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried. Those clauses refer to events in history. The creeds also say that he is the only Son of God, that he rose and ascended, and that he will come to judge. These are claims about God and the meaning of events, and historians as such cannot test them.
Christian thinkers have long held that faith concerns real events. Paul writes that if Christ has not been raised, the preaching is vain (1 Corinthians 15:14). Luke says he investigated everything from the beginning (Luke 1:3). So Christianity cannot simply separate faith from history. At the same time, the church has always said that faith is a gift of God and a response to a person, and not only a conclusion from evidence.
Step-by-step explanation
Step 1: What history can and cannot do
Historical method works with the shared evidence of texts, archaeology and context. It reaches probabilities. It can say that Jesus lived, was baptized, taught and was crucified, and it can show how the gospels were written and read. It can describe what the first disciples claimed, and that they sincerely believed it.
It has limits. It cannot measure God’s action or decide whether Jesus is the Son of God. A historian who says ‘I cannot assess a miracle as a historian’ is describing a limit of the method. A historian who says ‘miracles cannot happen’ is making a philosophical claim, and one that rests on more than history. Careful scholars of all views try to keep these apart.
Step 2: Three ways Christians have related the two
Some stress continuity: faith depends on historical events, and historical evidence for them supports faith. Christians who take this line, such as many evangelical and Catholic scholars, argue that the evidence for the gospels and the resurrection is strong. They point to Paul’s list of witnesses (1 Corinthians 15:3 to 8) and to the empty tomb tradition.
Others stress distance. Martin Kähler argued in 1892 that faith should not depend on the results of scholars, since the Christ preached by the church is the real Christ of history, and Rudolf Bultmann held that faith answers the call of the proclamation and does not need historical proof. Critics reply that this makes faith detached from events, and that Christianity has always claimed that events took place.
A third group, including Wolfhart Pannenberg, argued that the resurrection is a historical question to be examined openly, and that its meaning is disclosed within the history of Israel’s expectations. N. T. Wright argues that the best historical explanation of the rise of the early church is that the first Christians were convinced they had seen Jesus risen. Others, such as the historian Bart Ehrman, accept the same early belief but hold that a historian cannot affirm the resurrection itself.
Step 3: The churches’ teaching
The Catholic Church teaches in Dei Verbum, paragraph 19, that the four gospels faithfully hand on what Jesus did and taught, written by the apostles and their circle, while the writers selected, summarized and adapted. This grants a role to critical study, within the church’s reading of Scripture. Orthodox teaching receives the gospels within the apostolic tradition and the worship of the church, and hears the resurrection as the center of the liturgical year.
Protestant churches confess the authority of Scripture and the truth of the gospel events, and they hold a wide range of views about critical methods. The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (1978) represents one conservative position, while other Protestant bodies accept more critical conclusions about authorship and sources without giving up the creeds.
Step 4: Habits of a fair student
A fair student does several things. State what the evidence is, and what is inference. Admit one’s own starting point, whether believing or skeptical. Avoid treating a single scholar’s theory as the result of ‘scholarship.’ Treat people who disagree as intelligent. And avoid using history as a weapon: neither ‘science has disproved the Bible’ nor ‘history proves the faith’ follows from the evidence.
A believer can hold that historical study is a gift that helps to read the gospels more closely and to hear them as written. A non-believer can read the gospels with respect as ancient texts that still have a claim to be understood. The course asks only for honesty about what is known, what is probable, and what is a matter of conviction.
- What questions about Jesus can a historian properly answer, and which lie beyond the historian’s tools?
- Why does Paul tie the truth of the Christian message to a historical event?
- Is it fair to say that faith should not depend on scholars’ results? What are the strengths and dangers of that view?
- Can a person who does not believe in miracles write a fair history of the first Christians?
- How would you respond to someone who says historical study has disproved the gospels?
- How would you respond to someone who says that historical study can prove the gospels?
Examples
The empty tomb
The gospels agree that women found Jesus’ tomb empty. Many scholars find the tradition early and unlikely to have been invented, since women’s testimony counted for little in the culture. Others explain it differently. All agree that the first Christians proclaimed a risen Jesus. They differ on why.
Two readers, one text
A believing reader and a skeptical historian read Mark 15 together. Both agree that Jesus was crucified under Pilate and that the author means to show him as a righteous sufferer. They differ on what to make of the story after the cross. The shared reading is real and the disagreement is also real.
A creed’s two kinds of claim
In the Nicene Creed, ‘he was crucified under Pontius Pilate’ can be examined by a historian, while ‘of one Being with the Father’ cannot. A student can study the first as history and the second as the church’s teaching about who Jesus is.
Different perspectives
Catholic view
Catholic teaching holds that faith and reason are not opposed, and that the church can use historical research as a servant of understanding Scripture. Dei Verbum states that the gospels are historical in character. The Church holds, on the authority of the tradition, that Christ rose bodily.
Orthodox view
Orthodox theology emphasizes that the risen Christ is known in the church, in worship and in the sacraments, and that knowing him is not mainly a historian’s conclusion. Orthodox writers often say that the resurrection is the foundation of the faith and an event in history.
Protestant view
Protestants range from those who rely on apologetic arguments for the historical reliability of the gospels to those who emphasize that faith is awakened by the word of God. The Reformers taught that the Holy Spirit gives assurance of Scripture’s truth, and that believers do not depend only on historical argument.
Secular and Jewish scholarly views
Secular historians hold that the resurrection cannot be established by historical method, though they agree the belief arose very early. Jewish scholars such as Geza Vermes and Pinchas Lapide have written about Jesus with sympathy, and have differed on whether the resurrection can be accepted as historical.
Why it matters
Many people feel that they must choose between a faith that ignores history and a history that dismisses faith. This lesson shows that the options are broader. Christian thinkers have long insisted on real events, and honest historians have long insisted on limits. A student who understands both can read the New Testament with more care and without needless fear.
Common misunderstandings
Misunderstanding: Historical study of the gospels is a danger to faith.
Correction: Churches differ on the details, but the major traditions teach that careful study of the text is permitted and useful. Many saints and teachers studied the text closely, and the gospels themselves invite investigation (Luke 1:1 to 4).
Misunderstanding: History can prove the resurrection.
Correction: History can examine the evidence for the early Christian claim and propose explanations. Whether it counts as proof depends on assumptions about what is possible, and on trust in the witnesses. Christians in all traditions also hold that faith is more than the sum of evidence.
Misunderstanding: History has disproved the resurrection.
Correction: A historian may decline to affirm it, but declining to affirm is not disproof. To disprove a miracle one would need more than historical method, namely a philosophical case that miracles cannot occur.
Misunderstanding: The Jesus of history and the Christ of faith are two different people.
Correction: The contrast describes two ways of speaking about the same person: one limited to what a historian can say, the other what the church confesses. Whether they match is the question under discussion.
Knowledge check
What can historical method say about Jesus?
It can say that Jesus lived in first-century Galilee and Judea, was baptized by John, taught and healed, and was crucified under Pilate, and that his followers soon proclaimed him raised. It reaches probabilities by weighing evidence, and it can study the gospels as ancient texts.
What can it not do?
It cannot measure God’s action or decide whether Jesus is the Son of God. It also cannot show that miracles are impossible, since that is a philosophical claim. These matters belong to faith and to philosophy.
How did Paul connect faith and history?
In 1 Corinthians 15 he lists witnesses to the risen Christ and states that if Christ has not been raised, the preaching and faith are in vain. He therefore treats the resurrection as an event on which faith depends.
Name two approaches Christians take to the relation between faith and historical results.
One holds that faith rests on historical events and that evidence supports it, as many evangelical and Catholic scholars argue. Another, such as Kähler and Bultmann, holds that faith answers the proclamation and does not depend on scholars’ reconstructions.
What habits mark a fair student of these questions?
Separating evidence from inference, naming one’s own starting point, not treating one scholar’s theory as settled, treating those who disagree with respect, and refusing to use history as a weapon either for or against faith.
Think it through
- Which side of the faith and history question comes more naturally to you, and why?
- How would your faith or your skepticism change if one detail in the gospels were shown to be mistaken?
- What does it mean to trust a witness, in everyday life and in religion?
- How can a class of believers and non-believers study the gospels together with respect?
Independent assignment
A fair statement
In your own notebook, write 350 to 500 words. State what a historian can say about the death of Jesus, then what the creed confesses about it, then explain how the two statements relate. Write it in a way that a thoughtful believer and a thoughtful skeptic could both accept as fair. Do not send this to anyone.
Further study
- N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God Read selectively for the argument that the rise of the early church needs explaining, and note other scholars’ replies.
- Catholic Church, Catechism of the Catholic Church Read the sections on the gospels and on Christ’s resurrection for the Catholic position.
- Timothy (Kallistos) Ware, The Orthodox Church Read the sections on Scripture and tradition for the Orthodox position.
- Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation of the Word Read selectively for the patristic account of why the Word became flesh.
- 1 Corinthians 15:14 Paul says that without the resurrection the preaching is vain.
- Luke 1:3 Luke’s careful investigation.
- John 20:31 These are written that you might believe.