Must One Rule Out the Possibility of Divine Activity?
Must One Rule Out the Possibility of Divine Activity?
One scholar complains that “the vast majority of modern historians” examining the resurrection story “would say that no evidence at all would ever demonstrate that a unique resurrection took place,” because it cannot be confirmed by scientifically. 4 “Few if any modern historians” would accept the evidence of the first followers’ belief to argue that Jesus actually appeared to them in a physical body; “If so, why not believe not only all the miracles of the Old Testament, including the six-day creation, as well as the miraculous giving of the Quran to Muhammad,” since “all have credible witnesses”? All who accept Jesus’ physical resurrection “as historical fact” are also Christians, which, he claims, suggests bias.5
The complaint here is a response to a Christian scholar claiming that an increasing number of New Testament scholars accept Jesus’ physical resurrection.6 The response seems fair if it primarily questions whether truth can be determined by a head count of scholars: most Christian scholars believe in a supernatural resurrection, whereas most non-Christians deny it. Yet it is unfair if it supposes that an appeal to secular scholars settles the question any more than an appeal to Christian scholars does. Scientific and historical epistemology demands evidence — appeal to authority (such as a head count of scholars) is a different epistemology, and tells us more about reigning philosophic paradigms than about historical facts. Naturally those who believe in the resurrection are (with a few notable exceptions) Christians — why would someone affirm Jesus’ resurrection yet not be counted as a Christian? But is a Christian (or Muslim, or other religious) interpretation any more inherently biased than a nonnegotiably “secular” one?7 Does this attribution of bias justify ignoring scholars with a different perspective or neglecting the evidence they present?
Most of our knowledge of history depends on the reports of witnesses and on evaluating those reports. To take the examples given, we do not have many witnesses concerning an angel revealing the Qur’an to Muhammad (though this lack of witnesses need not rule the claim out). Scripture offers no witnesses to a six-day creation, and the character of the creation narratives differs markedly from any of the genres of our resurrection reports for Jesus, whether Paul’s claims or those in the biographies we call Gospels.8 The comparisons suggest that the objection is not one of genre but that any claim suggesting supernatural activity (in whatever genre it occurs) must be consigned to the same category.
Some accept many miracle accounts (though not necessarily their explanation of supernatural causation) while rejecting those that lack sufficient parallels. Yet this claim that historiography a priori excludes anything “unique”9 can beg the question of uniqueness’ definition. Every historical event is unique in some sense, involving a variety of causes and consequences. In fact, an event like hundreds of people claiming to have seen their miracle-working teacher alive from the dead, and being prepared to die for this claim, was fairly unique at the time of its occurrence.10 Yet few would deny that this was in fact the experience of these people, however we explain it. The objection to countenancing “unique” events in this case does not mean objecting to what is merely unusual or even unrepeatable11 (history is not a repeatable scientific experiment), but to what is normally believed to be “impossible” apart from a divine, supernatural, or at least currently inexplicable cause.
This approach necessarily presupposes a specifically naturalistic definition of history, which is hardly neutral, and in fact functions as a circular argument in this case. To ask how many historians rule out the possibility of God acting in history is essentially to return to a head count of historians’ religious beliefs. (Here I think our particular scholar might underestimate the proportion of historians who do believe it, but that is beside our point.) Since historiography does not rule out intelligent causation as a historical factor (so long as the intelligence is human), one can rule out the theological question not because it involves causation but because it involves a deity. That is, to presuppose that God did not act (because he cannot act) one must first presuppose (or demonstrate) atheism or deism.
Methodological naturalism as a ground rule for inquiry functions well when exploring natural causes for events; normally we can accept it as a working method. But as a philosophic foundation philosophic, thoroughgoing naturalism is only a presupposition, no matter how many people believe it or (more often) use it. One can make normal use of the method to explore natural causes without assuming that one has thereby disproved theism (indeed, most of the early Enlightenment scientists who developed this method did so alongside theistic beliefs). Is it philosophically necessary to rule out the question of God as a possible cause for events (complicated as it may prove to devise tests for such a hypothesis)? If so, are we not simply presupposing (rather than proving) atheism or (as in the case of many of the later Enlightenment thinkers) deism? Intellectually fashionable though such an option may be in many elite circles, there is no reason why atheism or deism must constitute an epistemological assumption (much less that we should claim to have proved atheism or deism because we have started from this assumption).
Most of our other discussions in this book (regarding sayings traditions, biographic genre and so forth) should be agreeable to most historical inquirers regardless of religious or philosophic presuppositions. Discussing the nature of the resurrection, however, cannot so easily skirt the philosophic question. To rule out the possibility of this extraordinarily unusual occurrence despite otherwise persuasive evidence is easier if one rules out plausible supernatural explanations; yet to rule out the possibility of supernatural explanations is likely to prejudge the conclusion of one’s case in this instance.
N. T. Wright’s monumental work on resurrection (comparable to Raymond Brown’s works on the infancy and passion narratives) challenges the perspective of those who claim that Jesus’ resurrection is “not amenable to historical investigation.” 12 He surveys five senses in which we use the term “history”:
1. An event (what happened, whether or not we know it)
2. A significant event (worthy of record)
3. A provable event
4. Historiography (writing about history)
5. “What modern historians can say about a topic” (from a “modern” perspective)
Wright complains that some historical Jesus research proceeds as if rejecting knowledge about Jesus or the resurrection in the fifth sense entails rejection of it in every other possible sense of “history” as well.13 He contends that some arguments function as smokescreens meant to absolve scholars from engaging the questions seriously. For example, the claim that we lack direct access to what “happened” could be made for much of history.14 He suggests that ruling out even asking questions about God or Jesus’ resurrection is not neutral, but part of the radical Enlightenment’s cultural hegemony.15