A major philosophical question that has become central as the result of Bible scholarship and the growth of modern science is whether historical and scientific evidence can establish if God has revealed any information to mankind. This would also include whether God has intervened in history. This question is central for the Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions, since they center on certain historical documents, monuments, and institutions.
Bible critics have shown that when these items are treated as parts of human history, one can find out the best estimates of their dates, origins, original meanings and uses, and so on. But what does all of this establish in terms of the religious significance of these entities? A crucial matter that one would want to know is whether the documents, no matter what their history, do or do not convey special knowledge that God has imparted to man. Whether the documents are older or younger than people used to think does not settle this. But would any historical information accomplish a resolution of the question?
Let's consider some hypothetical cases. First, let us suppose that someone discovered a very ancient copy of the Pentateuch. Let us further suppose that by carbon-14 testing this manuscript could be dated around 1300-1400 B.C. Let us finally suppose that sufficient evidence could be found to lead historians to conclude that it was in the handwriting of Moses himself. Does that show that what Moses reported really happened, or only that the historical Moses reported that it happened?
If other corroborating evidence were found, the broken tablets with the Ten Commandments written on them, an account by Aaron of what his brother told him, and a journal by a disinterested bystander present during the period at Mount Sinai, would this settle the matter? Again the question would be, do these human artifacts show that God spoke to Moses, or again merely that Moses said that He did? The crucial feature of the situation is not in the documents but in whether there is a relationship between God and human history. The documents are human historical ones. Their revelatory status depends upon knowing not just that the documents report an alleged revelation but rather that a revelation took place. Can any historical information tell us this?
But what could all this research ever establish? It might settle interesting historical questions, such as was there a historical figure named Jesus of Nazareth, what actually happened to him during his lifetime, what doctrines did he actually teach, and were these doctrines original with him? But would any answers to these questions establish whether Jesus is or was God? At best they would tell us that Jesus said he was God, that be acted accordingly, and that some people believed him.
But could any information gleaned from human history tell us if Jesus actually was... God? Let us assume that a crucial document is found, the diary of Jesus of Nazareth. Let us suppose that it can be authenticated. This certainly would then be a more interesting document for finding out the message of Christianity than the accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul. But no matter what claims appear in the diary, they will not establish that Jesus is or was God, but only that he wrote certain claims. The historical information will not confirm or deny what is essentially not visible in human history. One can find the historical data that may or may not be the results of divine affairs, but to know that it is or is not related to God is more than the data can tell us.
Bible critics have shown the extraordinary amount of information one can gain about a text by employing all sorts of scientific and historical analyses, but in so doing, they have raised the problem of whether one can find the Bible's revelatory content by means of historical and scientific study.
Not all Biblical scholars have come to such negative or skeptical conclusions. One present-day scholar, John Warwick Montgomery (see Where is History Going? 1969), has tried to combat the results issuing from the works of Bible critics. Montgomery bases his counterattack on taking the Bible at face value, and insisting there are no good reasons to doubt the claims and to doubt the eyewitness accounts. In the case of Jesus, one has several independent accounts of the same events. There is no reason to believe that all of the Biblical writers would lie. (Montgomery points out that it is standards like this that lead us to accept any historical account, religious or secular.) Regarding an event like Jesus's death, there were hundreds of eyewitnesses (according to the Bible). Similarly, the miracles of feeding the flocks with a few loaves of bread were witnessed by multitudes. So if these miracles were seen by reliable witnesses, claim Montgomery and the English theologian and science fiction writer C. S. Lewis, we then have direct factual knowledge of the supernatural events recorded in the Bible.
Skeptics view this as an overcredulous acceptance of all claims in this ancient text as being true accounts. It would be as if a historian were to read in an ancient text an account of how a certain ancient prince slew a dragon with his pocket knife and concluded from this that dragons really existed.
Biblical criticism has raised a fundamental problem for the Christian believer. If the Bible is examined as a historical document, then the central question arises whether one can ascertain what, if anything, in the Bible contains revealed religious knowledge. Some have concluded that since the Bible is a historical document, it cannot also have a privileged status of containing information that goes beyond human history. One result of this view has been to denigrate the Bible to being just a compilation of documents of the early Hebrews and early Christians, having no particular import about the nature of God. Others have rejected the results of Biblical criticism, either denying the claims of Bible scholars or insisting that the historical interpretation does not deny that there is another dimension to Biblical material, namely its revelatory content.
As Bible scholars have accumulated more and more information about the historical context of the Biblical documents, the question of delineating what is the revealed information has become a central issue within the community of Christian believers, and has led to a wide variety of interpretations of Judaism and Christianity, ranging from a denial that either of them contains any special religious knowledge, to modern presentations reevaluating these religions in terms of modern scholarship, to fundamental rejections of the findings of the Bible critics. Another view was offered by the Danish philosopher of religion Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855). He concluded that the basis for religion could never be found in history but could only come from faith. If one had faith, then certain historical materials would have religious significance. This has led to the development of fideism, i. e., a complete reliance on faith and rejection of science and philosophy in religious matters.
The development of Bible criticism and the findings and theories of modern science have thus raised grave difficulties for Christian believers. I was reminded of this upon the reissuance of one of the best books on this problem: The Historian & the Believer: The Morality of Historical Knowledge and Christian Belief (Westminster Press, 1966). I recommend it to readers wanting to research the subject.
(Robert Lockwood, 3955 Bigelow Blvd., Apt. 106, Pittsburgh,
PA 15231; e-mail RLock81626@aol.com)
