I am unsure why this is a difficult concept for everyone here to understand, perhaps I am not explaining myself properly. Let me reiterate.
As I have already said pages ago in a post to Hedrick, the field of historical inquiry cannot prove anything that really counts about Christianity, namely the resurrection of Christ, the forgiveness of sins, etc.
Obviously, the forgiveness of sins cannot be proved by history. We're in agreement there.
But the reason the forgiveness of sins cannot be proved by history is because forgiveness is something that happens in the mind of God, and history doesn't have access to the mind of God. History examines events in the space-time universe which we have access to through archaeology and primary sources.
If we're to be serious about the resurrection as a historical event, then it should be open to the investigation of history.
It appears that a strawman keeps getting set up, that I am saying that because the Bible contains supernatural events, it cannot be trusted as a historical source in its entirety.
This is pretty strange, because I have already addressed this point specifically, saying that in normal historical inquiry, historians will ignore records of supernatural events in accounts such as Herodotus, and will generally give accounts that lack any mention of supernatural events, such as that of Thucydides, more credence.
I apologize if it seemed I was attacking a strawman and if I mischaracterized your views. But even in the above clarification, it seems you're slipping from one view to another. At first, you say that historians will discount
those portions of Herodotus that contain reports of supernatural events; but you go from there to say that Thucydides
on the whole is given more credence because it lacks supernatural evidence. The latter is clearly the reason for my misunderstanding.
But in any case, historians don't
a priori disregard Herodotus' reports of the supernatural. Those portions of Herodotus are worthwhile subjects of historical study (as well as, of course, literary study). Now a historian might come in with a naturalistic bias and attempt to find some natural reason behind Herodotus' report; but a naturalistic historian who attempts to investigate matters from a neutral standpoint will admit that Herodotus' report of a supernatural event may go back to an event that cannot be explained because we don't have access to that event except through Herodotus. In the end, the historian is left with "an event happened that we cannot explain given the present state of evidence, even though I believe it cannot have been supernatural."
This is precisely why I throw out any assertion by any "scholar" such as a NT Wright or anyone else that the actual occurrence of the resurrection can be proved out by history. If this were the case, we would have to accept the entirety of all ancient accounts of the supernatural, which no one is willing to do and would be bad historical study.
Well that definitely isn't true. N.T. Wright, James Dunn, and all the rest of the good folks involved in the third quest for the historical Jesus don't just
accept the accounts. Instead, they investigate the accounts through source criticism, form criticism, tradition history, and archaeology. And in the course of doing so, they also come to the conclusion that Jesus did
not to some of the miracles attributed to him (John Meier, in particular, comes to a series of carefully argued negative conclusions about the historicity of Jesus' "nature miracles"). But the positive or negative conclusions are borne out through
investigation and argumentation, not through
a priori assumptions of the reliability of whole reports or unreliability of whole reports.
Hence, anyone who builds their Christian faith on the historicity of accounts in Scripture ultimately will have to give up all of its supernatural elements.
I specifically said earlier that faith cannot be built on history. Faith is the direct gift of God in Jesus Christ, not the result of either historical investigation or the construction of a theology out of a supposed inerrant, verbally inspired text. Historical investigation, I said, is essential to faith in our historically-conscious age when faith is to be self-reflective; it is not the basis of faith.
And, in any case, no, no I don't have to give up all supernatural elements. I've certainly given up some. I don't believe Jesus actually turned water into wine, because the account, even once you peel back the layers of tradition history and formal integrated into John's gospel, does not meet any of the criteria for authenticity. But that doesn't mean the resurrection accounts don't meet the criteria for authenticity, nor does it mean that John's account of Jesus turning water into wine doesn't have the same meaning for us today as it would were it historical, because historical or not it is still
Scripture.
