In The New Testament and the People of God NT Wright offers an epistemological theory as a necessary prolegomenon to his overall work. This is quite an odd thing to do- other historians do not feel compelled to preface their works with thoughts about how we can know anything at all. They just get on with it.
However, Wright feels compelled to do this because he wants to defend the gospels against the charge that their value as historical documents has been fatally compromised by the interpretative framework in which the historical facts are lodged.
“we must insist that the gospels, though they are…theological through and through, are not for that reason any less historical. The fact of their being interpretations does not mean they are not interpretations of events….” P.95 NTPG
He does this by proposing that all knowledge (or as Wright calls it, the “process of knowing”) involves selection and therefore interpretation.
Wright’s theory, which he calls critical realism, can be briefly stated
1. All knowledge is based on a selection of the available sense impressions “at any given waking moment, I am aware of a vast number of sense impressions, out of which I make a very limited selection for my current focus of attention and interest”
2. But if all knowledge is based on sensation, how can we be sure what the sensations are sensations of? Do not the sensations cut us off from any knowledge of reality?
3. Wright’s response is that while we can never know anything with complete certainty, we do get at reality by an iterative process of hypothesis, framed in terms of the pictures we have formed of the world, about what exists ie., objects and events. Thus our access to reality is
“achieved along the spiralling path of appropriate dialogue or conversation between the knower and the thing known”p.35
and
“knowledge takes place, within this model, when people find things that fit with the particular story or (more likely) stories to which they are accustomed to give allegiance” p.37
Later he says his own view of “reality as we know it” is the Christian story of salvation. This story “fits far more with the real world than the usual post Enlightenment ones” p.98
The charge that the gospels are worthless as records of fact because they involve interpretation is thus defeated- all knowledge and hence all history involves selection, a point of view and interpretation. It is thus grossly unfair to exclude the gospels as reliable history because they do likewise.
However, Wright’s theory of knowledge is open to a number of criticisms.
Wright regards knowledge as a process in which we select from the sense data (or ‘raw’ data) presented to us. The notion that knowledge rests on sense data is heavily traversed territory within philosophy and has been strongly attacked, particularly by Wittgenstein. Wright does not canvass these objections to his theory and in fact seems to be unaware of them.
Secondly, Wright’s reliance on sense data threatens to establish an unbridgeable gap between the individual and the external world. Wright’s defends against this possibility by arguing that we fit the raw data of experience into a larger story and then check to see how it fits with reality. The idea of checking a model or hypothesis against the facts or reality makes sense within science or history but it will not serve in epistemology because epistemology asks how we can be sure that we apprehend reality so it may not assumeapprehension of reality as a given.
Wright’s suggestion that knowledge is a process and thus all essentially of the same sort rests on a certain picture of the knowledge “process” (largely derived from British empiricism) and completely ignores the logical grammar of the word “knowledge”. The “process” of knowing is assimilated to a process such as eating where I pick and choose between the dishes available at a buffet.
The verb ‘know’ does not refer to a process at all- it has no present continuous tense. It is a speech act in which I make a claim that X is the case and that I can prove it- that is, I can answer the question, how do you know? The proofs vary with the kind of knowledge claim it is (compare the difference in responses to the question “how do you know?’ in the case of the following knowledge claims: I know the names of all the Prime Ministers of Australia, I know how to count, I know where Smith is). In none of these instances of knowledge does the question of selection of raw data even arise.
Finally, Wright’s theory obliges him to claim that we never know anything with certainty. Wright is driven to this insupportable position because he believes that his claim that all knowledge involves selection of raw data entails that I can never be sure that the particular set of data I have selected accords with reality. However the claim is plainly untrue. For example, I know with certainty that Tony Blair is the Prime Minister of Britain; that the Great War took place between 1914-18; that the holocaust occurred during the Second World war. Somebody who denied any of these propositions would be considered to be mentally ill (persons being tested for Alzheimers are standardly asked whether they know the name of the current Prime Minister) or paltering with the truth in the service of ideology (David Irving). If we really thought we could know nothing with certainty, our behaviour would be very different. Wright’s claim is, in Wittgenstein’s phrase, a case of language idling.
Wright’s theory of knowledge is designed to allow him to claim that all knowledge and hence all history involves selection and hence a view point and interpretation.
“in order to make any statements about the past human beings have to engage in a massive pro gram of selection” p.83 NTPG
“to imagine that all we do is record how it actually happened with no interpretative element…is arrogant absurdity” p.86 “
“there is no such thing as the ‘neutral’ or ‘objective’ observer; equally, there is no such thing as the detached observer’ p36 NTPG
What do we make of the claim that all historical knowledge involves selection.
In some cases we do select the facts on which to base history. Such selection depends on eg., the level of detail of our enquiry (life of Napoleon as against France in the 19th century) or a particular interest (economic history as against art history). This kind of selection obviously occurs in the gospels- for example, we are told only a little about Pilate or Herod but quite a lot about Jesus. Selection of this sort is not necessarily a criticism of an historical work, though you might say that the gospels take brevity to extremes.
However there is a pejorative sense of selection as applied to history- as when, say, David Irving, in writing history about the Holocaust, selects some facts and avoids others. We regard such selection as a perversion of historical enquiry and believe not only that it can be avoided but that it must be avoided. Those who criticise the gospels as historical records are thinking of selection in this latter sense. Their argument is that the beliefs of the gospel authors have so contaminated the story that it is impossible to recover the facts on which the story is based. This may or may not be so but it is not to be rejected by a spurious epistemological theory that all knowledge is based on selection of raw data.
And the praise that we confer on an historian for having provided a balanced account is, if Wright’s view is to be accepted, a logical error for it is an epistemic truth that no one can be neutral or objective. Good news for David Irving.
Wright wants to say that all history involves interpretation. This is simply wrong. Historical facts sometimes require interpretation, sometimes not. Within the intelligence community, a distinction is often made between the raw data and the interpreted data eg about what was happening inside Saddam’s Iraq. Interpretation is called for in such a case because information about what was happening was so meagre and agencies had to substitute guesswork based on snippets of information. Wright’s view of interpretation would assimilate that bit of history to eg Tony Blair winning the last UK election. But this is absurd: who in their right mind would suggest that the fact (as distinct from its implications) of Tony Blair’s electoral victory was open to interpretation.
The meaning or implication of events is much more likely to require interpretation but not always. Nobody doubted that defeat at Stalingrad meant a massive setback for the Wehrmacht. On the other hand, whether it meant the end of Nazi Germany was matter for interpretation.
In summary, the fact that the gospels mix fact with the faith and theology of their authors does pose questions about the historicity of the events the gospels record. These questions need to be settled on their merits not by an appeal to epistemology.
stereohindsight
A historical fact may be indisputable, but what makes us think of this or that fact as ‘history’? Facts such as man successfully landing on the moon, or the death of JFK are indisputable because of wide publicity and numerous witnesses. Facts of ‘lesser significance’ will often disappear into obscurity.
How many today, know the history of the Apollo flights that preceded the first moon landing, or care what JFK did on the day prior to his lurid assassination? Paulhartigan’s decleration regarding the holocaust is similar. Even so, here we would acknowledge that for the same ‘event’, a German perspective may be different from a Jewish one, and a Russian perspective may differ significantly from a British one.
The Russians ‘know’ that they won the 2nd World War, a claim that may be questioned by a Brit or American, each of whom feels their nation to be the rightful victor. Revisionist historians in Japan would like to revive what they consider to be Japan’s proud history of conquest in the 19th and early 20th centuries. A friend (Rich Kurz) brought this home (quite powerfully) to me and here’s a link to his article.
Facts in history are subjective! This does not make them any the less ‘facts’.
Ideology (and epistemology) certainly make a difference to how one sees history. The situation with NT scholarship is a very goosd case in point. If one takes in hand two commentaries on a gospel, produced by two different schools (say German vs British) one will be struck by the fact that while both seem to hold to similar theories (say Markan priority & ‘Q’ as sources) the results of their analysis of the history of any one verse will likely be divergent.
I distinctly remember, when first starting to try to make sense of the different ‘criticisms’ one respected scholar identifying a verse as definitely helenistic, while a couple of weeks later, another equally weighty scholar said that the same verse ‘must’ have originated in an Aramaic context. For me, this was only the very puzzling beginning - made ad still makes my head spin!
Of course, my ignorance is not the issue, but I feel that regardless of whether or not one accepts Wright’s epistemology, his defense of the relative historicity of the Gospel traditions is sound, especially in the light of what generally passes for ‘consensus’ in scholastic NT exegesis.
I would argue, though from a different epistemological standpoint to Wright’s, that all history is interpretation. The very fact that something is considered significant enough to be history is itself an interpretive act.
Live to serve : Serve to live
Facts in history are subjective????
Hi samlcarr
You say “Facts in history are subjective”
Which of the following facts would you regard as subjective
George Bush was elected President in 2000 and 2004. President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 Napoleon invaded Russia in the early 19th centuryAren't they?
Perhaps the problem is that we are using the word ‘history’ differently. Were I to write history, it would be about something ( a period, some nations interacting, key people, ideas…) that I was passionate about.
My ‘history’ may not include any of the ‘facts’ that you feel are history. GWB winning the Presidency twice may enter my tale as a particularly bad example of how democracy can go wrong…
A century or two down the road, if, (a big IF) anyone ran across my take, and didn’t have much other exposure, their view of some major events of the early 21st C would be very strange ones by today’s standards. The only thing they would be sure of is that I wrote out of a real sense of involvement about happenings in my time. So, my interpretation would in turn have to be interpreted by the scholars and historians of that time.
If my synthesis had the halmarks of my times, and if my reconstruction were apparently consistent and reasonable sounding, it may even become the History! And, if what was left as corroborating evidence was only what’s in blogs today, they might even conclude that I was a centrist!
Coming back to the question of interpreting the NT. The first Quest was a mess, the second only tentatively better but the 3rd promises to bring us much more into line with the spirit of the NT.
Live to serve : Serve to live
Re: Facts in history are subjective????
Geoge Bush’s election is a good example. First, we consider “elected.” The Florida debacle comes into play. Whether he became President by election or by judicial decree is very much under dispute in contemporary society, let alone posterity. Most who want to answer this question are supporters of Bush or do not support him—few are considered “neutral.” Was he “actually” elected? Who knows what the voters intended? That’s a factor of chads, dimples, pregnancies, vote counters, etc. Then there’s the theoretical debate as to whether any of that matters once the “process” has reached a decision (whether or not it corresponds to what it “should” have).
Next we consider Kennedy. What is “1963”? Why, a human (subjective) construct, of course. Some considered it the Year of the Rabbit. And then consider all those conspiracy theories…can no historian ever question whether JFK was in fact assassinated? Must they ignore the conspiracy theories that are well-known and which people persist in bringing up?
Now Napolean. What is “Russia”? Why, another social construct. It’s boundaries change, due to shifting geographical features, military action, diplomatic agreements, etc. Once we (subjectively) define things, then we can (sometimes apparently objectively) say what events meet our (subjective) definitions.
In other words, things really happen. But our understanding of them is skewed by our language, culture, and social positioning. This is what I understand to be Wright’s “critical realism.” The Modern solution to bias is to pursue neutral objectivity; the Postmodern solution is to seek agreement from people with diverse biases—languages, cultures, and social positions.
Wright, interpretation and theories of knowledge
Very interesting to get a criticism of Wright’s epistemological framework, Paul. Well done you! I would like to raise one or two questions.
Beginning with your conclusion: aren’t you taking a very narrow view of ‘knowledge’, eg Tony Blair is the Prime Minister of Britain, the names of the Prime Ministers of Australia etc? In relation to the gospels, Wright is doing much more than establishing a foundation for belief in the literal historical accuracy of the accounts of Jesus’s life. He is also asking how we can know the Jesus presented in the accounts - that’s to say, know him with some sense of accurate historical perspective. It is in this latter sense that selection and point of view influence the picture. But selection and point of view do not necessarily invalidate the historical groundedness of the picture, since all such historical portraits, at any point in history, involve selection and point of view.
Ancient history in particular recognises that ‘facts’ in themselves are only the beginning of ‘knowing’ what actually happened in any historical period, and beyond that are the interpretive purposes of the observer/historian. Modern history is also written in this way: we have Whig interpretations of history; history as written from the point of view of Gibbon, Macaulay, A.J.P.Taylor, J.H.Plumb, Asa Briggs, Christopher Hill, the blatantly propagandist versions of history such as by Arthur Bryant or Winston Churchill, and so on. More recent historians seem much more alert to the hidden presuppositions that all historians bring to their historical enquiry, which makes history such a fascinating subject to study at this time.
There is a historical ‘myth’, which is not so much to do with establishing whether events actually happened or not, but that a position of supposed ‘neutrality’ is possible, from which true ‘knowledge’ (in the interpretive sense) can be attained. Wright calls this ‘the view from nowhere’ - because there is no such neutral position. It is one of the myths of modernism - which also attaches itself to scientific ‘knowledge’, and heavily influences the approach of Richard Dawkins. It has infected biblical criticism for the best part of two centuries, and continues to this day - eg in the ‘Jesus Seminar’ quest for the historical Jesus.
Theories of knowledge have of course been the subject of debate in modern times from Descartes onwards. I doubt if any one person, let alone Wright, could absorb the entire history of epistemology, which is far from a single, simple line of development leading to a uniformly held position. Wright’s theory of ‘critical realism’ is as good a working model of knowledge as any. It discards the idea that a naive apprehension of ‘things as they really are’ is possible either in direct experience or through recorded events. But it pulls back from the more typically postmodern idea that it is impossible to have any knowledge of anything with any degree of certainty, such as that things perceived are purely a product of our linguistic culture.
Wright is a ‘realist’ - aligning himself with those who say we can have knowledge of the world around us and its history with some degree of certainty, but also ‘critical’ - in taking account of philosophical and historical developments which have made naive beliefs about the directness and accuracy of apprehension untenable, yet nevertheless allowing a place for cross-questioning of things apprehended in order to reach a more complete grasp of what they portend. This is particularly appropriate in biblical criticism, where the model of a ‘hermeneutical spiral’ has for some time been offered as a way of guiding interpretation.
Wright has also more potently suggested that one of the ways in which we process information as a way of ‘knowing’ the world around us is by comparing it with the stories which we inveterately create about our lives. This phenomenon cannot be lightly dismissed, and it particularly accords again with an age which recognises the existence and significance of such ‘stories’ on a personal level, contrasting them with the perceived unreliability of stories which we have been given from ‘higher authorities’ - such as the Marxist, Capitalist, Freudian narratives which purport to explain broader reality to us.
I find I have some way to go before accepting your comments, but welcome the issues they raise as a subject for discussion.
Do we all have a barrow to push?
Peter
You say
“Theories of knowledge have of course been the subject of debate in modern times from Descartes onwards. I doubt if any one person, let alone Wright, could absorb the entire history of epistemology, which is far from a single, simple line of development leading to a uniformly held position. Wright’s theory of ‘critical realism’ is as good a working model of knowledge as any. “
There are, as you say, different views within philosophy, about epistemology. However I disagree that “Wright’s theory of ‘critical realism’ is as good a working model of knowledge as any”. Wright’s theory scarcely passes muster as the work of a first year philosophy student and I do not believe that he has any serious knowledge of the history of epistemology. What is particularly objectionable about his theory is that it is designed to support a position he wants to take on the historicity of the gospels and not a genuine treatment of the subject on its merits- that is, he wants to arrive at a position where he can say that all knowledge and hence all history involves selection, a point of view and interpretation so that he can conclude that it is unfair to exclude the gospels as reliable history because they do likewise.
“There is a historical ‘myth’, which is not so much to do with establishing whether events actually happened or not, but that a position of supposed ‘neutrality’ is possible, from which true ‘knowledge’ (in the interpretive sense) can be attained. Wright calls this ‘the view from nowhere’ - because there is no such neutral position.”
I accept that history involves selection eg in the level of detail or the themes to be examined. But Wright wants to argue more than that . He wants to say that “there is no such thing as the ‘neutral’ or ‘objective’ observer; equally, there is no such thing as the detached observer’. In other words everyone has a barrow to push. Wright thus wants to exclude from the language the possibility of describing an account of a past event as neutral or objective or detached. This means that you cannot draw a distinction between the work on the Second world War of David Irving and, say, John Keegan. It means that we can no longer object that a judge has been biased or that a tender board favoured the chairman’s cousin or that a Murdoch newspaper mixes fact and editorial. These are distinctions that we make everyday and Wright has given no reason to suppose that it is illicit to do so.
Re: Do we all have a barrow to push?
We don’t necessarily all have a barrow to push, but we do all have a point of view. Even a camera selects detail according to the angle in which it is pointed by the photographer. This is not to say that we cannot have any knowledge of history, but that historical knowledge is never detached from wider questions - such as what the consequences of occurrences may have been, what the intentions were of those who took actions, what the historical context which helps to explain actions and events, what the interpretive connections between historical figures, their actions, and the contexts in which they took place, what the significance of these actions for us today. These are precisely the kinds of questions which are asked about Jesus, and on which Wright’s idea of critical realism sheds light - as well as providing a basis for his own approach to the quest for the historical Jesus.
Re: Do we all have a barrow to push - the final instalment?
Paul
I stand by my previous comment, though I accept that Wright applies his argument to the gospels as history in themselves.
Maybe this could become a contemporary equivalent of the Barth/Brünner debate - the Wilkinson/Hartigan spat. Maybe someone should adjudicate. And where did the umlaut come from in that ‘ü’?
Just a detail from a previous comment of yours: you said -
“Wright thus wants to exclude from the language the possibility of describing an account of a past event as neutral or objective or detached. This means that you cannot draw a distinction between the work on the Second world War of David Irving and, say, John Keegan.”
This is the opposite of what Wright argues. His use of the model of an interpretive spiral means that we can constantly set one interpretation against another and come to better informed conclusions - which would immediately be the case with David Irving.
Eric correctly identified the source of my quotation. The prize is free cappuccinos for two at the Royal Festival Hall cafeteria next time you are passing through.
Do we all have a barrow to push
Peter
My argument is that
1. Wright devises a theory of epistemology which allows him to say “there is no such thing as the ‘neutral’ or ‘objective’ observer; equally, there is no such thing as the detached observer’
2. Wright wants to be able to say this because if all knowledge and hence all history involves selection, a point of view and interpretation it is unfair to exclude the gospels as reliable history because they do likewise
3. To rebut Wright I argue that
I do not disagree with your observation that “historical knowledge is never detached from wider questions etc” but I do not see how it bears on my argument .
Re: Do we all have a barrow to push
Paul
I think you have made a basic misunderstanding of Wright’s argument. He is not using a ‘critical-realist’ epistemology as a way of asserting the historicity of the gospels; rather he is proposing a pathway which will provide a better approach to New Testament interpretation. In doing so he avoids the extremes of positivism, or naive realism on the one side, and phenomenalism on the other. He also adds the idea that we are essentially story-tellers, and factual knowledge of history tends to be assimilated into one or another narrative explanation or ordering of the facts. This is simply how we order, or make sense of our understanding of reality, and begin to arrange it into a worldview. (The existence of worldviews is one of the arguments for the necessity of the spiral of ‘critical realism’).
I found this summary of part of his argument in ‘The New Testament and the People of God’ quite helpful:
“Finally, to the idea that history is knowledge of what happened we must add three further levels of historical understanding. First, history must encompass human intentionality: we are concerned not only with the ‘outside’ of an event but also the ‘inside’ (109-112). Secondly, the task of the historian is not merely to record isolated facts but to describe the narrative that connects and makes sense of the facts: ‘a great many people within the guild of New Testament specialists have written very little history as such’ (113). Finally, we may inquire as to the meaning of historical events. ‘The meaning of an event, which… is basically an acted story, is its place, or its perceived place, within a sequence of events, which contribute to a more fundamental story; and fundamental stories are of course one of the constituent features of worldviews’ (116).”
Prizes to anyone who knows where it came from.
Re: Do we all have a barrow to push
Sounds much like Andrew’s summary to me.
Did I misunderstand Wright's argument?
Peter
You comment that
“I think you have made a basic misunderstanding of Wright’s argument. He is not using a ‘critical-realist’ epistemology as a way of asserting the historicity of the gospels; rather he is proposing a pathway which will provide a better approach to New Testament interpretation.”
We disagree. For the reasons I have given in my previous posts I believe that Wright uses his ‘critical-realist’ epistemology precisely in order to assert the historicity of the gospels. He seeks to disarm those who deny or downplay gospel historicity on grounds that the gospel authors mix fact with faith/theology by saying everybody does something similar when they write history.
Further evidence that this is so is the fact that after the initial bout of theorising, Wright scarcely if ever makes use of his epistemological theory to “provide a better approach to New Testament interpretation”. In other words he makes little if any hermeneutic use of the theory- it is there for other reasons.
As regards the idea that “we are essentially story-tellers, and factual knowledge of history tends to be assimilated into one or another narrative explanation or ordering of the facts etc” I feel somewhat sceptical. The idea came originally (I think) from Alisdair McIntyre’s book After Virtue and has had a brief floruit but has (again, I think) come under attack and no longer figures prominently in the theory or practice of historians. However, I may need to be corrected on this.
I have no problems with “three further levels of historical understanding etc” you quote from Wright but I do not think these comments are germane to the issues I have raised
Re: NT Wright is seriously wrong, part 2: does all history depen
Paul:
In summary, the fact that the gospels mix fact with the faith and theology of their authors does pose questions about the historicity of the events the gospels record. These questions need to be settled on their merits not by an appeal to epistemology.
Thoughtful post. I’d be quite interested to hear your proposal on how ‘these questions’ ought to be settled apart from this epistemology.
How to settle historical questions
Brad
I would refer you to the debate over the last two centuries, with the Jesus seminar and people like Bultmann at one end of the spectrum and those who believe in the bible as an inerrant historical record at the other.
My point is that epistemology has no place in this debate but has been introduced by NT Wright to provide support for a particular view about biblical historicity.
Re: How to settle historical questions
Epistemology and presuppositions, to whatever extent we can be conscious of them, when expressed, will serve to clarify discussions and scholarship.
Perhaps Wright’s epistemology is faulty, in which case we could discuss the epistemology first before getting into the issues around his exegesis.
Bultmann’s epistemology, he wore on his sleave, while for most of the scholars this is simply not true. Certainly, (except for Barr) the Jesus Seminar group are poor in comparison to one of their mentor’s in this regard.
Live to serve : Serve to live
Beware epistemology!
Samlcar,
Epistemology is a vast and difficult subject to which every major philosopher has contributed. Venturing epistemological theories without an understanding of its history is fraught with peril. In other words if historians are going to do it, they need to know what they are talking about.
Wright doesn’t.
More importantly, I can see no need for historians to get involved in such theorising and, to my knowledge, very few of them have ever done so.
too late by half
Sorry for the delayed response! It is far too late for me to “beware epistemology”. A fundamental shift for me was moving from more traditional evangelical thinking to a PoMo stance and this unfortunately involves basic questions about the nature of knowledge, how truth can be known, whether truth exists and to what extent truth can be known (or encountered). I’m afraid that most friends who have run into PoMo have a similar dilemma and have had to ask and answer these questions.
In any case, the epistemology under discussion is Tom Wright’s and I doubt that there is much to beware of in considering that!
Certainly one’s epistemology must be flexible enough to tackle different types of enquiry. Certainly, history is as much art as science with hard to quantify factors like instinct and gut reaction playing a large part in what we do and do not believe when we are looking at a work of history.
In this regard, I do not think that Wright is proposing that history can be a pure science. I do think that he takes the written word as the basic data and in the spiral of hermeneutics, we are encouraged to take the text with us as basic data for constant comparison. I don’t see anything intrinsically problematic here. The process is also avowedly an individual one and therefore subjectivity is accomodated in the process itself.
Live to serve : Serve to live
Re: NT Wright is seriously wrong, part 2: does all history depen
It depends on what you mean by “history.”
Some people mean “the modern study of history,” having in mind certain methods and principles. Such methods are biased against any unique people or events (since the allegorical principle concludes that the same sorts of things have happened in the past that happen now), requiring stronger evidence for anything unique or unusual than for everyday sorts of things. I believe this is the sense taken by the Jesus Seminar. Questions of historicity are not settled by appeals to epistemology.
But other people mean “what has been passed down,” distinguishing between what a person may have been from what they are remembered for. “My Dad will go down in history as the first man ever to swim across the Atlantic Ocean, but to me he’ll always be the man who taught me how to fish.” Little relevance to epistemology.
Sometimes “history” is synonymous with “account.” “A history of bubble gum.” Epistemology is of little use.
Where epistemology does come into play, however, is when people understand “historical” to be synonymous with “real” and the oppositite of “fiction.” When asking, “is the resurrection historical,” they are not asking whether there is enough evidence for a neutral judge today to accept that it happened 2,000 years ago, they are asking whether or not it actually happened. While guild historians must say “We have to say that Jesus did not rise from the dead days after he died simply because nobody rises from the dead days after dying,” this does not really address the question of whether Jesus actually did.
How certified historians answer questions about how we know whether or not a unique event has happened is separate from whether any such events have happened; and epistemology is most certainly relevant to addressing questions about whether there is a God and has he intervened in human reality in unique ways.
Re: NT Wright is seriously wrong, part 2: does all history depen
What if the stories contain abosoutely NO facts? Woud the truth contained in the message be any different?
The reason we seek the historically factual information about the NT (and the OT for that matter) is so that we can get a proper context for the metaphorical story. Discussions about the factualness of resurrection or virgin birth make us Christians seem silly, but most theological discussions always devolve back to the point of “is it fact or fiction”. In my mind it really doesn’t matter. Everything Jesus said and everything Paul or others said about him would be just as TRUE even if the whole lot of them were fictional characters. Jesus is both a historical person AND a fictional character. The same is true for any “story” based on a historical persons life. We can’t “prove” the facts about historical person but we don’t need to because we can prove the facts about the character in the stories. What he says and does in the narrative is “literary fact” because it is in the story.
N.T. Wright probably wouldn’t phrase it that way, but I think that general idea is at the heart of this discussion. The Bible is a narrative not a history book.
How exactly does the past effect the present other than through our minds (memory, emotions, feelings)? Let’s say that I told you my mother died when I was 3 in a boating accident and this effect has left emotional scars and development issues in my personality as they relate to a fear of water and a host of other issues. Now lets say that she didn’t ACTUALLY drown but that is what my adoptive parents told me because they didn’t want me to know she was a drug addict that abandonded me on the side of the road. Wouldn’t the effects of a fictional story be the same as a historically factual story? Would I be any less afraid of the water? How would I “know” the difference. That is a morbid example but the point is that the truth is that the story of my mother’s death has changed my life regardless of the historical accuracy of the story.
Can’t the effects of a fictional story of Jesus be just as “real” and life changing as a historical account? Maybe it is actually more profound and life changing as told through metaphors. It is certainly more memorable that way. I’m sure there are many differences between the historical Jesus and the “character” Jesus in the NT. Actually, each gospel has a slightly different character of Jesus. John’s character of Jesus is dramatically different and uses much different language, but that isn’t the point. It is the character of Jesus as precieved by each Christian (i.e. Christ) which lives on forever and plays out his role as savior in our lives. Why does it matter how much of the fictional character actually resembles the historical man.
http://danutz.blogspot.com
The historical Jesus
Danutz
Your comment raises very interesting questions. However before responding to the substance of them, I think you are mistaken in your understanding of NT Wright’s position: he regards himself as an historian who seeks to establish what happened.
You say
Everything Jesus said and everything Paul or others said about him would be just as TRUE even if the whole lot of them were fictional characters.
Jack Miles’ two books, on the OT and the NT, proceed in this vein. I personally have found them far more enlightening than most of the biblical scholarship I have read.
Consider the resources that will beavailable to the future historian who comes to write about George Bush: the eyewitness accounts, the diaries , the recorded conversations, the vast corpus of electronic images. Compare this with the historical resources we have about Jesus- the gospel accounts themselves and very little else besides. You would have to say that the historical record relating to Jesus is derisory by comparison with that for George Bush. And yet I and hundreds of millions of others over the last two thousand years look on Jesus as God and are prepared to change our lives because of him.
This brings to mind something written by Wittgenstein on this subject.
“Kierkegaard writes: If Christianity were so easy and cosy, why should God in his Scriptures have set Heaven and Earth in motion and threatened eternal punishments? - Question: But in that case why is this Scripture so unclear? If we want to warn someone of a terrible danger, do we go about it by telling him a riddle whose solution will be the warning? - But who is to say that the Scripture really is unclear? Isn’t it possible that it was essential in this case to `tell a riddle’? And that, on the other hand, giving a more direct warning would necessarily have had the wrong effect? God has four people recount the life of his incarnate Son, in each case differently and with inconsistencies - but might we not say: It is important that this narrative should not be more than quite averagely historically plausible just so that this should not be taken as the essential, decisive thing? So that the letter should not be believed more strongly than is proper and the spirit may receive its due. I.e. what you are supposed to see cannot be communicated even by the best and most accurate historian; and therefore a mediocre account suffices, is even to be preferred. For that too can tell you what you are supposed to be told. (Roughly in the way a mediocre stage set can be better than a sophisticated one, painted trees better than real ones, - because these might distract attention from what matters.)
The Spirit puts what is essential, essential for your life, into these words. The point is precisely that your are only SUPPOSED to see clearly what appears clearly even in this representation. (I am not sure how far all this is exactly in the spirit of Kierkegaard.)
Christianity is not based on a historical truth; rather, it offers us a (historical) narrative and says: now believe! But not, believe this narrative with the belief appropriate to a historical narrative, rather: believe, through thick and thin, which you can do only as the result of a life. Here you have a narrative, don’t take the same attitude to it as you take to other historical narratives. Make a quite different place in your life for it. There is nothing paradoxical about that!
Re: The historical Jesus
It seems to me that the difficulties rise when we confuse the search for facts about the historical Jesus with the search for understanding of the character Jesus. There is importance to the understanding of who the historical Jesus was and we can gain greater understanding of the meanings of the stories by studying the historical Jesus as well as the historical authors of the NT. It is also important to understand the Christ figure and how the stories, myths, and spiritual meanings of the stories now effect our lives. We also have to understand that the writers of the NT had decades (some might say a century or more) to let the story of Christ grow in their hearts and minds before creating the character of Jesus. This must be factored into our analysis of the texts as well.
Paul, you said…
Exactly what narrative truth does Christianity ask us to “believe” in? Maybe we are getting at the same point. I would argue that the the search for “truth” in Christianity is skewed when it focuses on believing in any particular historical truth about Jesus or about the nature of God and creation. I feel that the compelling truth of Christianity is vision of a possible future that Jesus paints which consists of a different type of community (Kingdom of God). If we interpret Christianity this way then we no longer have to separate Jesus from his Jewish roots since the whole truth of the Jewish faith is also about developing this community. I see the truth of Jesus as the same vision for the future as Moses and the OT prophets but set in a different time and place.
Israel has historically seemed to misinterpret the call to community to be limited to a particular land. Modern Christianity has misinterpreted the call to community to be a particular set of historical truths about Jesus. Both have at times lost thier way. The real truth we seek is the vision of a possible community and this vision is clear in the scared texts of both traditions as well as many others. The land of Israel and the person of Jesus are important catalysts for the community but they are not to be turned into idols and substitued for the community.
Re: The historical Jesus
The problem with this, to my mind, is that this ‘different type of community’ is not merely a future ideal. It has been in existence arguably since Abraham (whatever that means historically), and more importantly claims that its identity and nature were critically changed by events that took place at a certain point in history. It seems to me that as a historical (and no merely ideal) community we are bound to ask: What happened to us? How have we been shaped by that event? If we presuppose historical continuity, it seems rather weak-minded not to face up to questions of historical origins.
Re: The historical Jesus
That is exactly my point Andrew. The community talked about through the entire narrative is not a particular community that will happen in exactly one place or time. It is a “type” of community or a set of ideals to be applied to every community. The KOG has always been around in that it’s ideals have always effected community in some way, but it must be nurtured so that it becomes more fully realized. The whole point of the Genesis myths is to show that this type of community is not only possible but was the original intention of the creator. The whole point of the Torah and its laws were to help provide guidelines for establishing the ideal community. The whole point of the Prophets was to realign Israel back to the values of the ideal community. The main points of the NT is to echo the phrophets critique of Israel and to extend the values to the rest of the world beyond Israel. In the end it is all about creative stories, laws, policies and inspiration to help nurture the ideals of living in community in this special way. If we loose focus on the narrative of community then we end up with the whole “left behind” type of fundamentalist view of a future kingdom forced on us by a theistic God.
Prophetic claims throughout the OT and NT are calls to make the community happen and warnings about what could happen if we don’t do that. Of course every prophecy is laced with the relevant metaphors known to their own culture and filled with their own biased opinions about what the ideal community might look like.
I don’t mean to stray off topic and I mention this here because it changes “why” we look at the history. I don’t think we look at the history to ground our selves is the truth of its facts, but we look at history to better understand the nuance of the story. If we tried to understand the NT without a good historical understanding of the Roman Empire then the story falls flat. I think that is why you find that less informed groups of people end up with more skewed interpretations resulting from a more naive and literalistic and interpretation. Some people think that looking more closely at history is an attempt to discredit the stories. I think that post modern Christianity should give up that fight and claim a faith in the story rather than in the history. This saves us from having to have the old literal v. metaphorical debate again that our parents and grandparents fought about.
If we do this then we can say “it doesn’t matter if it is ‘true’ because we ground our faith in the story which may or may not be fiction, but in either case it still rings true to our hearts and more importantly it just plain WORKS when we follow its course”.
The story becomes “true” when we follow the narrative in our own live by becoming transformed and transforming our communties and then the fruits of that transformation prove the truth of the story. The story is proven to be true each time another Empire falls and each time another community grows closer to the ideals of the Bible.
Re: The historical Jesus
Against my better judgement (which says walk away from this debate) I offer the following observations on the extract from Wittgenstein.
He (Wittgenstein) sets a number of different perspectives against each other:
Kierkegaard’s perspective on the Christianity of his day
Kierkegaard’s perspective on the true nature of Christian belief
Wittgenstein’s perspective on Kierkegaard’s perspective (which genuinely seems to miss the thrust of Kierkegaard altogther - as if the target of Kierkegaard’s contempt - Danish social Christianity - could really be excused by the perspective Wittgenstein offers)
Wittgenstein’s perspective on the gospels - as unsatisfactory historical records - ‘not more than quite averagely historically plausible’ - ‘inconsistencies’
Wittgenstein’s perspective on the nature of the content of the gospels - ‘a riddle’ - ‘a mediocre account’
Wittgenstein’s conclusions based on these perspectives - that the account (in the gospels) is meant to be mediocre so that we put more faith in the spirit rather than the letter - the faith that we require being not a belief which rests on a historical account - but belief “which you can do only as the result of a life.”
I’m surprised Paul doesn’t apply to this kind of speculation and unsubstantiated assertion the same reductionist rigour with which he dismisses those he disagrees with. I’m tempted to say to both: “Get a life!” - but that might seem very ungracious.
Ungracious.
.…..but that might seem very ungracious.
You’re right, Peter, it does
Re: Ungracious?
Just as well I didn’t say it then! But how about tackling the arguments?
Jesus- do we really know what happened?
Peter
This is a response to your post on the appositeness of Wittgenstin’s views on the histroical Jesus
The largest question in biblical studies over the last 200 years has been: “do we really know what happened?” that is, what happened and how good is our evidence that it happened. There is considerable scepticism among the majority of biblical scholars about the quality of the historical evidence and hence agnosticism about the response to the question “do we really know what happened?”. NT Wright conceives has task as a straightforwardly historical one and believes that such agnosticism is unwarranted, that in fact the NT accounts of what happened are by and large perfectly satisfactory as history.
To this I say (and I am repeating my words to Danutz): consider the resources that will be available to the future historian who comes to write about George Bush: the eyewitness accounts, the diaries, the recorded conversations, the vast corpus of electronic images. Compare this with the historical resources we have about Jesus- the gospel accounts themselves and very little else besides. You would have to say that the historical record relating to Jesus is derisory by comparison with that for George Bush. And yet I and hundreds of millions of others over the last two thousand years look on Jesus as God and are prepared to change our lives because of him.
It is against that background that I quoted from Wittgenstein, as follows (and leaving out the bits about Kierkegaard which are not germane)
God has four people recount the life of his incarnate Son, in each case differently and with inconsistencies - but might we not say: It is important that this narrative should not be more than quite averagely historically plausible just so that this should not be taken as the essential, decisive thing? So that the letter should not be believed more strongly than is proper and the spirit may receive its due. I.e. what you are supposed to see cannot be communicated even by the best and most accurate historian; and therefore a mediocre account suffices, is even to be preferred. For that too can tell you what you are supposed to be told. (Roughly in the way a mediocre stage set can be better than a sophisticated one, painted trees better than real ones, - because these might distract attention from what matters.) The Spirit puts what is essential, essential for your life, into these words. The point is precisely that your are only SUPPOSED to see clearly what appears clearly even in this representation. Christianity is not based on a historical truth; rather, it offers us a (historical) narrative and says: now believe! But not, believe this narrative with the belief appropriate to a historical narrative, rather: believe, through thick and thin, which you can do only as the result of a life. Here you have a narrative, don’t take the same attitude to it as you take to other historical narratives. Make a quite different place in your life for it. There is nothing paradoxical about that!
Wittgenstein is not saying that the question of historical truth (ie our ability to provide convincing evidence that we know what happened) is simply irrelevant, merely that it is not important. If it were determinative, we would have to ruefully shake our heads and say
“Well, what Jesus is reported as saying and doing is very impressive but if I’m to change my life I would need much better evidence of eg the resurrection, the crucifixion, the miracles, the sayings- evidence at least as good as that we have for the life and times of George Bush.”
If this is so, it suggests that the obsessive concern with the question “do we really know what happened?” that has characterised biblical research for 200 years misses the point.
Re: Jesus- do we really know what happened?
Paul
I just lost a much longer and more detailed response to your comment. Just to say - I disagree with the thrust of your comment, and with what Wittgenstein appears to be saying, which I still find highly contradictory and confused. I’m not even sure that you interpret him correctly, in this extract, by suggesting he says that history is not “simply irrelevant, merely that it is not important.”
There are academics today who assert the historic unreliability of the content of much of the gospels. There are far fewer who would confidently agree with Bultmann (whose views seem to co-incide with Wittgenstein here, especially in their existentialist conclusions) that virtually nothing can be known about the historical Jesus. See, for instance, F.F.Bruce: “The New Testament Documents - Are They Reliable?”
One of the issues raised by the Wittgenstein extract is of invalid historical comparison. Instead of comparing the methods and validity of modern historical documentation with the gospels, we should be comparing other ancient writing with the gospels as historic documentation. On that basis, the gospels come out very well. If we insist on the former as a comparative model for validation, then most ancient history is cast into doubt. Some ancient history deserves to be interpreted more critically, as Terry Jones’s wittily revisionist “Barbarians” illustrates.
One wonders what Wittgenstein is reading when he describes the gospels as ‘mediocre’. On the basis of historical narrative literature alone, ‘mediocre’ they are not.
Likewise it is invalid to describe ‘differences’ and ‘inconsistencies’ between the gospel accounts as proof of historic unreliability. One needs to know precisely what Wittgenstein means by these terms - since ‘difference’ or ‘inconsistency’ can (and often does) amount to little more than variation in point of view, or presentation - such as an abbreviation or expansion of a similiar incident described.
It would also be helpful to know what is meant by no “more than quite averagely historically plausible”. The ‘average’ of what? Presumably, Wittgenstein has in mind an average of modernist versions of history - to which the comments in my third paragraph apply.
The accounts given in the gospels do require a historical base, since Christianity is a historically based faith, describing a history in narrative form of a people in a divine plan to restore a lost creation, and fulfil creation’s purposes. With Christ as the hermeneutical key, the central event in this plan, the resurrection, has as much historical evidence and attestation to satisfy any modernist historian. As Paul put it, no resurrection, no faith. (He meant the literal, historical, physical resurrection of Christ).
Wittgenstein struggles to a position which is in the end only repeating the traditional Christian belief in the divine inspiration of the biblical canon (in this case, that portion of the canon which is the gospels): “The Spirit puts what is essential, essential for your life, into these words. The point is precisely that your are only SUPPOSED to see clearly what appears clearly even in this representation.”
The faith which is advocated in the NT is not of the existentialist kind that Wittgenstein urges, however. To believe, on the basis of an overriding ‘Spirit’, in the teeth of accounts which are “mediocre” and no “more than averagely plausible” is the fast-track to the Richard Dawkins camp for recovering ex-adherents of religious superstition. The faith advocated in the NT is on the basis of reasonable evidence - which the NT documents adequately supply, reinforced by the experience of the people of God who have believed these things through the centuries.
weighty opinions
We would have to take into account that when Wittgenstein wrote what he did, he was being very conservative in his analysis of what the majority of scholars were willing to assess as the historical reliability of the Gospels. W. does accept that they are “averagely historically plausible” but this is not good enough for faith. Faith should be above this need for historicity which to W. is nothing but speculation.
The preponderance of scholarly wisdom is not something that I find particularly useful. With all that learning, the question must still be ‘what do you make of this text?’ and on that point alone there is rarely anything like a consensus. Much of sudy but precious little useful output! Perhaps with Wright and a growing crop of students who are willing to approach the scripture as narrative we can hope for something a bit more holistic to emerge.
Live to serve : Serve to live
Wittgenstein, Jesus and history
Peter
You say
Instead of comparing the methods and validity of modern historical documentation with the gospels, we should be comparing other ancient writing with the gospels as historic documentation. On that basis, the gospels come out very well. If we insist on the former as a comparative model for validation, then most ancient history is cast into doubt
I have two comments
1. You say the gospels compare well with other historical documentation of that time. Bearing in mind that the gospels are not a broad brush history of the time but more like a biography where quite small details are of crucial significance (crucifixion, resurrection, miracles, sermon on the mount, other sayings) what are other historical texts by comparison with which the gospels ‘come out very well’?
2. Even if the answer to 1 is positive it is still clear that the very best of historiography of two thousand years ago is exigent by comparison with what is available today- that is, I can be far more assured about the life and times of George Bush (Churchill, Disraeli, my great aunt Gertrude) than I can be about the life and times of Jesus.
There are academics today who assert the historic unreliability of the content of much of the gospels. There are far fewer who would confidently agree with Bultmann (whose views seem to co-incide with Wittgenstein here, especially in their existentialist conclusions) that virtually nothing can be known about the historical Jesus.
I do not think Wittgenstein’s anti metaphysical philosophy would have fitted with the Bultmann approach (and its Heideggerian underpinning) at all. Also Wittgenstein did not say that nothing could be known about Jesus only that the gospels are not be more than quite averagely historically plausible
the resurrection, has as much historical evidence and attestation to satisfy any modernist historian. As Paul put it, no resurrection, no faith. (He meant the literal, historical, physical resurrection of Christ).
I am not contesting that the resurrection took place- I accept what Paul says, no resurrection, no faith. My point concerns the quality of the historical evidence for saying that it took place- and I think that the evidence is quite poor on a number of grounds. Hence I disagree that it “has as much historical evidence and attestation to satisfy any modernist historian”.
Re: Wittgenstein, Jesus and history
Paul
The gospels compare well with other ancient histories on two counts - i. ancient histories were frequently written with a particular bias (of which the historians were well aware), around which ‘facts’ were arranged. An example would be Roman histories which sought to present Rome, and its leaders, in the most favourable light. ii. the proximity in time of the earliest extant NT documents to the originals, and proximity to the events described; also the vast number of such douments in circulation, compared with very few copies of ancient histories and their comparative distance in time from events which they describe.
If Wittgenstein believed that the gospels were mediocre, and not more than slightly above averagely plausible, then he is saying that the historical evidence for the life of Jesus, and events surrounding the life, is scarcely to be trusted. (He is also saying that they fall short on literary grounds). Of course many people agree with him, then and now. I’m simply saying that not everybody does, and on significant grounds: the gospels require a historical underpinning because of the nature of the biblical narrative and its implications, and a good case can be made for the reliability of the gospels (and NT literature generally).
Since the historical evidence for the resurrection (and the life of Jesus) resides almost entirely in the NT documents, then their reliability is a significant issue. A credible faith rests on reasonable evidence, which the written materials supply, as well as the evidence of the truth claims of the material in people’s lives today. Wittgenstein tips the balance from reasonable evidence towards existential experience. Bultmann tips the balance even further. Today, the balance is moving in the opposite direction. And so the debate rages. Well, storms in academic tea cups, maybe.
Re: Wittgenstein, Jesus and history
Peter
You argue that
1. the gospels are historically reliable
2. they need to be historically reliable because “a credible faith rests on reasonable evidence”
I argue, following Herr Wittgenstein, that
1. the gospels are only mediocre seen as history
2. but the fact that the gospels are mediocre as history does not mean that what is recounted therein did not happen- just that the historical evidence for what happened is mediocre
Why isn’t the demand that the gospels rest on satisfactory historical evidence comparable to the demand by Thomas to see the mark of the nails on his hands before he would believe that Jesus was risen?
Most people during most of Christian history have believed without satisfying themselves of the historicity of the gospels. Have they been intellectually irresponsible in failing to carry out a due diligence check?
Those who have eyes to see accept what they find in the gospels just as the first century Jews who had eyes to see accepted Jesus as from God. The historicity of what is asserted is not simply irrelevant but it is not important. At least, I think so.
Re: Wittgenstein, Jesus and history and due diligence
I like the idea of a due diligence check on the historical basis of the gospels.
There is a limit to how far historicity can be ‘proved’, and factors outside a purely historical basis do play their part in a credible faith.
I suspect that if most believing people found the gospels unsatisfactory as history, they would ‘smell a rat’ and not believe. Since Jesus claimed to have come into history to change history, then history is not unimportant. It is therefore relevant to enquire into the historical underpinnings of the gospels. It is not flying in the face of evidence to say that there are reasonable grounds on which the gospels stand as historical evidence - using the kinds of criteria on which historicity is measured.
F.F. Bruce makes the point that it is theologians more than historians who have had the greatest difficulties in accepting the gospels as reliable history - a phenomenon which has as much to do with their presuppositions as anything.
Incidentally, we may have far more access to historical data of many kinds in writing a history of the likes of George Bush. But would that give us any more certain access to who he really was? The data would be the opinions and records of colleagues and opponents, including his own diaries, if he kept them. The same could be said of Richard Nixon. But who on earth was he - after all the information has been read and scrutinised? Who on earth is George Bush? Or Tony Blair? Or Saddam Hussein? One could go on.
One of the most striking incidents we have of the life of Jesus in the gospels is the moment at Caesarea Philippi, when he asked his disciples: “Who do people say that I am?” Then he asks: “Who do you say that I am?” The historical record of the gospels, as far as it is history, gives some kind of answer - though since the disciples didn’t get it, it’s not surprising there is still debate today. On the other hand, when Peter gave his own unique answer, Jesus’s response: “Blessed are you Simon Bar Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my Father in heaven”, perhaps this is an indicator of another source of knowledge which is just as important to us today.
Jesus in history
C.F.D. Moule made the point that whatever we think of the historicity of the gospels as records of Jesus, the historical effect of Jesus life, death and resurrection cannot be historically questioned. With such a remarkable effect, one has to accept a remarkable cause - historically…
Live to serve : Serve to live
More on pushing barrows
Peter
Wright’s idea of an interpretive spiral as the model for all knowledge is cursorily stated and is in the form of a (particularly slippery) metaphor so I cannot be completely sure that my understanding is correct.
As far as I can make out, Wright proposes that all our attempts at knowledge involve comparison of a model of reality with reality.
Models of reality make sense in science. Scientific models propose a certain understanding of a range of phenomena and expose the understanding to falsification by predicting hitherto unnoticed facts eg Einstein’s theory of special relativity proposed a model of space-time which predicted that light would bend in proximity to a massive body and this was tested by Eddington in 1919 and found to be true.
However epistemology seeks to explain how we come to know anything at all. It therefore begs the question to say that all our attempts at knowledge involve comparison of a model of reality with reality since this implies that we already have access to reality.
Hence, I regard Wright’s interpretive spiral model of knowledge as incoherent.
You say
Just a detail from a previous comment of yours: you said - “Wright thus wants to exclude from the language the possibility of describing an account of a past event as neutral or objective or detached. This means that you cannot draw a distinction between the work on the Second world War of David Irving and, say, John Keegan.” This is the opposite of what Wright argues. His use of the model of an interpretive spiral means that we can constantly set one interpretation against another and come to better informed conclusions - which would immediately be the case with David Irving.
The point is that according to Wright’s theory neither John Keegan nor David Irving are neutral or objective or detached- because nobody is. The interpretative spiral can go on forever but at any point in it none of us are neutral or objective or detached. As I said earlier, this is good news for David Irving.
Hermeneutical spiral
The concept of a hermeneutical spiral is not Wright’s alone, but has been developed as a way of describing how we understand biblical texts. It also works for understanding texts of any kind, and how we understand our world, where the world is a kind of text which we are constantly trying to read and understand.
The concept acquires significance as a model by standing in relation to other models - such as reader-response criticism of an extreme sort, in which the meaning of a text is said to be determined solely by the pre-understanding which the reader brings to it - and that pre-understanding being, in turn, determined by the pre-understanding of the community which informs the reader. It stands in contrast with the view that meaning is determined solely by the intention of the original author, and it is the task of the reader to ascertain what that original intention was, as a historical enquiry. It also stands in contrast with the view that the meaning of a text is solely determined by the text itself, in isolation from any external considerations.
The hermeneutical spiral suggests that the reader always brings a pre-understanding to a text, but that after an initial study of the text, the text performs a work on the interpreter, so that his or her pre-understanding is no longer exactly the same as it was before. As the interpreter brings this new understanding to the text, perhaps further understanding is obtained. Interpretation is not a repetitive circle, but a progressive spiral of development.
The hermeneutical spiral suggests a dynamic and progressive interaction of text, reader, and context which the reader brings to the text, and within which it is interpreted. It is particularly appropriate for biblical interpretation, if the reader believes that “the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any two-edged sword, it penetrates even to the dividing of soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”
It also places interpretation within a philosophical context, avoiding a naive positivism, in which textual or verbal meaning is said simply to be a relationship between word and thing described in an external world (a position healthily rejected by most branches of philosophy, as far as I can see), or phenomenalism, where meaning is ultimately said to reside in our senses, but not the thing perceived in itself, to which we have no access. Further, it critiques various forms of literary understanding, whereby we are said to have no understanding outside of constructs which are created within linguistic forms and expressions - such as in some models of deconstruction.
It is significant for Wright, because it provides a starting point for understanding how the gospels work as literary history, from the point of view of their authors, and it also suggests how our own reading (and his in particular) brings meaning to texts and obtains meaning - not in a circular, definitive way, but in a progressive way. Wright suggests a model for understanding worldview - based on a community’s sense of its own narrative, symbols, praxis etc. Through these means, he constructs the worldview of 1st century Israel, as the basis for providing some unique insights into the historical Jesus, and into New Testament texts in general - especially Paul, where an understanding of terms like ‘righteousness’ and ‘justification’ as underpinnings of Paul’s theology have been significantly changed and enhanced.
My understanding of philosophy is somewhat sketchy, and as someone more trained than I, Paul may be better able to comment on some of these observations.
Re: More on pushing barrows
Paul, I would have thought that the reason why Wright felt the need to preface his historical work with some sort of explicit epistemology is to be found i) in the peculiar literary-historical character of the Gospels and ii) in the polemical context in which he started the work. We have to take into account both the novelty of the events described and the background of both scholarly and popular suspicion regarding the objective truthfulness of the narratives. I share some of your doubts about the practical usefulness of the approach taken, but I think I can see why he felt the need to offer a formal philosophical defence of his goal of giving an account of the career of Jesus that would do justice both to historical-critical and theological interests.
Doesn’t this rather assume that knowing and speaking about what we know are two distinct activities? It seems to me i) that any perception or datum is immediately assimilated into a conceptual framework or worldview or narrative that is the product of our particular cultural and intellectual history; and ii) that we very quickly find ways to articulate that perception or datum using the linguistic material that is most readily at hand. In other words, the ‘coming to know anything at all’ and the conceptualization and expression of what is known are in effect inseparable. But because conceptualization and expression are contingent upon and hampered by various social and personal factors (degree of education, experience of the world, ideological preferences, and so on), some sort of self-critical, self-questioning, testing process becomes inevitable. So I don’t really see why the hermeneutical spiral idea in itself is so incoherent.
As has been pointed out, the interpretive spiral is a testing process that in principle should be progressive; over time it should approach a more truthful statement of how things are or were. Or to state it more pragmatically: there is a social process at work that shifts public confidence in one direction or the other, without necessarily ever coming to the point of ascribing absolute objectivity or truthfulness to the position reached.
Having said that, I think there is another preliminary question to address in this debate, having to do with the level of detail at which we seek historical coherence. The answer to this is determined by the nature and scope of the historically relevant material that we have access to. It is only to a very limited degree that we can verify or discount particular details of the Gospel narratives. Did Jesus feed a multitude with five loaves and two fishes? There’s no way of answering that - though Elisha did something similar (2 Kings 4:42-44), which is why we have to ask questions about the relation between theology and history. But there are larger questions of coherence that we can explore much more confidently: the coherence between the Gospel narratives and the Old Testament interpretation of history, first-century Jewish self-understanding, and the historical experience of Israel in the period presupposed and anticipated by the New Testament. It is my confidence in this broader, large-scale coherence that makes me unwilling to follow Danutz’s metaphorizing approach; but I would accept that we still have to take into account strong theological predispositions which make it very difficult to construe this sort of analysis as objective historiography.
Still more on pushing barrows
Andrew
You comment
“I would have thought that the reason why Wright felt the need to preface his historical work with some sort of explicit epistemology is to be found i) in the peculiar literary-historical character of the Gospels and ii) in the polemical context in which he started the work. We have to take into account both the novelty of the events described and the background of both scholarly and popular suspicion regarding the objective truthfulness of the narratives.”
In my view, a theory of epistemology is not needed to deal with the factors you mention. Epistemology asks questions like: if all I see is an orange patch how can I be sure it is an orange patch of the sun; or more generally, how can I be sure of an external world. My argument has been that Wright’s theory of epistemology is not intended as a contribution to that subject but rather to advance a particular view of biblical historicity- namely, that the gospel writers may not be criticised for failing to be neutral or objective or detached, because nobody is.
I am not suggesting that there are no epistemological issues in religious belief. I am particularly interested in Wittgenstein’s views on the subject and writers who have developed Wittgensteinian themes such as DZ Phillips and Peter Winch. However their approach is vastly different to that of NT Wright.
“the interpretive spiral is a testing process that in principle should be progressive; over time it should approach a more truthful statement of how things are or were”
The idea of an interpretive spiral does not seem far different to the hypothesis/ falsification model of science and I have no quarrel with it so long as it is confined to particular spheres of knowledge. However it cannot be used in epistemological theory because it assumes we already have access to reality which is the thing that has to be demonstrated.
As regards your final comments on the sense in which the bible may be said to be an historical record, I ,like you, am chary of Danutz’s metaphorizing approach. I would be interested in your thoughts on the passage I quoted from Wittgenstein in my response to Danutz.
Horses for courses
Paul, perhaps I’m being naïve, but surely different forms of knowledge require different types of epistemology? The question you ask here belongs to an epistemology of scientific or empirical observation. An epistemology of religious belief would look rather different, and an epistemology of historical knowledge, which is what Wright aims at, would look different again. And then isn’t it self-evident that the epistemological stance that is adopted will ‘advance a particular view of biblical historicity’. Any scientific epistemology would be equally tendentious because it represents a philosophical choice. So Wright is simply being transparent about his philosophical presuppositions.
Horses for courses....yes, in a sense
Andrew
You suggest that “surely different forms of knowledge require different types of epistemology”
NT Wright’s theory is a perfectly general one applying to all forms of knowledge- indeed, one of the mistakes he makes (in my view) is to regard all knowledge as being univocal ie as being a process based on the selection of sense data. In one of my earlier comments, I pointed out that knowledge is not a process at all (has no present continuous tense) but is a speech act in which a claim is made that x is the case and that that I can prove it. The grounds of proof vary widely: consider what is required to show that I know
that 2+2 is 4;
that Tony Blair is the Prime Minister of Britain ;
that my mother is in the next room;
that muons are among the basic constituents of matter.
In On Certainty (and elsewhere) Wittgenstein argued that different forms of life involve different language games and that there is not a single criterion of rationality or a single vantage point from which language games can be adjudicated. Thus, the demand by people like Dawkins for religious propositions to conform to evidence in the scientific sense cannot be justified. There is now a substantial body of literature on religious epistemology within modern Anglophone phosophy. Unfortunately, it is virtually unknown within theology which generally looks to continental philosophers like Heidegger and Derrida when it seeks philosophical input.
In summary, I agree wiith your statement quoted at the top of the page (perhaps changing the wording slightly) but NT Wright would not.
Re: NT Wright is seriously wrong, part 2: does all history depen
How does one go about cutting the interpret function on and off? Is that even a possibility?
Are facts waiting there to be found and speaking for themselves or are “facts” constituted and invested with meaning?
How can one know anything without an epistemology? Isn’t how we know inseparable from what we know? If not, how does one get to the ontological (and know that you are there) without an epistemology?