April DeConick writes another of those posts on the resurrection which conclude with their own initial presuppositions. So, for example, she writes:
There is a big difference between confessional scholarship and its working assumptions and historical-critical scholarship and its working assumptions, and we must never confuse the two. Confessional scholarship is willing to compromise and apologize in order to keep ‘history’ aligned with the faith tradition. …
The easiest example of this in Christianity (which I have also discussed on numerous occasions previously) is the physical resurrection of Jesus. Confessional scholars are willing (some even feel compelled) to allow for the physical resurrection of Jesus to be historical fact. Of course it is not. Dead bodies don’t come back to life. And Jesus’ body did not come back to life. This is a theological doctrine that was historicized in the literature of the early believers. Those outside of Christianity, and non-confessional academics in another field (like science) see this immediately.
Now it is possible that April is simply expressing herself badly, but it seems to me that she is saying that anyone who believes that Jesus’ tomb was empty because of God’s action (this seems to be the best way to express it) cannot do historical scholarship, but is, in fact engaging in confessional scholarship.
(Anyone who disagrees with DeConick is, of course, not a proper scholar by definition and so there is no need to engage with them.)
Note that this is technically not a historical argument, but one from philosophy and common experience. Note also that as a presupposition it means that before a single source has been investigated, it has already been concluded that any sources which say the tomb is empty is one or more of late, ideologically driven, mistaken or deceitful. It is questionable just how carefully one will listen to texts when that is the presupposition with which they are approached.
The next point worth noting is that history is not an exact science but is also a narrative art, and where it differs most from scientific methodology is in repetition. Science proceeds according to the idea that under the same conditions the same thing will happen, and so good experiments will yield consistent results and confirm the hypothesis. History is interested in the distinctive, the unrepeatable, the things that stand out, just as much as in the things that even out for a population as a whole. Why did the Jewish revolt happen in 66CE and not earlier? History seeks to construct an intelligent narrative that accounts for the unusual as well as the normal, the different as well as the same. Paying serious attentiveness to the difference – even if sceptically – is an essential tool.
It is also worth teasing out what we mean by an historical event. At its most nugatory we might define it as an event that has historical causes and itself leaves historical effects. That clearly poses problems for classifying the resurrection as an historical event, since it is of the essence of any claim made for it that it is directly and eschatologically caused by God, and has no historical cause whatsoever. From that angle the resurrection is not an historical event, either to the sceptic or the believer. But historical events also leave significant effects, footprints, ripples. Things happen because other things have happened. And it has to be said that a great deal happens because of the resurrection – whether that is understood as experiences of vision, convictions of the heart, or an empty tomb.
What we refer to as resurrection (and whatever we mean by that from hallucination to empty tomb) is historical in the sense that it causes a great many significant historical effects. (Yes, in this sense even visions can be historical.) Historians have to discuss what the best explanation of those significant effect are, and there have always been some who have concluded that the empty tomb is indeed the best explanation for the magnitude and nature of what followed. I suggest that this methodology is properly speaking a proper historiographical process, even if the event it investigates is not, strictly speaking historical. Historians work like that for more “ordinary” events: those sorts of things which DeConick would not rule out as impossible. Why then is the same methodology to be ruled out here?
And in the end, it is surely in the methodology and outworking that the strength or weakness of the conclusions can be properly probed, analysed, and tested to destruction. Anyone can dismiss a conclusion on the grounds it disagrees with their presuppositions. Scholarship lies in dismissing a conclusion based on showing the weakness of the case, the problems in the methodology, the evidence that has been ignored, and alternative interpretations of the evidence that has been included. Whether the scholar believes or disbelieves in the resurrection ought, in a non-confessional institution, to be irrelevant to the quality of the argument, the knowledge of the sources and the skill of the one making a case.
Update: see Mark Goodacre’s (as always eirenic and thoughtful) take here.
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Perhaps April’s real problem is that she is relying on the logical fallacy of hasty generalisation, that because she has never seen a dead body rise no dead bodies can ever rise. By her argument you can “prove” that the extinction of the dinosaurs was not caused by a collision with an asteroid. After all, for the last 20 billion days or so no large asteroids have hit the earth, so asteroids don’t hit the earth, so something else must have killed off all those giant reptiles.
“It is also worth teasing out what we mean by an historical event. At its most nugatory we might define it as an event that has historical causes and itself leaves historical effects. That clearly poses problems for classifying the resurrection as an historical event, since it is of the essence of any claim made for it that it is directly and eschatologically caused by God, and has no historical cause whatsoever. From that angle the resurrection is not an historical event, either to the sceptic or the believer. But historical events also leave significant effects, footprints, ripples. Things happen because other things have happened. And it has to be said that a great deal happens because of the resurrection – whether that is understood as experiences of vision, convictions of the heart, or an empty tomb.”
Doug, I do not know what you think of Jurgen Moltmann, but he argues something similar in his Theology of Hope.
I don’t think there is anything “hasty” about the generalization that dead bodies don’t rise nor do I think that DeConick is relying merely on the fact that she has not seen a dead body rise. I think the generalization is so well supported by centuries upon centuries of observation that it is almost inconceivable any historian would ever consider it the most likely explanation or even a possible explanation absent extraordinary evidence.
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