The reason historians cannot prove or disprove whether God has performed a miracle in the past—such as raising Jesus from the dead—is not that historians are required to be secular humanists with an anti-supernaturalist bias. I want to stress this point because conservative Christian apologists, in order to score debating points, often claim that this is the case. In their view, if historians did not have anti-supernaturalist biases or assumptions, they would be able to affirm the historical “evidence” that Jesus was raised from the dead. I should point out that these Christian apologists almost never consider the “evidence” for other miracles from the past that have comparable—or even better—evidence to support them: for example, dozens of Roman senators claimed that King Romulus was snatched up into heaven from their midst; and many thousands of committed Roman Catholics can attest that the Blessed Virgin Mary has appeared to them, alive—a claim that fundamentalist and conservative evangelical Christians roundly discount, even though the “evidence” for it is very extensive. It’s always easy to scream “anti-supernatural bias” when someone does not think that the miracles of one’s own tradition can be historically established; it’s much harder to admit that miracles of other traditions are just as readily demonstrated.
But the view I map out here is that none of these divine miracles, or any others, can be established historically. Conservative evangelical Christian apologists are right to say that this is because of the presuppositions of the investigators. But not for the reason they think or say.
The first thing to stress is that everyone has presuppositions, and it is impossible to live life, think deep thoughts, have religious experiences, or engage in historical inquiry without having presuppositions. The life of the mind cannot proceed without presuppositions. The question, though, is always this: What are the appropriate presuppositions for the task at hand? The presuppositions that the Roman Catholic believer brings to his experience of the mass will be different from the presuppositions that the scientist brings to her exploration of the Big Bang theory and different from the presuppositions that historians bring to their study of the Inquisition. So let me stress that historians, working as historians, do indeed have presuppositions. It is important, therefore, to know something about the kind of presuppositions historians have when they are engaged in the act of reconstructing what happened in the past.
Most historians would agree that they necessarily presuppose that the past did happen. We can’t actually prove it, of course, the way we can prove a scientific experiment. We can repeat scientific experiments, and by doing so we can establish predictive probabilities that can show us what almost certainly will happen the next time we do the experiment. Historians can’t do this with past events because they can’t repeat the past. And so historians have different ways of proceeding. They don’t use scientific “proofs” but look for other kinds of evidence for what has happened before now. The basic operating assumption though, which itself cannot be proved, is that something did in fact happen before now.
Moreover, historians presuppose that it is possible for us to establish, with some degree of probability, what has happened in the past. We can decide whether it is probably the case, or not, that the Holocaust happened (yes it did), that Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon (yes he did), and that Jesus of Nazareth actually existed (yes he did). Historians maintain that some of the things in the past (almost) certainly happened, other things very probably happened, others somewhat probably happened, others possibly happened, others probably did not happen, others almost certainly did not happen, and so on. It is (virtually) certain that the University of North Carolina basketball team, the Tar Heels, won the national championship in 2009. It is also (virtually) certain that they got knocked out of the NCAA tournament in 2013 by Kansas. (It is absolutely certain that this was an enormous tragedy, but that’s a value judgment, not a historical claim.)
Related to the presupposition that it is possible to establish with degrees of probability what has happened in the past (some things more probable than others) is the assumption that “evidence” for past events exists, so reconstructing the past is not a matter of pure guesswork. And historians presuppose that some evidence is better than other evidence. Eyewitness reports are, as a rule, superior to hearsay from years, decades, or centuries later. Extensive corroboration among multiple sources that show no evidence of collaborating with one another is far better than either collaboration or noncorroboration. A source who provides disinterested off-the-cuff comments about a person or event is better than a source who makes interested claims about a person or event in order to score an ideologically driven point. What historians want, in short, are lots of witnesses, close to the time of the events, who are not biased toward their subject matter and who corroborate one another’s points without showing signs of collaboration. Would that we had such sources for all significant historical events!
These then are among the kinds of presuppositions that historians tend to share. On the other hand, some presuppositions are decidedly not at all appropriate for historians who want to establish what happened in the past. It is not appropriate, for example, for a historian to presuppose her conclusions and to try to locate only the evidence that supports those presupposed conclusions. The investigation needs to be conducted without prejudice as to its outcome, simply to see what really happened. Similarly, it is not appropriate for a historian to treat evidence as irrelevant when it does not happen to be convenient to his personal views.
Moreover—and here is where the rubber meets the road—it is not appropriate for a historian to presuppose a perspective or worldview that is not generally held. “Historians” who try to explain the founding of the United States or the outcome of the First World War by invoking the visitation of Martians as a major factor of causality will not get a wide hearing from other historians—and will not, in fact, be considered to be engaging in serious historiography. Such a view presupposes notions that are not generally held—that there are advanced life-forms outside our experience, that some of them live on another planet within our solar system, that these other beings have sometimes visited the earth, and that their visitation is what determined the outcome of significant historical events. All these presuppositions may in fact be true—there is no way for historians to know one way or the other, using the historical approach to establishing what happened in the past. But since they are presuppositions that the vast majority of us do not share, historical reconstruction cannot be based on them. Anyone who has these presuppositions has to silence them, sit on them, or otherwise squelch them when engaging in their historical investigations.
This is also true of all religious and theological beliefs that a historian happens to have: these beliefs cannot determine the outcome of a historical investigation, because they are not generally shared. This means that a historian cannot establish that the angel Moroni made revelations to Joseph Smith, as in the Mormon tradition. Such views presuppose that angels exist, that Moroni is one of them, and that Joseph Smith was particularly chosen to receive a revelation from on high. These are theological beliefs; they are not based on historical evidence. Maybe there is an angel Moroni and maybe he did reveal secret truths to Joseph Smith, but there is no way for historians to establish any of that: to do so would require accepting certain theological views that are not held by the majority of other historians—for example, those who are Roman Catholics, Reformed Jews, Buddhists, and nonreligious hard-core atheists. Historical evidence has to be open to examination by everyone of every religious belief.