If the sources are unwritten, criticism could take such forms as the use of dating methods, other scientific testing procedures such as chemical analysis, and comparisons to relevant written accounts. The testing of eyewitness interviews and oral tradition would follow lines of criticism closer to those used for documentary sources, complete with external and internal phases, including authorship, the date of the testimony, its credibility, and whether it has been modified by time or circumstances.
After the historian gathers his materials, organizes them, and applies external and internal criticism, he is ready to prepare and formulate his conclusions. The results should conform to all the known data and provide the most comprehensive and probable judgment on the issues. The outcome is then open to careful scrutiny from other scholars, which should prompt the cautious historian to be able to defend the results, based on the factual data available.
Summary and Conclusion
We began by maintaining that a concept of history includes at least the events themselves and the records of these occurrences. Additionally, there is always a subjective element in reporting the past and conclusions from this discipline must be couched in probabilistic terms. But when proper procedures are followed, the objective data of history can be uncovered within these parameters. Those who have argued against the historian’s ability to uncover objective facts are opposed by numerous difficulties.
We also outlined how the historian’s methods and tools, especially the use of primary sources, are still able to achieve accurate knowledge of the past. Most historians agree with this conclusion. Cairns summarizes as follows:
Through scientific study of his artifacts and documents, the historian can be reasonably certain concerning an event . . . . There is a surprising amount of consensus among historians on the basic facts and on many conclusions about the past.46
It is within these parameters that we have sought in this volume to address the historicity of Jesus. We have especially endeavored to ascertain the facts surrounding his death and resurrection.
1For a slightly edited version of the first and third sections of this chapter, see Habermas’ chapter “History and Evidence,” in Miethe and Habermas, Why Believe? God Exists! (Joplin: College Press, 1993), pp. 237-245.
2For some of these interpretations, see Patrick Gardiner, “The Philosophy of History” in the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, ed. by David L. Sills (New York: The Macmillan Company and The Free Press, 1968), vol. 6, pp. 428-433.
3W.H. Walsh, Philosophy of History (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960), pp. 101, 103.
4William Wand, Christianity, pp. 432-433.
5See Moses Hadas’ “Introduction” to The Complete Works of Tacitus, pp. IX-XIX.
6Ibid., p. IX.
7Ibid., XVII-XVIII.
8Grant, Jesus: An Historian’s Review, pp. 183-189.
9Hadas, “Introduction,” pp. XVII-XVIII; cf. Grant, Jesus: An Historian’s Review.
10Wand, Christianity, pp. 51-52.
11Ernest Nagel, “Determinism in History” in William H. Dray, ed., Philosophical Analysis and History (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), p. 355.
12Ibid.
13Wand, Christianity, pp. 25-27, 51-52, 156.
14We are not using “proof” in the sense of apodictic certainty such as that achieved in certain types of mathematics or deductive logic, but in the sense of other sorts of inductive studies. For details, see Gary R. Habermas, “Probability Calculus, Proof and Christian Apologetics,” The Simon Greenleaf Review of Law and Religion, vol. VIII (1988-1989), pp. 57-88.
15For a more complete treatment, see Earle E. Cairns, God and Man in Time (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1979), pp. 11-29.
16For a more detailed version of the following discussion, see Gary R. Habermas, “Defending the Faith Historically,” forthcoming.
17W.H. Walsh, “Can History be Objective?” in Hans Meyerhoff, The Philosophy of History in Our Time (Garden City: Doubleday, 1959), pp. 216-224.
18Charles Beard, “That Noble Dream,” in Fritz Stein, ed., The Varieties of History (Cleveland: World, 1956), pp. 323-325.
19For this historical dialogue, see especially the essays by Carl Becker, Charles Beard, Morton White, Ernest Nagel, and W.H. Walsh in Meyerhoff, Philosophy of History, Section II. Compare the selections by Walsh, White, Isaiah Berlin, Christopher Blake, and William Dray in Patrick Gardiner, Theories of History (New York: Macmillan, 1959), Part II and the contributions by Walsh and J.A. Passmore in William H. Dray, ed., Philosophical Analysis and History.
20Meyerhoff makes this remark (Philosophy of History, p. 119) while discussing the views of Carl Becker and Charles Beard.
21Nagel in ibid., p. 214.
22Blake in Gardiner, Theories, p. 332; cf. pp. 335, 343; David Hackett Fischer, Historian’s Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), pp. 42-43.
23This is Meyerhoff’s comment (in Philosophy of History, p. 138).
24Beard in ibid., p. 147.
25White in ibid., pp. 194-195. White (p. 199) borrows the analogy of the physician from Sidney Hook.
26Nagel in Meyerhoff, Philosophy of History, p. 210.
27White in Ibid., pp. 200-201.
28Charles Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution (New York: Macmillan, 1935).
29White in Meyerhoff, Philosophy of History, pp. 190-196, 200-201. White goes further in charging Beard with contradicting himself on whether or not history can be done in a neutral manner (pp. 196-197).
30Meyerhoff, Philosophy of History, p. 138.
31Nagel in ibid., p. 213.
32Walsh, Philosophy, p. 19; cf. other comments by Walsh in Meyerhoff, Philosophy of History, pp. 217, 222, 224; in Dray, Philosophical Analysis, pp. 60-61, 74; in Gardiner, Theories, pp. 60-61, 74.
33Walsh in Gardiner, Theories, p. 301. Most historians agree with this point. See D. Fischer, Fallacies, pp. 42-43; Passmore in Dray, Philosophical Analysis, pp. 79-80, 88; Berlin in Gardiner, Theories, pp. 324-329; Blake in Gardiner, Theories, pp. 331-332, 339; White in Gardiner, Theories, p. 365.
34Beard in Meyerhoff, Philosophy of History, p. 148.
35For some impressive passages in those who are often identified as the best known relativists, see Wilhelm Dilthey (in Gardiner, Theories, p. 224), Benedetto Croce (in Gardiner, Theories, p. 228 and in Meyerhoff, Philosophy of History, p. 47), Robin Collingwood (in Essays in the Philosophy of History, ed. by William Debbins [New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1965], pp. 102-103 and in Meyerhoff, Philosophy of History, pp. 79-84), Beard (in An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution, and in Meyerhoff, Philosophy of History, pp. 141, 149), and Carl Becker (in Meyerhoff, Philosophy of History, pp. 122-128, 134, 136; cf. Carl L. Becker, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers [New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1932; reprint 1969], chapters I-II). It is important to note that it is precisely for this reason that the label “relativists” is a misnomer for these idealistic historians.