Interestingly, in their discussion of sources both Wright and Borg separate knowledge from history and knowledge from faith. Indeed, Borg is worried by Wright’s use of the term ‘faith’ at all and prefers to use the phrase ‘metahistorical factors’. By this he means initial presuppositions which, while they have a logical basis and can be evidenced up to a point, cannot be conclusively proved but do govern the researcher’s response to the historical data. Belief in God is one metahistorical factor. The separation between historical knowledge and faith (however labelled!) knowledge serves to suggest that historical knowledge is more objective and evidenced. This is still the popular view of knowledge that derives from scientific process and both maintain this view with their distinction. Both make a point of emphasising the extent to which non-historical factors influence historical knowledge, nevertheless both do make the distinction.
What this distinction masks is the extent to which historical knowledge (as with scientific knowledge) is faith knowledge. Philip Sherrard has given forceful expression to this view:
“Every thought, every observation, every judgement, every description whether of the modern scientist or of anyone else is soaked in a priori preconceived built-in value-judgements, assumptions and dogmas at least as rigid, if not more rigid (because they are so often unconsciously embraced) than those of any explicitly religious system. The very nature of human thought is such that it cannot operate independently of value-judgements, assumptions and dogmas. Even the assertion that it can constitutes a value-judgement and implies a whole philosophy, whether we are aware of it or not.”
Lesslie Newbigin highlights the work of Michael Polyani who argues that “the time has come for a shift in the balance between faith and doubt in the whole enterprise of understanding, a recognition that doubt – though always an essential ingredient – is always secondary and that faith is fundamental. His book [Personal Knowledge, 1958] is a massive attempt to demonstrate that all knowledge of reality rests upon faith commitments which cannot be demonstrated but are held by communities whose “conviviality” is a necessary factor in the enterprise of knowing”. Faith cannot be bracketed out of the historical equation in the way that Borg wants. It is fundamental to human knowing and needs to be recognised up front.
This has clear implications for Borg’s approach to the sources as it emphasises the extent to which his methodology depends on presuppositions. Each element of his methodology could be reversed or be used to extract a different understanding from the data. So, for example, a ‘late’ source could be a more accurate report of Jesus’ actual words than an ‘early’ source or multiple attestation could confirm agreement about an interpretation and not be a sign of historical factuality. No process for sifting historical information is objective, all represent interpretation of history.
Borg’s methodology also betrays a lack of understanding of literary and linguistic process. He argues that “Metaphorical language is intrinsically nonliteral”. This is true, but inadequate. Metaphorical language is nonliteral but the object the metaphor relates to can be literal. One strand of literary criticism, for example, focuses on the extent to which biographical data features in an author’s fictional work. This strand recognises the extent to which fictional material can contain a historically factual event. As a creative writer, I can recognise the way in which all historical factual events recorded in writing (whether fictional or not) are altered in the process. All writers select, emphasise and metaphorise in recording or re-creating historically factual events. This is precisely what we should expect to find when examining any document of any era. In addition, metaphor can focus on other aspects of the events (i.e. emotional or relational) rather than the historically factual aspects. None of this invalidates the reality of the historically factual event that is being re-presented or that underlies the re-presentation, even when this is set in an entirely fictional context. Borg’s inclination, however, is to assume that all metaphorical narratives in the Gospels are not historically factual and contain only metaphorical truth.
Borg’s methodology risks the bracketing out of valid evidence and the misinterpretation of evidence that it retains. Jesus portraits produced by those advocating the quest for the historical Jesus have often been ones in which he is a vastly reduced figure from that found in the orthodox tradition, and often accord with the authors’ other interests.
Borg’s methodology derives from the Enlightenment thinking that produced modernism. As such it displays both modernism’s belief in the objectivity of its methods and the tendency towards deconstruction and specialisation that is a key characteristic. While Borg personally rejects some of the restrictions of modernist thought, his methodology exhibits the dualism inherent in modernism. Newbigin has noted modernism’s separation of facts from values and it’s assignation of facts to a public sphere of objectively verifiable data and faith to a private sphere of personal values. Borg’s acceptance of a split between the Jesus of History and the Christ of Faith is a sign of the extent to which his methodology derives from modernism's dualism.
The alternative, taken by Wright, is to see a continuity between the pre-Easter and post-Easter Jesus and to include all the evidence within the hypothesis before making distinctions between data. Borg thinks that source criticism and redaction criticism, do not allow us to state that Jesus understood himself to be the Messiah. He argues that Wright is setting aside two hundred years of scholarship on the sources but this alternative does not set aside source criticism. Rather, use is made of it at a different point in the process of forming an hypothesis. Instead of it being fundamental to the process, it is used as one of many tools necessary for the examination of all the evidence. This wider ranging toolkit includes tools that Scot McKnight thinks he and fellow historians (such as Borg and Wright) have put to one side, such as: etymology; linguistics; hermeneutics; and narrative. Having used these tools which, taken together, point towards Jesus understanding himself to be the Messiah, the arguments that Jesus did in word and action claim to be the Messiah look less unlikely. Using the historico-critical approach is not an argument for removing all other tools from the toolkit. That this is sometimes done is not a sign of historical rigorism but of personal agendas.
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Violent Femmes - Jesus Walking On Water.
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