Historical Criticism versus Prophetic Proclamation

Extract

A question which historical critical scholarship can no longer evade is whether it still contributes fundamentally to the strengthening of faith, or whether it is effecting its dissolution. Where biblical research continues to be done within the framework of Christian convictions, a crisis of identity threatens, since the historical critical approach with its related methodologies tends to dissolve the most fundamental assumptions of the New Testament Christian faith, namely, that salvation is possible only in relation to Jesus Christ. William Mallard focused sharply on this problem when he pointed out that even “when critical research supports a historical religious claim, the character and function of that claim is thereby undermined, and the past event in question loses the force of revelation.” In the same context J. Maxwell Miller argued that there could be no resolution of the conflict between critical inquiry and the biblical view of history because a historical critical understanding can have no place for God's repeated “intrusions” into the course of the Old Testament history. To use Mallard's formulation, a critical explanation for these divine intrusions into the Old Testament history effectively abandons the Old Testament understanding itself. According to Miller: “If the Jewish historian does not offer a natural explanation for the origin of the Exodus traditions, he is untrue to the critical method of historical research. If he does offer a natural explanation, he destroys the basis of his Jewish faith — i.e., that God intruded upon human history at the time of the Exodus and made a covenant with the fathers which applies even today. The same would seem to be true of the Christian historian who attempts to deal with the incarnation or the resurrection.”