so a theological account of history is not really about investigating what happened it's about
interpreting history after the fact you know that we as christians we affirm that god has um caught
everyone up in every aspect of reality through the death and resurrection of jesus and that god is
involved in every aspect of history so we don't really make a distinction between
history god's involved in natural and history that god's not involved in supernatural we say god's
involved in all of it but this is a retrospective claim we have this is a claim that we make right
now based on our own christian presuppositions and we can look back and narrate through history
to figure out how god was involved and we can ask theological questions about it and i just don't
know why that's not enough for when we're talking about the resurrection why can't we make why
can't we talk theologically about what paul says happened and let the resurrection itself not be
something that we need to be able to reconstruct the way we can reconstruct the siege of jerusalem
for instance yeah well i just think this is a wonderful beautiful example of the difference
between a historian and a theologian okay um because i'm approaching this historically whereas
i think you're looking at it more theologically so let let's talk about a couple of these things
um uh you you mentioned about it we have to you know as christians we interpret this and and
god is is acting in history here i i agree with you if we're looking at it uh practically speaking
and theologically speaking but as a historian i can bifurcate um the
historical from the theological so for example take the claim jesus died for our sins now
i can't affirm that entire statement as a historian i can take that by faith but i can
adjudicate on half of that statement i can adjudicate on the portion that says jesus
died or jesus died by crucifixion i can look at the historical data and conclude that jesus died
by crucifixion while saying the claim that uh jesus death atones for sins well that's for the
theologian uh that's for faith where faith comes in uh but i can't verify that i might be able to
verify that jesus believed his death atones for sins or that the early christians believed that
jesus death atones for sin but as a historian i don't have the tools to be able to verify
that jesus death indeed atones for our sins regarding methodological naturalism i i agree but
i i think that methodological naturalism we've got to take a little more prudent approach to it
that's less infused with world views than is typically done what most historians i or i should
say biblical scholars well even some historians who deal with this and the matter of historians
and miracles is something that is a live discussion even amongst philosophers of history
at this very time and has been for the last two decades um a living discussion
but a lot of philosophers of history biblical scholars will say that you
got to go with a methodological naturalism that if miracles involved you can't adjudicate on it
okay so i think what a historian can do is they can look at the data and adjudicate on
whether the event occurred they just wouldn't be able as a historian to be able to adjudicate on
the cause of the event so let me give an example let's suppose that astrophysicists have been
uh keeping track of a comet for a decade and within the last year they've determined that
the comet is on a crash course with our moon and they've determined that it is going to crash into
the lunar surface at a specific time on a specific day and at that time the hubble space telescope
and a bunch of planetariums around the world are zoomed in on the lunar surface and they watch that
comet slam into the moon and as the dust settles there's a message on the moon's surface that says
and it's in hebrew and in greek it says jesus is lord now an astrophysicist could
look at that a cosmologist and say i have no idea how that happened how that how that um
statement appeared in greek and hebrew on the moon's surface but you wouldn't turn
around and deny that the comet crashed into the moon's surface and and left that message
you would say the event occurred you would leave the cause undetermined because you don't have
the tools as an astrophysicist to determine that god caused it now of course you could take your
lab coat off as a physicist and say but i do think that god is probably the best explanation but in
doing so you're not using the tools of a physicist in a similar way i think we the historian can look
at the evidence for the resurrection of jesus and conclude that jesus rose from the dead
and leave the calls undetermined now i think you could take your tweed jacket off as a
historian and say well um yeah god's probably the best cause for it especially given some of
jesus claims but we can't have the tools as a historian to verify that that god did it