Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

CHAPTER 6
History, Hermeneutics and Faith
6.1. An Ongoing Dialogue
As thus far described, the situation at the beginning of the twenty-first century is
one of even greater confusion than when Schweitzer surveyed the equivalent scene
at the beginning of the twentieth century. On the one hand, the rampant neo-Liberal
quest seems to have superseded and called in question some of the key results of
nineteenth- and twentieth-century Gospels and life of Jesus research. And on the
other, postmodernism seems to have pulled the rug completely from under the feet
of even the possibility of historical research producing results which could command
wide assent. The possibility of a 'third quest' is one I shall pursue further in
what follows. But before we do so it is advisable to take stock of the gains and
losses and outstanding challenges from the more than five hundred years of tension
between faith and history in regard to Jesus of Nazareth so far reviewed. The questions
posed by Reimarus and Strauss, by Lessing and Troeltsch, by Kahler and
Wrede, by Bultmann and Robinson, by Funk and Crossan, by Iser and Fish are still
there, and unless they can be answered satisfactorily at this point any progress is
likely soon to encounter new variations of the same old roadblocks as before.
If our analysis has confirmed that history (the discipline) and faith have made
uncomfortable bedfellows, each usually trying to push the other out of the bed, it
has also demonstrated that history and hermeneutics are close companions,
Siamese twins perhaps. That will no doubt be part of the reason for the failure of
history and faith to bed well together: hermeneutics is the too little acknowledged
third partner — a somewhat uncomfortable menage ä trois. But unless the interdependence
of history and hermeneutics is acknowledged, there can be no progress;
as Gadamer puts it, 'the foundation for the study of history is hermeneutics'. 1
1. Gadamer, Truth 198-9.
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