Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§6.3 History, Hermeneutics and Faith
Faith as trust is never invulnerable to questions. 16 Rather, faith lives in dialogue
with questions. Faith-without-doubt is a rare commodity, which few (if
any) have experienced for any length of time. 17 On the contrary, doubt is the inoculation
which keeps faith strong in face of unbelief. Whereas it is the iust for
certainty' which leads to fundamentalism's absolutising of its own faith claims
and dismissal of all others. In fact, of course, little or nothing in real life is a matter
of certainty, including the risks of eating beef, or of crossing a road, or of
committing oneself to another in marriage. In each case, particularly in the case
of personal relationships, the language of trust, confidence, and assurance is
much the more appropriate. 18 In which case faith can live a good deal more comfortably
with the uncertainties of human testimony than Lessing or Troeltsch
thought. 19 In a day when all evaluation of social relationships is dependent to a
considerable extent on statistical survey and analysis, the fact that we live by
probabilities rather than by certainties is less of a problem than it has ever been. 20
c. Analogy
Troeltsch's second characteristic of the historical-critical method is the necessary
complement to the recognition of historical otherness (§6.3a above). The
recognition of a natural homogeneity and similarity between the historian and
the historian's subject matter is what prevents history from lapsing into a bare
catalogue of sequences of events. This insight was fundamental to Wilhelm
Dilthey's attempt to distinguish the methodology of the human sciences from
that of the natural sciences. 'Lived experiences' of the past can be 're-lived';
even 'what is alien and past' (§6.3a above) can be relived by historical under-
Dallas: Word, 1991) 325-26; P. Ellingworth, Hebrews (NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993)
564-66.
16. Trust is not the inevitable last step in a series of historical inferences' (Keck, Future
126).
17. Even in the case of the final resurrection appearance of Jesus recorded in Matthew's
Gospel, Matthew records that 'some doubted' (Matt. 28.17); see further below, §18.4b.
18. For Newman 'certainty', or subsequently 'certitude', was essential in religion; see
his An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, ed. I. T. Ker (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985) index
'Certitude'. But my colleague Sheridan Gilley points out that for Newman 'certitude' is 'ultimately
personal, the sort of certitude that we have in our personal relations, in which we trust,
love and have faith in God and one another' (personal communication dated March 14, 2001).
19. Thiselton cites A. D. Galloway, 'Merely probable knowledge is psychologically
compatible with the trustful certainty of faith. . . . There is nothing illogical or unreasonable in
the combination of such trust with merely probable knowledge' (Two Horizons 83).
20. Even more than when Bishop Butler first made the point, 'probability is the very
guide of life' (Introduction to his The Analogy of Religion [1736]).
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