Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§6.4 History, Hermeneutics and Faith
ism'), while also fully acknowledging that the only access we have to this reality
lies along the spiralling path of appropriate dialogue or conversation
between the knower and the thing known (hence 'critical'). 47
The historians Appleby, Hunt, and Jacob argue in similar terms for 'practical realism'
as 'an interactive relationship between an inquiring subject and an external
object', 48 a 'qualified objectivity . . . disentangled from the scientific model
of objectivity'. They concede the impossibility of neutral research but maintain
'the viability of stable bodies of knowledge that can be communicated, built
upon, and subjected to testing'. 49
I align myself with the basic thrust of Lonergan's epistemology and its application
to history. Even the data themselves are never 'raw': they have already
been 'selected' by the historical process; they are 'selected' again by the way
they have been discovered and brought to present notice; they come with a context,
or various contexts already predisposing interpretation; the interpreter's
framework of understanding or particular thesis causes certain data to appear
more significant than others; and so on. But all that being said, there is an otherness,
an 'over-against-us' character to the data, and also to the events to which
they bear witness. And the task of seeking to describe and evaluate the data and
to reach some sort of judgment regarding the facts, which is not merely subjective
but may command proper critical respect, is not only viable, but in the case
of the great event(s) of Jesus necessary. In particular, the model of historical
study as a dialogue between present and past, between historian and history, is
one which has always appealed to me, not least because it recognizes that the historian
not only asks the questions, but, in genuine engagement with the subject
matter, often finds him/herself put in question. In what follows, therefore, I will
attempt to practise the historian's art somewhat on the model of 'critical realism'.
All this becomes still more relevant when the subject matter is mediated to
us primarily through historical texts.
6.4. Hermeneutical Principles
The 'linguistic turn' of postmodernism has refocused the historian's task on
'text' rather than 'event'. Besides which, any attempt to recover the historical figure
of Jesus is more or less exclusively a matter of dealing with ancient texts. So
questions about history elide almost imperceptibly into questions about interpre-
47. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God 31-46 (here 35 — Wright's emphasis).
48. Telling the Truth 251, 254, 259, 285.
49. Telling the Truth 254-61 (here 254).
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