Does Lack of Neutrality Prevent Us from Knowing Historical Facts?

Caleb Colley, Ph.D.

Misc.

Christianity is far more than a positive mental attitude or a generally moral way of life. The Bible teaches that Christianity is true because of certain historical facts related to Christ (1 Corinthians 15:1-19). In fact, knowledge of some historical facts is essential to saving faith.1 Facts are true propositions, or statements that correspond to how things really are. For example, “Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead” is a statement that makes a claim to being a fact of history, a claim that is essential to the Christian faith.

Is it possible to know whether such a statement about ancient history is true? Relativists believe that truth always is relative to the knower, and so there are no statements of universal truths about anything (historical or otherwise). In support of relativism, some have suggested that historical facts are inaccessible to humans due to unavoidable, biased presuppositions that make all of us non-neutral observers. For example, the late Michael Oakeshott, a political historian of the London School of Economics, wrote,

We know nothing of a course of historical events apart from some system of postulates. . . . What is known is always in terms of what is presupposed. [The historian—CC] is represented as starting from a ‘bare fact,’ whereas it is safe to say that he never does so, because such a starting-place is impossible—he begins with an interpretation, which he reinterprets.2

According to this view, there is no way to break out of the cycle of interpretation and re-interpretation to get an accurate understanding of what occurred in history. Similarly, Martha Howell and Walter Prevenier, in their 2001 textbook on historical methodology, wrote “[H]istorians do not discover a past as much as they create it…. Historians always create a past by writing it.”3

In discussions of the facts of biblical history, skeptics of the Christian faith often make similar allegations that such facts are lost to the mists of time. According to the skeptics, any reassembling of a historical narrative would be hopelessly confused by biases—particularly religious ones. For example, in arguing against the knowability of the historical facts about Jesus, Robert M. Price wrote:

[I]n trying to reconstruct the past, the historian is like the futurologist, or even the humble weatherman. . . . [T]hey merely assess the current, admittedly shifting, state of the data and project what is likely to happen, baring the unforeseen, which they warn viewers may nonetheless pop up and throw their projections into a cocked hat. The historian is not projecting but rather retrojecting. . . . Anything may have happened, for all we know.4

Christians would be wise to arm themselves with a response to this kind of general skepticism of historical knowledge.

One way of responding is to notice the time-honored distinction between history and propaganda. If a skeptic can admit the distinction between responsible history and propaganda about the past, then he is prepared to admit that techniques for responsible historiography are possible. Professional historians and historical associations roundly and routinely support this distinction. For example, the American Historical Association (certainly no proponent of biblical theism), has published its “Statement on Standards of Professional Conduct.” It reads in part:

All historians believe in honoring the integrity of the historical record. They do not fabricate evidence. Forgery and fraud violate the most basic foundations on which historians construct their interpretations of the past. An undetected counterfeit undermines not just the historical arguments of the forger, but all subsequent scholarship that relies on the forger’s work.5

Notice that the AHA recognizes that there is a right way to handle historical evidence and a wrong way.

As an example of this distinction between real historical research and propaganda in practice, consider the words of the Harvard University historian Morton:

It has been shown by students of the Russian Revolution that mountains of books, newspaper, pamphlets, decrees, and documents had to be consigned to the ‘memory hole,’ mashed to pulp, or brought out in corrected editions in order to substitute for Lenin-Trotsky a new duality-unity, Lenin-Stalin.6

For another example, the Brick Store Museum of Kennebunk, Maine wrote its “Principles of Research,” and included the following statement as one of its major principles of research:

Identify Bias: Recognize that all people have bias. In primary sources, secondary sources, and in historic interpretation, be able to detect bias and evaluate it. Analyze evidence critically, and question assumptions and interpretations (even your own). Consider alternative explanations. Biases are inherent in human thinking and can influence research. Researchers should reflect on their own backgrounds, beliefs, values, and potential biases that might affect their interpretation of historical events and attempt to remove those biases.7

Recognition of the distinction between history and propaganda is not the same as the establishment of standards of historiography, but it clears the way for such standards to be established, and so they have been.8

And, in his work on defending biblical historicity, Michael Licona of Houston Christian University listed six factors that historians use to reliably mitigate bias: (1) Proper historical method; (2) Public acknowledgement of one’s horizon and methodology; (3) Peer pressure and review; (4) Submitting hypotheses to hostile experts; (5) The presence of certain minimal facts; (5) A serious effort to detach from biases.9

Conclusion

As Norman Geisler pointed out, the only way to acknowledge that one’s worldview could potentially distort how he views history is to affirm that there is a right way to view history; relativism in any area of thought is self-defeating.10 Thus those who work in history regularly seek to detect and remove biases in order to get at the truth of what happened. If, after doing so, they follow the evidence where it leads, they will come to a saving faith in the historical Jesus Christ.

Endnotes

1 Cf. Acts 1:3; 2:29-36; Romans 1:4; Philippians 3:20-21; 2 Peter 1:16-21; John 1:1-14; 1 John 1:1-4.

2 Michael Oakeshott (1952), “Book Review: An Introduction to Philosophy of History,” The Philosophical Quarterly 2[8]:277.

3 Martha C. Howell and Walter Prevenier (2001), From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods (Ithica: Cornell University Press), p.1.

4 Roy Abraham Varghese, et al. (2013), The Case for the Christ of the New Testament: An Adversarial Dialogue Concerning the Existence of Jesus Christ (Vienna, WV: Warren Christian Apologetics Center), p. 67, emp. in orig.

5 American Historical Association (2023), “Statement on Standards of Professional Conduct,” historians.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Statement-on-Standards-of-Prof-Conduct-Jan-2023.pdf.

6 Morton White (1965), Foundations of Historical Knowledge (New York: Harper & Row), p. 268. Cited in William Lane Craig (2008), Reasonable Faith (Wheaton: Crossway), p. 236, revised edition.

7 Brick Store Museum (n.d.), “Principles of History Interpretation,” brickstoremuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/BSM_Principles_of_Research.pdf, parenthetical item in orig.

8 e.g., C. Behan McCullagh (1984), Justifying Historical Descriptions, Cambridge Studies in Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

9 Michael R. Licona (2010), The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity), chapter one.

10 Norman L. Geisler (1999), Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Baker), pp. 328-329.

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