Gerd Ludemann begins his book-length refutation of Benedict XVI’s book on Jesus with the following claim, which he regards as “undeniable, indeed axiomatic”:
In his insightful book The Historian and the Believer, Van Harvey drives home the point that history must be carefully distinguished from belief and identifies the crucial difference between the two: the historian must present objective evidence for his assertions. The rules of the game do not permit him to rely on uncorroborated testimony or claims of authority. Thus the validity of the historians conclusions derives from the very nature of historical knowledge. The chronicler who fails to challenge eyewitness testimony and to submit documentary sources to critical examination is not a historian. Rather he or she becomes, in Harvey’s trenchant but apt words, “no longer a seeker of knowledge but a mediator of past belief; not a thinker but a transmitter of tradition.”
This really is an axiom for Ludemann – he’s laid down a principle from which every other claim roles out with perfect logic. The axiom gets some dialectical defense – it’s not pure stipulation – but the genius and value of Ludemann’s work is its rigor, clarity, and consistency with his axiom. Once one has set down an absolute division between history/ knowledge and the transmission of tradition/ claims of authority, much of what he has to say about Christianity is pretty clearly sketched out.
Benedict, of course, does not see the Ludemann’s sharp, axiomatic lines. History has an intrinsic limitation when applied to the Christian faith, and must have its truth supplemented. Ludemann sees this as a search for an excluded middle:
[Quotations from Benedict- Ed.] In other words, this “Jesus of the Gospels” – who in the previous paragraphs was described as the product of a self-transcendent People of God, the Church that in turn received “its very self from the Incarnate Christ” – is now portrayed as “real”, “plausible” and “convincing” using the historical-critical method! The ontological disconnect leaves one breathless.
Brandon Watson said,
May 8, 2012 at 4:57 pm
It’s interesting that after all this time the argument still turns on a variety of Lessing’s Ditch.
I’m somewhat puzzled by Ludemann’s argument (or adaptation of Van Harvey’s argument), though; I know no historians who actually operate in the manner he suggests, for the obvious reason that such a procedure would require ignoring evidence. Historians will rely on uncorroborated testimony; they’re just expected to tag it as uncorroborated.
James Chastek said,
May 8, 2012 at 7:57 pm
I was puzzled by “uncorroborated” too – as though we’d value the quantity of witnesses over the quality of them, though it isn’t hard to imagine many situations in which we don’t do so. We would prefer an unimpeachable eyewitness to a shady character who had someone to vouch for him; less dramatically, we value a single expert opinion of a situation over a chorus of fools. Even with a ceteris paribus clause, it’s not obvious to me that we should value corroboration over other other features of evidence. But then again, this isn’t my field.
Ludemann is a pretty logical guy, though, so I wonder if by “uncorroborated” he meant “hearsay”, or if he had in mind something like “when there are multiple accounts, we accept the points of testimony on which they agree, and not on the points in which they are unique”. So maybe we admit a lot of Synoptic stuff and throw out a lot of Johannine stuff; or we accept the parables of the kingdom and not he slaughter of the innocents, etc. Even on this account, I still wonder if he wished he had that claim back. His main point – which is radical enough – is just to oppose fact and belief, and so the point about corroboration is (or at least should be) irrelevant.
Brandon Watson said,
May 8, 2012 at 8:18 pm
I wonder if, in context, it was a slip: not uncorroborated, but ‘unexamined’. That would make more sense of the argument — it would weaken the sense in which it could obviously be pinned on ‘the believer’, but it would make more sense in light of what he goes on to say.
James Chastek said,
May 8, 2012 at 9:34 pm
Or maybe “unable to be corroborated” or (if it’s a word) “uncorroboratable”- maybe his target is private experience, religious experience, things experienced in visions, etc. Not long after this he quotes The Varieties of Religious Experience as articulating the sort of experience that people nowadays find untenable and silly.
BenYachov said,
May 9, 2012 at 9:25 am
William Lane Craig debated Ludemann twice and if we believe Luke over at the Commonsense Atheism Blog. Craig smashed him both times.
(That is what I like about Luke which puts him a grade above the average Gnu, he is not afraid to say an Atheist lost an argument. He tries to not be tribal about the whole thing.)
theofloinn said,
May 9, 2012 at 12:21 pm
There is no first-hand evidence for Hannibal, either. Nor for Socrates. Porphyry did not record the teachings of Plotinus until after Plotinus was dead. Some people are wondering about Mohamed. One wonders how many historical person would survive if the same filter were it applied across the board.
As I understand it, the ancient Greeks valued what they called “the living word” — oral testimony of eyewitnesses — over documents for the simple reason that living people could be cross-examined and their testimony clarified. Words on a page could be misunderstood as to tone and meaning and could not be queried. Hence, most bioi and histories were only written down when the eyewitnesses were dying off.