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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
Must Christians today choose between the risen Jesus and electricity? Must we make a painful choice between modernity and miracles? Ernst Troeltsch, Rudolf Bultmann and Paul van Buren, to name only a few, all believe that the influence of modern science forces such a choice. Van Buren, for instance, simply assumes that ‘the idea of the empirical intervention of a supernatural “God” in the world of men has been ruled out by the influence of modern science on our thinking“.
page 309 note 1 The Secular Meaning of the Gospel (Macmillan, New York, 1963), p. 100.Google Scholar
page 309 note 2 Macmillan, New York, 1966.
page 310 note 1 ibid., p. 76. It should be noted that Harvey's modification of Bradley is not the most important one. It is not the indeterminacy principle of physics (see Hesse, Mary, ‘Miracles and the laws of Nature’, Miracles: Cambridge Studies in their Philosophy and History, ed. Moule, C. F. D. [Mowbray, London, 1965], p. 38)Google Scholar but rather Hume's point that natural laws are only predictive tools based on observed regularity that requires a modification of the notion of ‘immutable laws’. Such predictive tools cannot tell us whether a given kind of event could have occurred in the past.
page 310 note 2 The Historian and the Believer, pp. 74–75. See also p. 81.
page 311 note 1 e.g., ibid., pp. 85, 229.
page 311 note 2 ibid., pp. 114–15.
page 311 note 3 ibid., p. 115.
page 311 note 4 Rumor of Angels (Anchor Books, Garden City, 1970), p. 34. My emphasis.Google Scholar
page 312 note 1 Rumor of Angels (Anchor Books, Garden City, 1970), pp. 40–42. My emphasis.Google Scholar
page 312 note 2 Westphals's, Merold review of The Historian and the Believer in Religious Studies, XI (1967), 280.Google Scholar
page 312 note 3 Obviously, no actual historian can become so objective and disinterested that his personal preferences and commitments do not influence his historical judgments at all. ‘That noble dream’ of objectivity, however, is an exceedingly relevant ‘impossible ideal’. The methodological agnosticism of the historian qua historian, then, entails a conscious attempt not to permit one's personal commitment to say naturalism or supernaturalism, capitalism or communism, to negate one's obligation to decide questions of historical fact independently of one's personal preferences.
page 313 note l The Historian and the Believer, p. 87.
page 314 note 1 The Historian and the Believer, p. 225.
page 314 note 2 ibid., p. 228.
page 314 note 3 ibid., p. 227.
page 314 note 4 See his ‘Heilsgeschehen und Geschichte I: Die Geshicchte Gottes und die historisch-kritische Forschung’, Kerygma und Dogma, V (1959), 264ff.Google Scholar
page 315 note 1 The Historian and the Believer, p. 88.
page 315 note 2 ibid.
page 317 note 1 The Historian and the Believer, p. 10.
page 317 note 2 ibid., p. 88.
page 317 note 3 John 9.32; cf. also Luke 1.34.
page 317 note 4 See Nowell-Smith, Patrick, ‘Miracles’, in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, ed. Flew, A. and MacIntyre, A. (Macmillan, New York, 1964), pp. 243–253, and especially p. 245.Google Scholar
page 318 note 1 The Historian and the Believer, p. 123.
page 318 note 2 ibid., p. 18.
page 318 note 3 James, William, ‘The Will to Believe’, Essays in Faith and Morals, ed. Perry, Ralph B. (Meridian Books, New York, 1967), pp. 50–51.Google Scholar
page 319 note 1 Rom. 10.9; 1 Cor. 15.
page 319 note 2 An earlier version of this article appeared in Fides el Historia. The permission of Professor Robert D. Linder, Editor of FEH, to publish a revised version is gratefully acknowledged.