2 of 3
In his defense against this postmodern attack, Harvey invokes the name of one of the trendiest philosophers around: Ludwig Wittgenstein. In an odd use of Wittgenstein's appeal to ordinary language, Harvey tries to fend off the postmodern claim that there are no theory-free facts by claiming that the distinction between facts and theory is part of the ordinary working vocabulary of historians. There is no need for any philosophical ac count of the difference; good historians just base their theories on facts.
What Harvey does not see is that this move exactly parallels the claims made by the so-called Wittgensteinian fideists in theology, who have attempted to evade questions about religious truth by simply appealing to the fact that the religious language game is played. Essentially, such fideists say that God exists because the religious community talks about him as existing. However, such a move cannot satisfy the critic who wonders about the value and appropriateness of a whole kind of discourse.
The same is true for the critic who wonders about the "rules" of what we might call the game of the historian. If it is true that historical scholarship of the debunking sort that Harvey endorses has been shaped by dubious philosophical assumptions, then one can hardly evade critical questions about such practices by asserting with Wittgenstein that "this game is played." The proper response to such a move is simple: "Yes, I know, but should it be played, or at least played just the way it is?"
In theory, Harvey recognizes the relativity of all human scholarship, including historical scholarship. In practice, he still thinks of the methods of the "critical historian" as lifted above the flux of history, standing in judgment on the historically conditioned belief and thinking of all other peoples. Harvey needs to take more seriously than he does the implications of "historical relativism" for the practice of history. His instincts in wishing to preserve in the face of postmodernist relativism some notion of historical truth and objective evidence are sound. Nevertheless, he needs to reflect more than he does whether or not the "methods" of the group he calls critical historians give them a monopoly on gaining such truth, or rather whether they might reflect debatable philosophical assumptions. Harvey never considers whether God is himself, through his church and revelation, capable of giving people the good news they need to hear. The Christian claim that salvation depends upon historical events is surprising and shocking enough; the claim that the path to salvation rests on the shoulders of modern critical historians is just a little too paradoxical.
As a theologian, in the original edition Harvey was critical of neo-orthodox thinkers such as Bultmann for supposing that one can evade the significance of historical inquiry. He has now himself moved dramatically in their direction by em bracing the perspective of Leo Strauss, who denied the importance of history for faith. Christian theology and practice is informed by "stories" (myths in Straussian terms) whose historical truth is unimportant. The heart of Christian faith is found in Richard Niebuhr's concept of a "trust in the Void," which is that "last shadowy and vague reality, the secret of existence by virtue of which things come into being, are what they are, and pass away." The lesson I would draw from this is that if one empties Christian faith of all intelligible content, it really does have nothing to fear from historical inquiry, or indeed from inquiry of any kind. "Nothing ventured, nothing lost" could be the slogan of this kind of theology.
share this page
RSS Feed
