Theology vs. history?

These questions are particularly interesting in the light of our class topics this week on Biblical criticism.

Anonymous

One thing that we discussed in class over the past week was how the crucifixion of Christ can be viewed as a “great trauma” such as September 11th, or the holocaust. I personally find it really hard to think of theology as a form of history based on how I was brought up with Christianity. Learning about Jesus was learning about something I was supposed to accept without any proof. I went to school on Sunday to learn about this guy named Jesus who walked on water and turned water into wine. I was taught about the mythical aspects of Jesus’s life which made him seem very unreal to me; unreal in a sense that it was just a story and I never really grasped the fact that Jesus really did walk the earth at some point.

Let’s take a minute to look at how history is taught. In history class, a teacher tells you about something that happened a long time ago and you are taught to believe it without much of any concrete evidence placed in front of you. When you look at things this way, the bible is in some form a history text book. I guess what I’m trying to say is what makes history so different from Christian theology? Why do we question what we are taught in religion class and tend to accept what we are taught in history class? Historians study ancient Rome the same way Theologians study the story of Jesus Christ: by trying to look at primary sources and draw conclusions that are biased. For example, WWII is taught completely differently in Japan than it is in America. How do we know what the real side of the story is?

What makes history class more believable than Sunday school? The easy answer is the fact that what we are taught in Sunday school defies what we are taught in science class. It’s impossible to turn water into wine, to turn a couple of loaves of bread into hundreds and to be risen up from the dead. However, one might easily argue that those tales are not to be taken literally and are more fables about the human spirit. For example everyone has heard the rationalization that Jesus did not create loaves of bread and fish but everyone added to the basket to create more food than the disciples had to start with. This is a prime example of how these stories of miracles in the bible can be just another biased tale attempting to get people to relate to the situation and learn a lesson, much like Jesus’s parables. What we are taught in history class is only an interpretation of what really happened, just like what we are taught in Sunday school. In this way theology is just another form of history except it is one that attempts to solve the answers to the mysteries of life.