The Presuppositions of the Historical-Critical Method - Sources

This article is a companion piece to the discussion thread, Dan McClellan and his "Data over Dogma" rhetoric is hypocrisy.

The presuppositions of the historical-critical method - naturalism, methodological atheism, and an atomizing hermeneutic of suspicion - are documented across philosophical, theological, and historiographical literature:

1. Fallibility & Historical Conditioning (Rooted in Naturalism)

• Ernst Troeltsch, "On Historical and Dogmatic Method in Theology" (1898):

  • The foundational text establishing the epistemic framework of historical criticism. Troeltsch outlines the three necessary axioms of modern historical inquiry:

    1. The Principle of Criticism: Historical judgments are never absolute, only statements of relative probability subject to permanent revision.

    2. The Principle of Analogy: Past events must be evaluated through the lens of present human experience and natural regularities (effectively excluding unrepeatable supernatural interventions).

    3. ThePrinciple of Correlation: All historical events are bound together in a continuous, unbroken chain of immanent, natural cause and effect.

• Rudolf Bultmann, "New Testament and Mythology" (1941) & "Existence and Faith" (1960):

  • Bultmann explicitly stated that modern historical understanding is predicated on a closed causal nexus. Miracles and supernatural disruptions cannot enter the historical equation; any text reporting them must be "demythologized" as human existential expression conditioned by an ancient, pre-scientific worldview.

• Alvin Plantinga, "Two Dozen (or so) Theistic Arguments" & "Warranted Christian Belief" (2000):

• Plantinga critiques what he terms "Duhemian" or "Troeltschean Historical Biblical Criticism" (HBC). He demonstrates that HBC operates on methodological naturalism - precluding divine intervention and revelation a priori by tethering historical probability to observable, closed natural systems.

2. Exclusive Human Authorship & Compositional Evolution (Rooted in Methodological Atheism)

• Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (1967):

  • Berger formulated the explicit concept of "methodological atheism" in the study of religion. He argues that scientific and historical methodologies must operate under the bracketed assumption that religion is entirely a human projection and social construction, setting aside metaphysical or divine agency as inadmissible empirical evidence.

• Baruch Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670):

  • The intellectual bedrock of the modern critical method. In Chapter 7 ("Of the Interpretation of Scripture"), Spinoza insists that Scripture must be interpreted solely through its own internal history, language, and the natural minds of its fallible human authors, divorced from divine inspiration or philosophical dogma.

• Julius Wellhausen, Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels (1883):

  • Developed the classic Documentary Hypothesis (JEDP), illustrating compositional evolution. Wellhausen treats Israel's sacred texts strictly as secular documents reflecting human socio-political stages and priestly power struggles, arguing that religious forms evolved gradually from primitive animism to institutional legalism without transcendent intervention.

• C. Stephen Evans, The Historical Christ and the Jesus of Faith (1996):

• Evans analyzes how historical biblical scholarship demands an "agnostic" or "methodologically naturalistic" posture, treating the biblical authors as solely responsible for text production, thereby separating the natural human history of composition from theological claims of divine inspiration.

3. Pluralism & Contradiction (Rooted in an Atomizing Hermeneutic of Suspicion)

• Paul Ricœur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation (1970):

  • Ricœur coined the term "hermeneutics of suspicion". He contrasts the "hermeneutics of faith" (which seeks restoration of meaning) with suspicion (championed by Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud), which approaches texts believing their explicit surfaces mask self-interested, psychological, or ideological motives.

• Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (1997):

  • Brueggemann applies the hermeneutics of suspicion to historical-critical scholarship, arguing that critical approaches systematically deconstruct unified canonical claims into contested, ideological "voices." Texts are analyzed not as harmonious theological wholes, but as rival socio-political factions within Israel asserting power.

• Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (1983):

  • Explicitly champions the hermeneutic of suspicion within historical-critical biblical studies. She argues that biblical texts must be atomized and read "against the grain" to expose patriarchal and ideological interests that supposedly suppressed egalitarian early Christian communities.

• Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI), "Biblical Interpretation in Conflict" (Erasmus Lecture, 1988) & Jesus of Nazareth (2007, Foreword):

  • Ratzinger critiques the historical-critical method precisely for its atomizing nature. He argues that by operating on historical skepticism and hyper-specialized dissection (source, form, and redaction criticism), the method isolates literary fragments, sets them against one another in mutual contradiction, and dissolves the overarching canonical coherence of Scripture.