what is history?

When we attempt to answer the question, What is history?, our answer, consciously or unconsciously, reflects our own position in time, and forms part of our answer to the broader question, what view we take of the society in which we live. I have no fear that my subject may, on closer inspection, seem trivial. I am afraid only that I may seem presumptuous to have broached a question so vast and so important.

- E.H. Carr, What is History?

What I am, therefore, is in key part what I inherit, a specific past that is present to some degree in my present. I find myself part of a history and that is generally to say, whether I like it or not, whether I recognise it or not, one of the bearers of a tradition.

- Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue

now, i have nothing against the reformation. in fact, i would characterise my own theological convictions as reformed, indeed calvinist. but as good historians, we must recognise that the reformation is after all a tradition, a product of its times.

in particular, we must recognise that the phrase 'justification by faith alone' is after all a tradition, a product of its times. it was coined in response to the perceived corruption of the catholic church, which apparently diminished Christ's work on the cross by preaching 'justification by works'.

the truth is, there are two kinds of justification - justification by faith in the present and justification by works in the future. just because we are not justified by works in the present does not mean that we are not justified by works in the future, or that we are justified by faith alone. the phrase 'justification by faith alone' is not only not biblical, it is actually unbiblical.

But the point is this: there is no neutral, 'ordinary reading'. What seems 'ordinary' to one person will seem extraordinary to others. There are readings which have grown up in various traditions, and all need testing historically and exegetically as well as theologically. And, as I have argued before and hope to show here once more, many of the supposedly 'ordinary readings' within the Western Protestant traditions have simply not paid attention to what Paul actually wrote...

The rules of engagement for any debate about Paul must be, therefore: exegesis first and foremost, with all historical tools in full play, not to dominate or to squeeze the text out of the shape into which it naturally forms itself, but to support and illuminate a text-sensitive, argument-sensitive, nuance-sensitive reading.

One of the first insights I came to in the early stages of my doctoral work on Romans, wrestling with the commentaries of the 1950s and 1960s as well as with the great traditions (which I respected then and respect still) of Luther and Calvin, was that, when you hear yourself saying, 'What Paul was really trying to say was...' and then coming up with a sentence which only tangentially corresponds to what Paul actually wrote, it is time to think again.

When, however, you work to and fro, this way and that, probing a key technical term here, exploring a larger controlling narrative there, enquiring why Paul used this particular connecting word between these two sentences, or that particular scriptural quotation at this point in the argument, and eventually you arrive at the position of saying, 'Stand here; look at things in this light; keep in mind this great biblical theme, and then you will see that Paul has said exactly what he meant, neither more nor less' - then you know that you are in business.

Even if - perhaps especially if! - it turns out that he is not talking about what we thought he should have been, or that he is not saying exactly what our tradition, or our favourite sermon, had expected him to say about it.

- N.T. Wright, Justification: God's Plan and Paul's Vision