In chapter five, The Problem of Historical Knowledge, Craig defends the importance of history to Christianity in light of the popular and scholarly rejection of history. Craig traces historiography as a science. Historiography is defined as "the study of the way history has been and is written – the history of historical writing", which means that, "When you study 'historiography' you do not study the events of the past directly, but the changing interpretations of those events in the works of individual historians" (The Methods and Skills of History: A Practical Guide, 1988, p. 223, ISBN 0-88295-982-4). In the Medieval Period (fifth to the eleventh century), historiography waned greatly. Anselm, therefore, defended Christianity largely from the Biblical text itself.
In the Modern Period, the rise of historical apologetics corresponded with the rise of modern historiography. Erasmus was the embodiment of the ideal Renaissance humanist who spent his life translating classical works into Latin.
The Protestant Reformation turned to the Patristic age to disprove Roman Catholic doctrine. The seventeenth and eighteenth century saw a revival of interest in reading history.
Hugo Grotius was the first to provide a developed historical argument for Christianity in his De veritate religionis christianae (1627). He defended the historical proofs of Jesus’ miracles and resurrection and the conversion of the apostle Paul which bore witness to the reality of the resurrection of Jesus. Grotius argued given the authenticity of the Gospels, the apostolic testimony to the resurrection of Christ could only be denied if the apostles were either lying or sincerely mistaken. But neither of these are reasonable. Later apologists, such as C. S. Lewis, would use this argument. Both French and English apologists prove the truth of Christianity with the facts of history.
During the nineteenth century, German historian Leopold von Ranke greatly influenced the study of history. What drove his historicism was the uncovering the objective facts and letting them alone speak for themselves. The twentieth century, however, totally departed from Ranke’s objective approach to the subjective approach that the historian must ascribe meaning to the historical facts. This approach was called historical relativism.
Hayden White, for example, believes that because historical events must be embedded by the historian in narratives involving a plot structure which is his own construction, historical writing is not different from fictional writing and should be assessed only by means of literary and aesthetic criteria (“The Burden of History” in Topics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978, 27-50). The relativists abandoned the authorial intent of historians and one interpretation of history.
Historic relativism couple with the rejection of the miraculous in the nineteenth century led to the quest for the historical Jesus or the non-miraculous Jesus behind the supernatural figure in the Gospels. This quest failed, and so rather than accept a supernatural Jesus, biblical critics ascribed the supernatural Jesus to the theology of the early church so that the historical Jesus was no longer recoverable.
There are two main cases against the objectivity of history. First, we cannot know anything about the past as it actually happened because we cannot directly observe the past.
The Problem of Lack of Direct Access.
Historian Patrick Gardiner expresses this case: “In what sense can I be said to know an event which is in principle unobservable, having vanished behind the mysterious frontier which divides the present from the past? And how can we be sure that anything really happened in the past at all, that the whole story is not an elaborate fabrication, as untrustworthy as a dream or a work of fiction? (The Nature of Historical Explanation. London: Oxford, 1961, 35).
The second case against the objectivity of history is The Problem of Lack of Neutrality.
This objections states that history can never be objectively written. The historian always looks at the past though the colored glasses of the present, as determined by his society and environment. Every historian is the product of his time.
Critique of Historical Relativism
The Problem of Lack of Direct Access.
While the historian does not have direct access to the past, the residue of the past, things that have really existed, is directly accessible to him. For example, archaeological data furnish direct access to the objects of the historian’s investigation.
The postmodern relativist claim that all historical observation is theory-laden. No one employs postmodern hermeneutics in reading the instructions on a medicine bottle so why must one change his hermeneutic when it comes to history.
The Problem of Lack of Neutrality.
Craig provides three refutations to the problem of lack of neutrality.
1) A common core of indisputable historical facts exists. The relativists are totally inconsistent with this issue. Becker, while saying that facts have no meaning, admits that “some things, some ‘facts’ can be established and agreed upon” ----examples include the date of the Declaration of Independence, Caesar’s crossing the Rubicon, the sale of indulgences in 1517, Lincoln’s assassination, and so forth (Becker, Historical Facts, 132).
2) It is possible to distinguish between history and propaganda. A good example of propaganda was the Soviet practice of rewriting history to serve their political purposes. According to Morton White, when Stalin came to power, he had Russian history rewritten so that it was he and Lenin who led the Bolshevik Revolution instead of Lenin and Trotsky. According to White, It has been shown by students of the Russian Revolution that mountains of books, newspapers, pamphlets, decrees, and documents had to be consigned to the ‘memory hole,’ mashed to pulp, or brought out in corrected editions in order to substitute for Lenin-Trotsky a new duality-unity, Lenin-Stalin (Morton White, Foundations of Historical Knowledge. New York: Harper & Row, 1965, 268).
If the facts have no meaning and can be made to say whatever the historian wants, then there is no way to protest the propagandizing of history.
3) It is possible to criticize poor history. All historians distinguish good history from poor. Here is a good example:
Immanuel Velikovsky attempted to rewrite history on the basis of worldwide catastrophes caused by extraterrestrial forces. Edwin Yamauchi relentlessly plucked one support after another by a detailed analysis of ancient documents, archaeology, and philology until the structure tumbles down in ruin. His conclusion is succinct: “Velikovsky’s reconstruction is a catastrophic history in a double sense. It is a history based on catastrophe, and it is a disastrous catastrophe of history” (“Immanuel Velikovshy’s Catastrophic History,” Journal of American scientific Affiliation 25, 1973, 138, 134).
Postmodernist doctrines are so obviously self-refuting that it is difficult for most philosophers of history to take them seriously. As Fay complains, Postmetaphysical theories claim to tell us what is the case about history (and thus invoke the idea of truth); claim that their accounts better fit the evidence than do their rival’s (and thus invoke the idea of objectivity); and claim to reveal something about the ways things are (and thus invoke the idea of reality). Most postmetaphysical metatheories implode because they utilize what they deny is legitimate (Fay, “Nothing but History?” 84).