ARTICLE GUIDE
At a Glance
Walter C. Kaiser Jr. describes the promise-plan of God as a unified narrative of redemption, grounded in actual historical events. The narrative culminates in the bodily resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. However, post-Enlightenment historiography, influenced by methodological naturalism, systematically excludes supernatural causes, thereby distancing the biblical narrative from its original Hebraic context.
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What This Study Explores
Promise-Plan Theology • Resurrection • Historical Method
Direct Answer: Can historians responsibly investigate the resurrection without assuming methodological naturalism?
Yes. Historical inquiry need not presume either that miracles occur or that they cannot occur. A critically realist method can bracket metaphysical conclusions, examine the relevant evidence, compare competing explanations, and ask which hypothesis best accounts for the data with the greatest explanatory scope and least contrivance.
On this approach, the resurrection is not treated as a gap-filling appeal to the supernatural. It is evaluated as the climactic claim of Israel’s promise-plan: God’s vindication of Jesus, the defeat of death and hostile powers, and the inauguration of new creation for Israel and the nations.
Key Claims
- Methodological naturalism becomes philosophically prejudicial when it excludes supernatural causation before evidence is considered.
- Critical realism acknowledges the historian’s limitations while maintaining that genuine knowledge of past events is possible.
- Hume’s argument weighs antecedent probability heavily but does not eliminate the need to assess the quality and convergence of particular testimony.
- The resurrection hypothesis should be compared with rival explanations by standard historical criteria rather than dismissed by definition.
- The bodily resurrection functions within the biblical narrative as Messiah’s vindication and the historical climax of God’s promise-plan.
Interpretive Context
The argument concerns what historical method may investigate, not whether historical reasoning can compel theological faith. Scholars disagree about the admissibility of miracle explanations and about the strength of individual pieces of resurrection evidence. The most defensible formulation is therefore comparative: once an a priori naturalistic veto is removed, the resurrection may be assessed alongside alternative hypotheses, while its full meaning remains inseparable from Israel’s Scriptures and early Christian proclamation.
Critical realism also requires symmetrical scrutiny of presuppositions. The historian who invokes a miracle bears an explanatory burden, but the historian who excludes divine action by definition has made a metaphysical judgment rather than a conclusion drawn from the evidence; honest comparison should disclose those commitments and calibrate certainty accordingly.
Selected Scholarship
- David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, sec. 10 — the classic modern argument concerning testimony and miracles.
- C. Behan McCullagh, Justifying Historical Descriptions — criteria for assessing historical explanations.
- Michael R. Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach — critical realism and resurrection historiography.
- N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God — the Jewish and early Christian historical context of resurrection belief.
- Bart D. Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction, 7th ed. (2020).
Scripture Connections
Genesis 3; Genesis 1:1–2
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The complete article and its available video material remain on Rabbit Room Apologetics at Substack.
Originally published June 9, 2026. This WordPress page is a discovery guide; the complete article is hosted on Substack.