Adam

Somewhere recently (probably here, though I can’t find him in the Search function) I read about Van A. Harvey’s The Historian and the Believer Amazon link (or via: amazon.co.uk)
It’s been around since 1966 apparently without an adequate response to Harvey’s challenge for Christians to come up with some historical reality to Jesus Christ. The orthodox understanding has been factually refuted, and the “two truths” systems of Neo-Orthodoxy and Protestant Liberalism are philosophically untenable. I’m not able to find out if much has been done about this “Harvey Problem”. He seems to operate more as a philosopher (anti-)theologian than as a historian, however. I’m familiar with the philosophers he cites, as I was a philosophy major at about that time, and I was likewise quite aware of the apparent hypocrisy of the theologians and preachers. That’s why I have gone on my own search for truth as posted here on FRDB in
Gospel Eyewitnesses Posts #436 and 450
respectively where I list my major posts and state my most intriguing conclusion.
At Sheshbazzar’s request to present actual texts I gave a first pass of the earliest eyewitness sources I found at
Early Aramaic Gospels
and second (still incomplete) pass through of slightly later texts
Gospel Eyewitness Sources
I was challenged for scholarly underpinnings for my work, and I serialized here also my 1980 source criticism of the Fourth Gospel
Significance of John

It would seem that without ever hearing of Harvey in 1966 I have yet made my foremost goal to answer his challenge. Have others already done so? If adequate backing could be found in my above threads, would my work serve as the type response Harvey demanded? Was he looking for facts or philosophic theory? (If the latter, would my blog post here at FRDB do?)
Circle of Truth

Toto

R. Joseph Hoffman has a paper referencing that book, published as a blog post: Skeptifying Belief

There is a google books version.

I do not think that your approach comes close to answering the questions that Harvey raises.

Adam

Thanks again, Toto,
Yes I appreciate your responses to my requests for help.
I had already found the Hoffman article, but I re-read it. It's good, but it's at the higher philosophical-theological level I have been finding. So was Harvey just saying that Christians were building their theologies apart from realistic ties? Not that no legitimate theology could be based on the facts as known? Not that no real basis was possible?

Toto

You can read most of Harvey's book on Google books

http://books.google.com/books?id=dTFxhJMR8H4C

I don't know what you mean by "building their theologies apart from realistic ties? Not that no legitimate theology could be based on the facts as known? Not that no real basis was possible?"

There is no reason to assume that the theological works in the Christian Bible are based on historical events. Of course, it is remotely possible that there was a historical basis to the gospels, but mere possibility is not worth anything.

Adam

Thanks again,
but I had already found a more complete preview at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Historian-Beli...der_0252065964
In it Harvey's 1996 Introduction to his 1966 book acknowledged that he had depended too much on the heavy-handed Rationalism of F. H. Bradley. Had he (Harvey) been writing the book afresh, he would have used Ludwig Wittgenstein's more nuanced arguments for balancing belief and doubt (p. xxi-xxvii). So is the case Harvey made so strongly against Christianity in 1966 not in need of refutation because he himself would not still argue its logical force? Was his 1966 case just another moral imperative of the Clifford Principle? (I respond to the Clifford Principle myself, but I believe it should be applied against any sort of harmful blind faith (Marxism, etc.) as well as against paralyzing doubt. In 1960 I started my philosophy by going beyond Socrates and doubting doubt in addition to just doubting)

Regarding my questions, I was just asking whether Harvey made those sorts of arguments--apparently not.

Toto

No.

From that intro:

a great deal of Christian theology, both conservative and liberal, still rests on historical claims about Jesus that are unsupportable from a historian's point of view.

Clifford Principle = "it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence."

Adam

Is there sufficient evidence for the Clifford Principle?
It's like the conundrum of Logical Positivism, "A proposition is meaningful only if it's verifiable."
But even without there being sufficient evidence, I apply the Clifford Principle to my own life. Evidence determines whether I believe something or cease to believe it.

The Harvey quote may be stating the obvious that the Trinity, Nicene Creed, and surely the Athanasian Creed, stand apart from anything historians can establish about the historical jesus, not even if every word is attributed to an eyewitness.