the "objective" historian...

I recently had a conversation with a fellow early Church student about how I view my approach to the discipline. I expressed how, for me, it was important to acknowledge that I approach these texts from a confessional point a view, as someone who accepts them as part of my community's tradition. (More on this later). She replied, (something like:)"Well I guess you are more situated than I am. I mean, as a secular historian if I'm challenged on a point I can easily change my mind."

Keeping in mind my bad paraphrase, what I heard was, "Because you are a Christian, you are obviously a bad historian who cannot handle critique of your understanding of the material." Now, I know this person well enough to know that this is not really what she meant. But it sure did come across this way. It got me thinking a bit about acceptable and unacceptable "perspectives" from which to do history...

I recently finished Liz Clark's excellent book History, Theory, Text in which she encourages historians of late antique Christianity to be more mindful of literary and critical theory. Clark provides excellent summaries and assessments of the work of everyone from Saussure to Derrida and traces the historical discipline's engagement with (or ignorance of) such thinkers throughout the 20th century. I sympathize and mostly agree with Clark's assessment of the usefulness of post-structuralist/hermeneutic/literary theory in the discipline of early Christianity. In particular, Clark rightly highlights the way in which the historian's own culture, context, and assumptions shape the way she reads a seemingly concrete text. This understanding then allows Clark to open up the meanings implicit in seemingly innocuous texts vis-a-vis power, gender, and social control.

What I regretted about Clark's work, though, is that it seemed to dismiss (if only by silence) the possibility of real scholarship that takes seriously the Church as the historian's context. While Clark is right to lament the hegemony of confessional readings of the Church Fathers and the limited range of questions and reading practices associated with such an approach, I fear she does not take seriously that some real historians are also real Christians who see their faith defined by the language that is taking shape in early Christian texts.

For me, I study these texts because of my faith. I study them because I believe Christianity is best understood as a particular cultural-linguistic community whose identity is shaped by specific types of language and practice. The study of our history, then, is the study of the development (and, at times, decline) of our shared language. Study of the early Church allows us to broaden our lexical options and imagine different types of signification within our systems of speech and practice. Simply put, saying, "Jesus is my Lord and Savior" has meant different things to different people in different periods. Yet, in some way, all these meanings are connected, and we can benefit from expanding our own appreciation for the possibilities of the phrase.

And yet, does this make me a bad historian? I don't think so. When my friend suggested that I would not be able to change my mind or except correction on a point, I think she made a category confusion. It is a helpful confusion, though, as it is made by Christians and historians alike in different ways.

There is a difference between the presuppositions I bring to the text and the conclusions I draw from it. Now, certainly they are mutually informing. Certainly, one will shape the other. This is why we need transparency in our own contextualization. But, if I say I come to the study of early Christianity with a commitment to the Nicene faith, this does not imply that I expect to find that faith proven by my historical study. That is to say, someone who questions or corrects my reading of Augustine does not thereby say anything about the faith that shapes who I am as a Christian historian. On the flip-side (I'm looking at you, Christians!) the study of history cannot in any way prove or legitimate Christian doctrinal claims. It can only help us better understand the nature of those claims.

Similarly, a feminist historian looking to uncover modes of sexual power and gender differentiation in early monastic texts does not seek to find proof in those texts that men and women are equal (or that gender is a social construct, or whatever other legitimate position one wants to insert here). No. This is a prior assumption that guides the investigation and shapes the questions. Surely if I inform Virginia Burrus that she reads, say, Athanasius wrong, she is not going to say, "Oh crap! Men are more intelligent than women! I was wrong all along!"

And no one would expect her to. Nor would anyone question the integrity of her scholarship because it comes with a particular vested interest. (Ok, some people might, but they just suck.)

Mind you, I'm not trying to play the whiny oppressed white male Christian here. That's a tired defensive line that I hear way to much in my own classes. But there is a legitimate concern here, that "Christian" scholarship is no longer legitimate in the academy. Certainly there is lots of unreflective pseudo-academic crap out there under the title "Christian scholarship." But there is also a bunch of pop-historical crap out there, too (read: the History channel). All I want to argue is that "Christian" is a perfectly legitimate context within which to do history... especially if that history is (*cough cough*) our history! Moreover, it can be just as rigorous and respectable as a "gendered" person studying the history of gender.