Methodological Naturalism as an Unexamined Premise in Historical Jesus Research

Historians of early Christianity routinely describe their exclusion of supernatural explanation asa methodological constraint rather than a metaphysical commitment. This article argues that thedescription conceals a systematic equivocation. Three distinct theses travel under the single nameof methodological naturalism: an ontological claim that only natural causes exist; an epistemicmodesty claim that the historian’s tools cannot adjudicate claims of transcendent agency; and anexplanatory-filter claim that no explanation invoking such agency may be ranked among the candidate accounts of a body of evidence. The second is defensible and, properly stated, uncontroversial.The third is not, and the literature slides from the second to the third without argument, importing the first along the way. The article traces the genealogy of the premise from Spinoza, Hume,and Kant through Reimarus, Strauss, and Bultmann to its contemporary formulations; audits theresulting argument for circularity, argument from ignorance, and an unwarranted inference fromthe observed uniformity of nature; and shows that the criteria of authenticity are applied asymmetrically once extraordinary events are at issue, so that evidence which elsewhere corroboratesan event is reclassified as evidence only of belief. It closes by specifying what a non-questionbegging historiography of the extraordinary would look like, distinguishing the establishment ofan explanandum, the ranking of explanations, and the assent of faith, which is of another order.