N.T. Wright Project

Drawing from our conversation earlier this week, here is the video camera analogy Tom sets forth to explain how history can never be ‘merely reporting the facts’, since history always includes interpretation:

“…even a video camera set up at random would not result in a completely ‘neutral’ perspective on events. It must be sited in one spot only; it will only have one focal length; it will only look in one direction. If in one sense the camera never lies, we can see that in another sense it never does anything else. It excludes far more than it includes.” (NTPG, 83)

He is not saying we can’t know what really happened or took place in the past, but that history is a much more dynamic process involving a back and forth exchange between the interpreter and the events. We not only see from a certain perspective, we are selective in what we see.

This reminded me of something Robert Jenson said last year in one of his lectures at the university:

“A people’s historical memory is built up and passed on and then reshaped and passed on. Events are seen in a different light as they’re passed on. Israel’s history of herself was handed down 2000 yrs. There will always be a relationship between history handed down and the particular situation that the people are in; history is not an objective deposit.” (Princeton University, 2/6/08)

It’s this last line that is so impressive. Jenson’s wording is precise. Like Tom, he is not slipping into the oblivion of relativism. There are objective events and actual facts that take place. But the passing down and retelling of these events and facts (what we call ‘history’) requires them to be interpreted. This is not only true of religious communities, but of all people groups - families, nations, businesses, etc. The belief that history can be done without this element of interpretation is what Tom calls “the Myth of Objective Data” (88). All history is interpreted history; that’s simply how history works.