Abstract
Even the rather constricted vision of historical study described by Robert Orsi, which I take to be the conventional view of the profession, has its admirable features; it constrains and disciplines the mind, and forces even the most secular students to take religion seriously as a inescapably human phenomenon. Natural theology isn't something he sees as doable entirely outside the assumptions of the Christian tradition. [...]isn't what McGrath is doing better named "theological science" rather than "scientific theology"-faith-based science, so to speak, rather than science-based faith? How can one write public history with a straight face, knowing all the time that reality is permeated, for Christians, with trapdoors of reversal and bouleversement Even with these caveats established, though, I think the McGrath analogy may take us into some very interesting territory, though perhaps less into questions of theory than those of institutional context.