[153] LECTURE XIV, Nov. 17, 1955 We have begun the discussion of the relationship of religion and historical research and historiography^a. I tried first to show three elements in the work of the historian: the statement of the factual side, the attempt to explain the causal relations, and the understanding of the meaning. I said that the nearer we come from the first to the third level, the more the method is a method of participation^b. And the nearer we are to the factual, the more it is a method of detachment. History, like science, has methods of verification which are analogous with each other; the documentation in history, and the repeating experimentation in science, have an analogous character. Of course, history cannot be repeated, cannot be subjected to an experiment in THIS sense. But one can verify statements of one document by statements of an independent document which agrees with the first one. All this finally leads us to the question of the relation of historical and religious truth. Here l come to a point which is especially important for that type of religion which is intimately related to history. There are different types, one type which is very little related to history. Most of the Asiatic and the European mystical forms of religion have this character, while there are other religions which are definitively related to historical events, such as Judaism, Islam, Christianity, the religion of the old Persians, and modern progressive humanism. In the case of the history-directed religions, the question of historical truth in relation to religious truth is one of the most important and most difficult things and has moved theological thought, especially in Protestantism, ever since the method of historical research was applied to the biblical literature. This is the place where we must first of all discuss the relationship of religious truth (or truth of faith, truth in terms of ultimate concern) and historical truth (truth in the sense of understanding historical realities, their factual, their explanatory, and their meaning side).