That’s a fantastic question, which leaves me wondering about my own reasoning. It’s a line of thinking I found in reading the literary critic Harold Bloom and the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. Let me see if I can unpack my thinking on the matter.

I agree with you wholeheartedly that the only good history is honest history, a history which takes into the fullest possible account every valid source. I suppose my point is more or less that history isn’t so much where a theology derives its power, whether for good or evil — or anything in between. For instance, one might find a way to articulate to the fullest and finest degree each of the beliefs and practices of Jesus’ earliest followers, his closest students; but that does not, therefore, make those beliefs and practices powerful to a person in the twenty-first century. In order for such information to become relevant to a modern person, they themselves would need to find some kind of relevance here and now in it.

There’s a concept in psychoanalysis, especially in Lacan’s work, that there is a difference between what we might call “the past” and “history” — the past being a kind of objective series of events, saturated with potential data, and a history being a kind of distillation of that past into a narrative. For an individual subject or person, according to Lacan, memories of one’s past are reduced to a narrow selection depending upon a person’s present identity or personality. For example: a person breaks up with their significant other of several years, then insists to their friends that they never loved that significant other in the first place; except this person may have in fact indeed loved their significant other prior to their falling out. Per this example, the person in question is not remembering the past as much as a history; the past has not turned them into this person who resents their ex, but something about who this person is now causes them to view the past in this way.

I would say that’s something like what I mean when I say that theology begins in the present. I think we see this largely in individuals for whom no amount of historical data can seem to change their vision of the world or their history thereof. We might take the West’s varied views on Islam as an example: a person may ultimately never be convinced that Islam, or even Muslims themselves, are not an inherently violent or an imperial force in the world, for the fact that this person feels threatened by present realities — for instance, migration of refugees, or the waning influence of normative Christianity in the West, etc. In such a case, the most effective means of helping this person develop a more nuanced or realistic view of Islam or of Muslims themselves would not necessarily be to take them through further historical data (not at all to call this useless, only to say it may be less effective than alternatives), but to expose them to modern Muslim people or populations. The historical nuance may come, but one wonders if it might not come only after what causes the person to view Islamic history in such a light is changed. That’s a somewhat caricatured example, but I hope it illustrates something of what I mean when I say that theology begins in, or derives its power from the present.

All that said, as I mentioned above, I agree wholeheartedly that honest history is the only way to go if one wishes to improve their theology. An honest grapple with history, especially by including the historical data one has not accounted for in their theology or narrative, seems to me paramount in constructing a healthy theology. However, if I were to put a finer point on the line you highlighted above (admitting fully that it may not be as clear as it should be), my point in particular is that Hugh Nibley’s own personal theology is not necessarily dependent upon the veracity of his historical work. As a historian Nibley may indeed be as objective as he can be, yet surely not every historical datum he came across went into his private view of the world. However, as a theologian, in my view, Nibley becomes something akin to a poet who utilizes what he finds useful or relevant from his academic work — much like a person distilling a past into a history, based on their present identity — in order to make sense of, or formulate responses to his own most pressing realities.

I hope that makes sense. Please feel free to let me know what you think of the above, it can only help me develop and refine this!