Essay
When I began driving a truck to support my family eight years ago I found that I no longer had time to read theological and Biblical materials like I used to do. Instead the world of my reading became confined to those books which had been recorded as audiobooks, of which precious few had anything to do with theology. I decided that rather than wasting my time reading fiction all the time, I ought to read whatever I could find that bore even remotely on Biblical studies. It was not too hard to find books of history recorded on audiobooks, even from the period that interested me most, the first century Roman world of the New Testament, as well as the centuries just before and after it. I read Josephus'
Wars and Herodotus early on, and they became my favorites. My fascination with ancient history grew quickly as I read Livy, Books I-V, Tacitus'
Annals, Caesar's
Commentaries, Sallust, Eusebius, and Socrates Scholasticus, though not in that order. I read nearly every audiobook in the history section of our local library, covering periods ranging from fourteenth century France to biographies of Mao and Stalin. I read about two World Wars, the American Civil War, the Punic Wars, the Revolutionary War, the Napoleonic Wars, Alexander's conquests, the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide. I read about the discovery of Antarctica, the sources of the Nile, and the New World. I read sea adventures of Magellan, Drake, Nelson, Frobisher, Cook and a dozen others. Some books were written by the participants of the events they describe, others by contemporary chroniclers, and still others by modern historians. All this reading has done nothing to quench my thirst for an understanding of history.
I have been seeking more and more to understand the connections that tie the events together and unite them to a wider framework which will give them meaning. These connections between historical events and their meaning are interesting, but seldom discussed in histories. Historians almost never inform their readers of the basis of their jumps from the particulars of history to an absolute interpretation of the events, or else they avoid giving interpretations. As long as the reader and the writer share the same philosophy, there is really no need to put it on paper. Most readers today share a common secular worldview which includes elements such as a mechanistic universe, pure chance without the interference of spiritual forces, and aimlessness. Since both reader and writer do not believer that any particular world event moves history forward toward a predetermined goal, ther is no need for the author to say anything about it in his book. I, however, am not one of those readers. Even when writers make absolute statements about history, I can seldom agree with them because they cannot fit into my Christian interpretive framework. For example, when Tolstoy said, "A king is history's slave," he left out the most important party in the relationship, the Author of history, the Lord Himself.
God's hand moves history along according to his good pleasure toward a goal which He has predetermined before the world began. Few historians, especially modern ones, have acknowledged this in their interpretation of events. Sometimes I run across a writer who gives lipservice to Providence, while recording events as if there were no Hand guiding them. Other times I read old Christian authors who attribute all events to God without admitting the possibility of intermediate causes, or who subtily identify God's causes with his own, or fail to recognize the role of man's sinfulness in the outworking of His plan. Many of the Christian writers of whom I speak do not appear to be genuine believers. Some Christian writers simply mimic the methods of their secular exemplars, and then polish their work with a Christian varnish. Still other Christian writers have sound theology and aim at true Christian edification, but are just plain lousy historians. Some Christian biographies are really just hagiographies in Protestant disguise; they sift out all the historical data that do not glorify their subjects.
This failure to understand how God moves in this world both by means of and in spite of man's rebellion against Him has led historians into several common errors. 1)
God is on the winning side. God was pro-American and anti-British in the Revolutionary War, but pro-British and anti-French in the Napoleonic Wars. God was on Alexander's side. However, Isaiah 10 says that God was not on Assyria's side, even He gave them victory over the ten northern tribes. 2)
Religious factors are always less important in societal conflicts than political, cultural, and economic ones. The Reformation was only a power struggle betweeen the church and the growing power of the secular establishments of Europe. The settlement of New England was prompted by economic and political forces, not religious ones. 3)
Great men make history. The opposite mistake is just as pernicious. 4)
No one makes history; all alike are the pawns of chance.
I am tired of reading erudite histories written on the basis of extensive research, elegant in style, delightful to read, and in a narrative form that keeps the reader in suspense until the last chapter ties together every loose thread, but histories which exclude the Main Character of every story that has ever taken place. I am thankful for the work of many unbelievers who have brought history within my reach, despite their unreligious, and sometimes openly atheistic beliefs. I am indebted to Barbara W. Tuchman for my interest in fourteenth century Europe and the causes which led to World War I. Gibbon is not only the greatest historian in the English language, but holds my vote for the best prose writer. I owe him exclusively for what I know about long stretches of Byzantine history. I tip my hat other writers for their work in American history. Stephen E. Ambrose and David McCullough come to mind first. Respectful as they all may have been to religion in their respective time periods, none of these authors has written a Christian history.
What will a distinctively Christian history book look like? How will a Christian writer's output differ from that of his secular colleagues? How will his faith in Providence affect his interpretation of the evils of war? Many similar questions oppress me. The only way I can see to find answers to these questions is to answer even more basic questions, not about history writing, but about the very nature of history itself. The first step to writing a Christian history is a Christian philosophy of history.
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