Wanted: Christian Interpretation of History

In the interpretation of history the point of view from which sources are selected, presented, and evaluated is all-important. Writers of textbooks are as much conditioned by their own outlook as everyone else. Herbert Butterfield has stated the matter clearly in his book, Christianity and History: “There exists in most historical writing,” he says, “… an appearance of definitiveness and finality which is an optical illusion.…” “On the decisive question of … the interpretation one would give to the whole human story, it would be unwise to surrender one’s judgment to a scholar, any more than one would expect a scholar by reason of his technical accomplishments to be more skilled than other people in making love or choosing a wife.” “Our final interpretation of history … is our decision about religion, about our total attitude to things, and about the way we will appropriate life.”

The role of a Christian student in this academic world resembles in some respects that of Daniel in Babylon. Daniel had to enter deeply into the life of his time. He had to be concerned with national and international problems and to make judgments about them. And because his own life and hopes as a child of God were different from those of people around him, he could assess the position of Babylon with an objectivity impossible to Babylonians. Having the light of God’s revelation, he could point out the true meaning of events as the unbelieving wise men, however great their ability or experience, were powerless to do. (It is significant that in the visions and interpretations given Daniel, the cyclical rise and fall of successive empires, which was all the old pagan historians also saw, gives place to the Kingdom of the God of heaven that alone reveals a linear development and the real significance in history.) Entrusted with divine revelation Daniel, God’s prophet, had to speak for him to Israel and to the pagan world.

Is this not also the duty of the Christian scholar today? Though he does not have the exceptional visions of the prophet, he has the greater revelation of New Testament fulfillment (Matt. 13:17; Luke 7:28). Moreover, since Pentecost, every Christian has been called to prophetic witness (Acts 2:17, 18). Thus one can begin to understand the startling claim in Psalm 119:99, “I have more understanding than all my teachers: for thy testimonies are my meditation.” The position of the Christian is somewhat similarly described in First Corinthians: “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man” (2:14, 15).

On Guard Against Arrogance

At this point a word of caution is in order. The Christian must be on guard lest his additional light tempt him to an arrogance that would spoil his witness (1 Pet. 5:3). After all, this light is not the result of any achievement or ability of his own; it is a gift of grace. Neither does it entitle him to feel that the studies of unbelieving scholars are to be ignored or that he can afford to be more slipshod in his work than they. He must rather be quick to consider the meaning of whatever truth they discover and to put his best efforts into his own work—the more so because he has a key to interpret what is being unfolded that unbelievers lack.

This is not to say that the Christian “has all the answers,” so that for him no unsolved problems remain. Even the Apostle Paul had to say, “We know in part.…” Dare we expect or claim more? But what is significant for an age that grows increasingly skeptical about everything is that he could say about the things that matter most, “We know.…”

The Christian historian must give an interpretation of the course of events that will differ markedly from that of an unbeliever. In the concrete situations of study, teaching, or writing, he has the difficult task of determining just what that interpretation is and how it differs from those given by others. In the academic sphere, as in others, faith that does not lead to works will turn out to be mere self-deception. Let us therefore consider some aspects of a Christian interpretation of history.

It is axiomatic that in any serious historical study one must attempt to go to sources. This practice is doubly desirable for the Christian scholar, for often he will find himself much more able to understand the thinking and actions of our Christian forebears than many a modern interpreter who sees them through the astigmatism of materialistic, humanistic, or other anti-Christian prejudices.

Reviewing The Puritans

The Puritan colonists in New England, for example, have often been portrayed as long-faced pessimists warped by an inhuman Calvinist theology. A little acquaintance with some of those old Puritans through their writings tells a different story. Anyone who reads the diary of Samuel Sewell, in which he records the ups and downs of his courtship of the Widow Winthrop, finds himself both amused and fascinated by these exceedingly human Calvinists whose difference from their modern maligners lies mainly in the seriousness with which they took their Christian faith. The Christian appreciates the efforts of such scholars as Perry Miller to rehabilitate the Puritans. And on reading William Bradford’s Of the Plymouth Plantation, the Christian is impressed with the careful record of the Pilgrims’ venture of faith and feels profound sympathy with Bradford’s aim in writing: “That the children may see with what difficulties their fathers wrestled and how God brought them along notwithstanding their weaknesses and also to help others in similar experiences.”

While we appreciate the scholarly research of some well-known historians, we must be sharply critical of certain assumptions their works reveal. Charles Beard’s The Economic Interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, for instance, is an attempt to explain that document as the selfish effort of a group of property-owners to protect their own interests. Although the reader cannot help commending Beard for his extensive research, he must at the same time observe that Beard deliberately refrained from taking into account many other factors that entered into the formulation of the Constitution. As a study of one factor, his work has value; as an explanation of the whole document, it is a caricature.

One of the most influential American historians in the first half of this century was Frederick Jackson Turner. He propounded the thesis that American history can be largely explained by a consideration of frontier conditions and the free land that kept attracting settlers farther and farther westward. Yet the tremendous influence that he and those who followed his lead, such as Walter P. Webb, attributed to material factors in determining human life and action ought to be challenged by the Christian. Perhaps many people do act on the assumption that a man’s life consists “in the abundance of things which he possesses”; but a Christian can hardly accept this attitude as universal or normal. Although man may forget or deny that he was created in the image of God, that does not make him merely a food-eating and land-grabbing animal.

Certain interpretations of European history also call for criticism. Consider just two of the many historians of the French Revolution. In his Twelve Who Ruled, R. R. Palmer reveals not only a close acquaintance with the leading figures of the revolution but also his view of human nature. He says: “The best justification of Robespierre in the present author’s opinion is not to inveigh against all the Revolutionists except Robespierre and his closest associates, but to recognize that the Revolution itself was an ugly thing, making men not essentially bad conduct themselves in a deplorable manner.” This is just the old assumption of the natural man about himself, an assumption that says: “Men are good; circumstances make them bad!” The Christian needs to expose this for the error it is.

There is also Alfred Cobban’s analysis of the financial crisis in the old regime that helped bring on revolution (A History of Modern France, Vol. I). When he points out that those who had power insisted that the successive finance ministers prolong deficit financing rather than curtail expenses and raise taxes and in so doing pushed the nation into bankruptcy, the Christian must reply that this is not merely a matter of economics. When people refuse to pay their bills or tolerate equitable taxes, they reveal their moral degeneracy.

There is an urgent need for Christian vision in the interpretation of history in countless classrooms. A few years ago a college student asked my opinion of some comments his Christian professor had made on the Council of Nicaea. The professor had said that the council was much less important than Christians had often been led to believe. Under the authority of an emperor still half pagan, and dominated by men more politicians than Christian theologians, it simply did not begin to deserve the respect with which Christians had been taught to regard it. The student wanted to know if this were true. I answered that there was a good deal of truth in the claim. But I also asked whether the professor had pointed out that from this crooked political maneuvering emerged Athanasius. This remarkable man was forty-six years a bishop, five times exiled, and a fugitive for about twenty years. In spite of all of the political and ecclesiastical authorities who were won over to the heresy of denial of the deity of Christ and who threatened his life times without number, Athanasius refused so resolutely to compromise this all-important truth that the saying, “Athanasius against the world,” has sounded through the ages. Even the skeptic Gibbon was moved to write some of his most eloquent prose in praise of this church father. And despite all political chicanery, Athanasius’s confession of Christ’s deity was vindicated as the teaching of the Church. But the student had not been told this story.

There is urgent need for Christians to enter the field of history as scholars and teachers. Guided by deep and prayerful study of the Bible and prepared with a mastery of their areas of study, they need to stop repeating what their textbooks and professors have been telling them and work toward developing their own Christian critique of what they have been taught about the past. But they ought not to be content with mere criticism; they need, as their insights grow, to attempt to make positive contributions in teaching and in writing.

Books that present evangelical Christian interpretations are needed in every part of historical study. The Roman Catholics have a Christopher Dawson who in his Progress and Religion writes discerningly of the waning faith in the idea of progress, although his work is marked by the Roman Catholic effort to synthesize old Greek and Christian motifs and by the warning that civilization must return to the true church or perish. Or there is Karl Lowith who, in his Meaning and History, ably investigates the thinking of several leading philosophers of history, yet fails to give a satisfactory biblical perspective principally because of his neo-orthodox presuppositions. The same fault is glaringly apparent in John McIntyre’s less significant The Christian Doctrine of History. Can his view that “the fragmentariness [of history] is as real for God as it is for us” satisfy an evangelical Christian, when the Word of God states so plainly that he “worketh all things after the counsel of his will” (Eph. 1:11)?

One of the most exciting discussions of the meaning of history is Herbert Butterfield’s Christianity and History, from which I quoted previously. His frank reckoning with the influence of sin in the long record of humanity is unusual and refreshing. Unfortunately, his view of Providence that operates only in a general or limiting way like “helping a small boy to ride a bicycle” is hardly biblical. He sees the remarkable insights of the Hebrew prophets into the events of their times as “the work of a few select souls” instead of as the revelation of God which they said it was, and his lack of a biblical eschatology cannot but leave the Christian student disappointed.

One looks almost in vain for modern books that present a genuine Christian interpretation of history as a whole, and satisfying treatments of limited areas are also far too rare. We urgently need men who, guided by God’s Word and Spirit, will see and speak to the Church and the world of what God is doing in human history. May more evangelical Christians see this need and dedicate themselves to this field of Christian academic witness.

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