Presuppositions of a Christian Historian

PRESUPPOSITIONS OF A CHRISTIAN HISTORIAN

John R. M. Wilson

Mid-America Nazarene College

Four presuppositions appear to underlie the approach of Christian historians to their discipline. First, individuals are morally free agents, able to exercise free will. Second, it is possible to at least approximate truth about the past through the historical process. Third, history has not only meaning but also direction. Finally, a Christian historian believes that history has value in terms of moral instruction. This paper will seek to explore these presuppositions and develop some of their ramifications.

The question of free will is twofold. Not only are the subjects of historical study at issue, but the historian must employ free will. He or she has to write with some basis for selecting facts; the historian must choose.¹ Though we are all conditioned by our era, nationality, and training, we do exercise our freedom by our choices.

Determinism as a school of historical thought emerged in the late nineteenth century. The great prestige and example of natural science swept away some historians, while positivism played a role in attracting others to the new approach. The most prevalent species of historical determinism was Marxism. Yet as Marxism in practice evolved into Stalinism, it lost much of its allure to non-Soviet historians.² Other variants of determinism never took deep root among historians.

One line of argument against determinism attacked it on its own terms. As Pieter Geyl noted, determinism may have been a reasonable issue for theology (see the ongoing debate between Calvinists and Arminians) or philosophy, but it was not for historians. Only an omniscient person could have all the data and order them. Without such a total command of the facts, which not even the miracle of the computer will ever provide, determinism can never be more than a construct in the mind of the historian.³

R. G. Collingwood offered another critique when he noted that natural science, from the outside, could not gasp the key force shaping history--rational individual action. The facts upon which individuals base their actions are facts as they conceive them rather than reality. Thus one has to study the thought processes of the human mind, something general laws of natural science could never cover. Autonomists like Collingwood argued, on the whole successfully, that history was not closely kin to natural science and that it should and must keep its autonomy and distinctiveness.⁴

Numerous historians have also posited a simple, common sense refutation of determinism. Geyl argued that common sense and one's everyday way of looking at human affairs show the fallacy of determinism.⁵ Ernst Breisach said simply that free individual choice is "affirmed by life."⁶ Jean Jaures specifically attacked Marxist determinism. "Men have a prodigious variety of passions and ideas; the almost infinite complexity of human life cannot be brutally and mechanically reduced to an economic formula."⁷

Christian historians have been among the most eloquent defenders of free will. Herbert Butterfield recognized its limitations by suggesting that though men make history, their options are limited.⁸ Several contend, with Augustine, that the crucial point is that humans recognize good and evil and make a morally responsible choice between them.⁹ The Christian view gives people the dignity of free agency within a framework of general providence. For the historian, complete determinism would eliminate any drama or interest, while if chance and caprice ruled, there would exist no meaningful structure to history.¹⁰

Free will implies human dignity. The Christian faith amplifies that emphasis. As Kenneth Scott Latourette has so ably written, every person has importance as an individual designed for fellowship with God and redeemed by the blood of Christ. Biblical parables such as the prodigal son and the shepherd seeking one lost sheep clearly illustrate this point.¹¹

Thomas Carlyle, most identified with the concept of history as "the biographies of Great Men," also suggested that history was the essence of innumerable biographies.¹² The long tradition of biographical history is congruent with a Christian view of the importance of the individual, and Carlyle's second definition implies at least a minor role for the less than great.

Christians should rejoice in the new social history "from the ground up," for it explicitly confers dignity on the common person, even as Christ did. In fact, one might well reproach Christian historians for not originating it. Nevertheless, the Christian historian must beware of the dangers in new historical departures. Quantitative history not only leaves out the individual, but also makes history unintelligible to the average person. Psychohistory plays up the individual, but more as a battleground than as a rational being. The Annales school emphasizes structures (largely long-term socioeconomic forces) at the expense of the individual; both perspectives are necessary for a complete history. A Christian perspective, then, implies acceptance of the dignity and importance of individuals as a morally free agent, able to choose between good and evil and responsible for their decisions.

Probably no historian today would contend that one can attain absolute truth through the historical process. Sir Walter Raleigh's classic frustration when four witnesses to a current event recounted four different versions has certainly eroded historians' confidence in their ability to reconstruct more distant events with perfect accuracy. Gustav Droysen captured what remained: "History is Humanity's knowledge of itself, its certainty about itself. It is not 'the light and the truth,' but a search therefor, a sermon thereupon, a consecration thereto. It is like John the Baptist, 'not that Light but sent to bear witness of that Light.’"¹³

Such reservations aside, historians seek to come as close as possible to the truth. Two millennia ago Cicero established the cardinal rules for historians: "History's first law is that an author must not dare to tell anything but the truth; its second is that he must make bold to tell the whole truth."¹⁴ Eighteen hundred years later, Voltaire became what historiographer Fritz Stem termed a self-conscious pioneer of the modern emphasis "on history as promoting the enlightenment of men in a secular world."¹⁵ Though by modem standards Voltaire was seriously guilty of ethnocentrism and chronological snobbery, and though the Enlightenment in general was not productive of noteworthy historians, the movement did encourage the notion that larger trends and processes could be found beneath the accidents of events.¹⁶

With Leopold von Ranke's inspiring goal of telling history "how it actually was" paving the way, the nineteenth century proved a golden age for history. Auguste Comte's positivism, holding that all knowledge had to be based on directly observed phenomena, would have made history well-nigh impossible. More modestly, the spirit of the age did foster attempts to liken history to natural science, epitomized by J. B.

Bury calling history "simply a science, no less and no more" in 1903.¹⁷ Attempts to resist such a view were manifold. Friedrich Meinecke held that idealism and romanticism, two components of historicism, permitted a deeper understanding of history than simply facts.¹⁸ Charles Beard contended that any hypothesis or conception constructed to give coherence to history was an interpretation. Johann Huizinga argued that "history is unthinkable without theory."¹⁹ E. H. Carr went a step farther by suggesting that there are elements of interpretation in every fact, that "history means interpretation." His example: we all believe medieval Europeans were very religious. Why? Because the historians of the day said so. Yet the chroniclers were primarily churchmen and thus predisposed to see religiosity, to want to see it, and to focus on it.²⁰ The "facts" established an interpretation. The revolt against "scientific" history exemplified by such men did much to expand the discipline of history in the twentieth century.²¹

Butterfield maintained that the twentieth century has been characterized by a growth in historical objectivity.²² Yet progress has by no means been steady. Historians under the Nazis for a brief period and under the Communists for a more extended time have perverted historical truth in the service of their governments. In the West, the New History championed by Beard, Frederick Jackson Turner, and James Harvey Robinson had as its avowed goal the reform of society, hardly a neutral historical perspective. In our own era, revisionist historians have taken serious liberties with history to prove their points, as Oscar Handlin has a bit overenthusiastically pointed out in his valuable Truth in History²³. Handlin is justifiably disturbed that the historical profession seems disinclined to judge its members and cries that the standards set forth by Cicero are being abandoned. One reason is that increased specialization and fragmentation of history render us unable and unwilling confidently to criticize those in different areas.

The Christian historian should above all others be committed to the truth, for the Christian is to "know the truth and the truth will make you free." (John 8:32) As Roy Swanstrom reminds us, we should not fear for Christianity if we seek out the truth, though some have in the past. We should obey Cicero's injunction to tell the whole truth and not to distort the record to make "our side" look good. He cites the tendency of Protestant historians to compare Martin Luther's virtue with that of the dubious Pope Leo X, when it would be more honest to compare him with his good friend Johannes Staupitz, an honorable man who remained in the Catholic Church.²⁴

Christian historians in pursuing the truth select their facts differently than do secular historians. They perceive the role of religion and of religious commitment in history, interpret the facts in light of that, and in general recognize the complexity of human motivation.²⁵ Why, for example, was England moved to eliminate the slave trade in 1807? Marxist economic determinism can not make sense of such an event; the Christian historian can. Of equal importance, the Christian faith gives a historian a more stable perspective. A Christian can see the unity of history and exercise better judgment in consequence. If God is the Lord of history, then no person or group or idea is.²⁶ The historian can point out to utopians how and why past utopias failed, drawing on an understanding of human nature.²⁷ A Christian historian should be resistant to passing fads such as the black and white interpretations of the Cold War or the iconoclasm of the late sixties.²⁸ Most important, the Christian perspective allows us to see what others see . . . and more. The ability to grasp the spiritual dimension can hardly be overemphasized. Butterfield beautifully illustrated this concept by noting that scientists have dissected the universe and found no meaning, which is like analyzing an organ without knowing how it could play Bach.²⁹ George Marsden demonstrates the transformation by using the Gestalt shift in one's perception of this picture.

Though many people see only one picture, viewing the chin as the nose or vice versa can bring a sudden breakthrough and the ability to see relationships that existed but were hidden from view because of a limited perspective. So can the Christian perspective open the way to new ways of perception.³⁰

Marsden compares Christian and secular historians in four areas. First, in the details and technical aspects, they are essentially the same. Second, the Christian, as illustrated, can see new patterns in history. Third, Christianity provides controls on ideas such as freedom. While people are responsible, the Christian knows they are not sovereign. Freedom without dependence can be bad and lead to worship of wealth, power, and the like. Thus the Christian rejects the secular social science view that fixing the environment

will solve the problems of society, though he does not therefore oppose attempts at reform. Finally, biblical patterns can provide a ground for historians without necessarily affecting their academic work. Marsden likens us to J.R.R. Tolkien's protagonist Frodo in The Lord of the Rings. Frodo has history in his hands and yet knows that it is somehow controlled by higher powers. He continues on his way, never quite knowing when he is really in control, yet having responsibility.³¹ The sum of the difference in Christian historians is that, where a technical approach can focus too much on the "how" of history, they concentrate more on the "why." Rather than viewing people as objects or consumers or computer numbers, Christians see them as God's creations, each one valuable in his or her own right. Such is the essence of truth to the Christian historian.

III

Christian historians have a further advantage over most of their secular colleagues in that they perceive that history is going somewhere, that humanity’s existence is not simply meaningless and absurd. As a distinguishing feature of the Christian historian, this perception is relatively recent; many secular historians have moved away from it.

Herodotus, a Greek writing in the fifth century B.C., is generally credited with being the "father of history." He suggested that history was cyclical, launching the popular view that history repeats itself. Although this view dominated historical thinking until the time of Christ, it made no significant contribution to humanity's grasp of the universe. It reflected the cyclical patterns of human life and the seasons, and appears to be the most "natural" perception of history. It has claimed adherents, though in far smaller numbers, down to Arnold Toynbee in our own century.³²

With the rise of Christianity, the linear Hebrew model of history moved to the fore and dominated historiography, in a sense, until our own time. Hebrew history, dated by early historians like Eusebius to 5198 B.C., moved from God's creation to a promised messiah. Christian historians claimed that the messiah had come and formed a second point on the development of history, with judgment at the end of time the final point. This teleological view, that history has both a beginning and some sort of end or realization, is imperative if the whole of it is to be meaningful. Yet the Middle Ages, taking Augustine as a guide, went farther and professed a providential view of history. People saw God's hand in every occurrence, major or mundane, and viewed all of life as an ongoing struggle between good and evil. This view was not conducive to material or physical advancement, for its other-worldly emphasis suggested that the things of this world were not of much importance. Such attitudes contributed to rejection of the Middle Ages as Dark Ages once the modern era began.³³

The Renaissance heralded a transformation of the way people regarded the past. Growing confidence in humanity's abilities, emerging optimism about improving material conditions in this life, and an intellectual awakening based on rediscovery of Greek and Roman thought helped engineer a view of history as progress. By 1700 this view had seized the dominant position. But toward what end was history moving? The prevalent view for several centuries was in line with the linear Christian view: history would culminate in judgment and an eternal kingdom under God. Others came to believe that progress was an endless process without any final destination. The Enlightenment inspired philosophers and historians to forecast the building of a utopia on earth. Such optimism proved contagious, and as Western society made significant material gains in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the progress view, generally in its utopian variant, came to be almost universally held.³⁴

Two visions of progress merit closer attention. As Butterfield explained in his classic The Whig Interpretation of History, nineteenth century English historians were perhaps the most confident utopians of all. Writing in mid-century, Thomas Babington Macauley saw an almost unbroken march toward liberty and parliamentary democracy in England dating from the Magna Carta in 1215. His simple, confident, sure story line offered security in a complex world. The English were ready to believe in themselves as the bearers of fulfillment to the world. It hurt not at all that Macauley wrote so well that he realized his goal of replacing the latest fashionable novels on the tables of young ladies. The decline of England from her position atop the world has curbed the Whig interpretation and offers lessons to mid-twentieth century American historians who take a similar view of their nation.³⁵

Marx provided a new prophetic history for a Kingdom of God without God, based on a grand theory that explained all of history in economic terms. Though many adherents to Marxist thinking are impelled to such a position by political exigencies, many in the West subscribe to Marxist interpretations. In reality, Marxism is a humanistic variation on the theme of progress held by most historians when it was developed. By 1900 the social gospel movement had won over many mainstream Christian historians, thus placing them in the utopian camp increasingly dominated by Marxists.³⁶

The turbulent twentieth century has undermined the confidence so prevalent a century ago. Already in the late nineteenth century Jacob Burkhardt, fearful of the masses of the fourth estate, warned of a decline of social stability as public opinion came to replace history as the major social arbiter. His forecast of the rise of totalitarianism was eerily prescient. Since much historical belief in progress was rooted in the rise of reason, the emerging inarticulate fourth estate could only unnerve historians, largely of the second or third estates and seeing in themselves the source of social stability.³⁷ Two world wars, Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, George Orwell, and the United States on a permanent war economy have made the progress view seem terribly naïve.

And yet material progress continues. The fruits of natural science and its marriage to technology have made life in the West far more comfortable. But the gap between material progress and social progress has become ever more starkly evident. As history and confidence in progress have ceased to provide assurance and the moral nature of the world appears to be deteriorating, many have turned to existentialism, finding "meaning" in absurdity and irrationality. That way lies despair.³⁸

Secular history has lost its sense of direction with the decline of progress. The future seems less predictable than it has in a long time. Even Western Marxists have become pessimistic about the future. Without the underlying coherence lent by the progress interpretation, the discipline has fragmented into myriad aimless views and specialized fiefdoms. History is in chaos. Perhaps significantly, Breisach ends his major work Historiography by exploring new directions in world history and Christian history, seeking meaning amidst the confusion.³⁹

There has been a renewed Christian interest in the meaning of history in response to the catastrophes of the century. C. T. McIntire goes so far as to suggest a possible parallel to Augustine's City of God as the Roman Empire crumbled.⁴⁰ Christians, many of whom presumably did not share in the belief in humanity's perfectibility, can offer hope for others because they have not had utopian visions destroyed and turned into pessimism. Christians for the most part tempered their belief in progress with a realistic understanding of humanity's fallen nature.⁴¹ Few Christian historians believe humanity will attain its full destiny within history. Whereas history deals with time, Christianity transcends time, and Christians see the ultimate meaning of history outside time.⁴² Toynbee suggested that the Incarnation gave meaning, direction, and purpose to history, and potentially could free civilization from the cyclical pattern of challenge and response he portrayed in his A Study of History. He saw in Christianity the answer to the revitalization of Western Civilization.⁴³

But then, what is Western Civilization in the great cosmic scheme of things? How will our interpretations of history appear in 10,000 years? a million? Viewed from such a distance, our frameworks for understanding--unless they be eternal--appear rather provincial.⁴⁴

A fourth presupposition of history, though one not universally held, is that the discipline should provide moral instruction. This function dates from the Roman Empire. Livy lamented the transition from republic to empire, for it meant the citizens had become subjects; that in turn implied that they no longer needed education, which history provided, but merely entertainment. He sought to revive Roman morale through the example of his readers' forefathers.⁴⁵ Tacitus took very seriously the moralizing function as he delineated the depravity of the declining empire with devastating criticism. "History's highest function," he wrote, "is to ensure that noble actions are not left unrecorded and that evil words and deeds are held up to the reprobation of posterity."⁴⁶

Early Christian historians like Eusebius, and later medieval historians such as Einhard in his biography of Charlemagne, developed a pattern of writing first of the deeds of their subjects, then of the moral instruction to be derived from them. Sacchi's Lives of the Popes provided much grist for the mills of early Protestant historians with their particular flour to grind. Frederick Jackson Turner saw the most practical utility of history being the education of better citizens. And George Trevelyan, writing in 1903, lamented the decline of history's popular influence as literary history like Macauley's gave way to "scientific" history written for specialists. (He did see an offsetting gain for history, though, in that it was getting more attention in the universities.)⁴⁷

The movement toward scientific history was blunted, as we have seen, and by the 1970s historians had clearly moved toward agreement on the appropriateness of making moral judgments a significant part of their writing.⁴⁸ This development presents both dangers and opportunities to Christian historians. Among the pitfalls is the presumptuous identification of causes with Christ when there are less than clearcut spiritual or moral issues involved. Such questionable associations can alienate even Christians of differing viewpoints. Christians must also be wary of stacking the deck (remember Johannes Staupitz) or of exaggerating religious factors (the Reformation had significant political, economic, and personal ambition facets, after all.)⁴⁹ As Marsden argues, we must not believe we can read the mind of God and see His intent.⁵⁰ Furthermore, we must avoid the medieval practice of "plundering the past for instigations to present virtue or to action" rather than collecting facts.⁵¹ Specifically, we must beware of substituting moralism for significant historical analysis.⁵²

At the same time, the increasing vogue for drawing morals from history, coupled with the chaos of the historical discipline, presents great opportunities for Christian historians. Lord Acton denounced Ranke (of all people) for banishing himself from his books in his attempt to be scientific.⁵³ Resisting that extreme self-denial and also the temptations enumerated above, we can use our religious insight to see the uses of our knowledge.⁵⁴ We can expose both truth and error in popular mythologies.⁵⁵ We can shed light on the past by our knowledge of the present, and the reverse as well; as E. H. Carr has written, we can gain a profounder understanding of both through informed interaction between them.⁵⁶ George Orwell warned that totalitarian regimes must extinguish history, for history arouses the impulse to liberty.⁵⁷ Christian historians must work to keep the flame of liberty alive.

In his 1969 presidential address to the Organization of American Historians, "Clio with Soul," C. Vann Woodward tackled the issue of how historians should respond to the insistent demands of their own eras. His concern was with black assertiveness. Kenneth Scott Latourette's American Historical Association presidential speech in 1949 had addressed another matter of pressing concern to historians--the question of a Christian view of history. That way lies our challenge.

In 1972 Inter-Varsity Press published a collection entitled Christ and the Modern Mind that explored the academic legitimacy of Christianity in two dozen disciplines. Robert Clouse's article on history gave me my first insights into the question of the interplay of Christianity and history. Now the stream is broadening. Ronald Wells edited a fine collection called The Wars of America: Christian Views (Eerdmans, 1981) examining how Christians have acted in past wars to try to determine how they might respond to future ones. It offers an exemplary integration of faith, learning, and living for both students and professors. The key lesson is that one should cultivate a primary allegiance to the city of God and only subordinate loyalties to the cities of this world. Mark Noll, Nathan Hatch, and George Marsden have explored a hot contemporary issue in The Search for Christian America (Crossways, 1983). With solid historical scholarship they demolish the myth of a Christian America so persistently trumpeted from evangelical pulpits. Books of this nature lend themselves beautifully to the classrooms of Christian colleges like ours.

Other disciplines have similar, if not greater opportunities. Books like Ron Sider's Rich Christians in a World of Hunger (IVP, 1977) and Ron Kirkemo's Between the Eagle and the Dove: The Christian and American Foreign Policy (IVP, 1976) benefit from an advantage the social sciences hold over history--they are more open to prescription, where history is more descriptive. What history can help prescribe are attitudes toward both current issues and history that reflect historical reality.

Let us then go forward in the pursuit of truth, confident that as moral free agents we have chosen the right and seek to lead others to it, assured that history is moving toward a purposeful conclusion as prophesied in the Bible, and with the intent of drawing from our study of history moral lessons to pass on to our students.

Notes

1. C.T. McIntire, ed., God, History, and Historians (New York: Oxford Univ Press, 1977), 49.

2. Ernst Breisach, Historiography (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1983) 323.

3. Peter Geyl, Debates with Historians (New York: Meridian Books, 1958), 267-268.

4. Breisach, Historiography, 334-336.

5. Geyl, Debates with Historians, 268.

6. Breisach, Historiography, 410.

7. Fritz Stern, ed., The Varieties of History (New York: Vintage, 1956), 165.

8. C.T. McIntire, Herbert Butterfield: Writings on Christianity and History, ch.2.

9. Donald Gawronski, History: Meaning and Method (Iowa City: Sernoll, 1967), 17; Earle Cairns, God and Man in Time (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979), 146.

10. Paul Conkin and Roland Stromberg, The Heritage and Challenge of History (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1971), 9.

11. McIntire, God, History, and Historians, 57.

12. Stern, The Varieties of History, 103, 93.

13. Ibid., 144.

14. Conkin and Stromberg, The Heritage and Challenge, 17.

15. Stern, Varieties of History, 14.

16. Breisach, Historiography, 206; Conkin and Stromberg, Heritage and Challenge of History, 48.

17. Stern, Varieties of History, 223.

18. Ibid., 280.

19. Ibid., 324, 291.

20. E. H. Carr, What is History? (New York: Vintage, 1961), 11; McIntire, Herbert Butterfield, 26.

21. Stern, Varieties of History, 20.

22. McIntire, Herbert Butterfield, ch. 4.

23. Oscar Handlin, Truth in History (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1979, ch. 6.

24. Roy Swanstrom, History in the Making (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1978, 96.

25. George Marsden and Frank Roberts, ed., A Christian View of History? (Grand Rapids: Eerdman's 1984), 54.

26. E. Harris Harbison, Christianity and History (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1964), ch. 1.

27. C. T. McIntire and Ron Wells, History and Historical Understanding (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984, 54.

28. Swanstrom, History in the Making, 33.

29. C.T. McIntire, Herbert Butterfield, 225.

30. McIntire and Wells, History and Historical Understanding, 62-68.

31. Ibid.

32. Gawronski, History: Meaning and Method, 19-20; D.W. Bebbington, Patterns in History (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1979), 21.

33. Gawronski, History: Meaning and Method, 16; Ron Wells, "Viewing America," Fides et Historia (Fall-Winter 1984), 22.

34. Gawronski, History: Meaning and Method, 22-25.

35. Stern, Varieties of History, 71.

36. Breisach, Historiography, 293; Gawronski, History: Meaning and Method, 25.

37. Breisach, Historiography, 304, 366.

38. Conkin and Stromberg, Heritage and Challenge, 117.

39. Ibid., 101; Breisach, Historiography, ch. 28.

40. McIntire, God, History, and Historians, intro.

41. Cairns, God and Man in Time, 156.

42. McIntire, God, History, and Historians, 55, 59.

43. Ibid., 176.

44. Conkin and Stromberg, Heritage and Challenge, 122.

45. Breisach, Historiography, 63-65; Conkin and Stromberg, Heritage and Challenge, 14.

46. Ibid., 15.

47. Breisach, Historiography, 99, 156; Stern, Varieties of History, 207, 288.

48. Paul Ward, Studying History (Washington: AHA, 1985), 25; Michael Kammen, The Past Before Us (Ithica, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 1980), 23.

49. Swanstrom, History in the Making, 101.

50. Marsden and Roberts, A Christian View of History?, 39.

51. Conkin and Stromberg, Heritage and Challenge, 65.

52. Marsden and Roberts, A Christian View of History? 47-48.

53. Geyl, Debates with Historians, 9.

54. Harbison, Christianity and History, ch. 5.

55. Marsden and Roberts, A Christian View of History?, 44.

56. E. H. Carr, What is History?, 86.

57. Stern, Varieties of History, 32.

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