Of all my classes this semester, the most challenging has been CH812: Historiography. This class is all about the academic discipline of History, how and why it is studied. Throughout the course, my classmates and I have been exposed to numerous methods, but last week we were presented with a challenge: present our own.
What lies beneath this body of text is a modified version of that presentation. I don't ever want my work to exist solely for a small class and a professor (after all, what's the point of work if you can't share it?). I hope it makes sense...
(a brief) Philosophy of History
In
order to engage non-Christians in thoughtful discussion about the philosophy of
history, it is important to utilize common terms and categories while simultaneously
remaining true to the divinely revealed eternal perspective. From a secular
perspective, the presented philosophy of history will be addressing the period
between the first appearance of consciousness to the future date if human
extinction. This extinction may
come at the hands of man, or by the natural entropic nature of the Universe. Appealing
to the same ‘bookends,’ with theological verbiage, the Christian historian will
write: History is the story of humanity in the period between the creation of
the perceivable universe and the second coming of Jesus Christ. With the
parameters of time set in place, the question becomes – what is between the
‘bookends’ of time?
As
with all stories, the narrative of human history is set in motion by conflict.
Defined here as the struggle between two or more forces set in opposition to
each other by the desire to achieve unequal objectives, conflict is easily
perceived at both the micro and macro levels of the universe. The root of all
conflict is found when objectives (both conscious and unconscious) are outside
the will of the Creator. Where the secular might label this struggle
“competition,” Christians define this struggle against the telos of the universe as “sin.” The reason being that there can be
no competition if only one side of a struggle (in this case, God) has the
ability to win. As the object of any struggle is to be the winner, all sin must
therefore be self-seeking. In order to uncover historical narratives, the
historian must discern what it is people seek.
The task of
discovering the self-seeking objectives of humans is vast. However, like the
mathematician, the historian is not without his/her formulas. Biblical
revelation provides a framework by which the historian can discover and sort
human patterns. Ecclesiastes 1:9-10 states, “What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the
sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”? It has been
already in the ages before us.” This seems to imply a cyclical understanding of history, but that cannot be. The assumption
that humanity has an ultimate end means the perceived repetition is not purely
cyclical, but more akin to circling a drain. The statement that there is
“nothing new under the sun” must not imply replication, but
archetypes. The historian perceives these archetypes acting out similar
conflicts, but always pushing the ultimate narrative of history toward telos.
Archetypes in action: The hero, the princess, the rogue, the villain, the robot...
The
concept of archetypes is not meant to imply that there are only a few types of
human characters walking the earth, but rather to suggest that the similarities
displayed by types of humans support the assumption that all humans, when
presented with the option to sin, will do so. The historian can examine the evidence of the past to sort
certain humans into these archetypes. For example, Christopher Columbus, John
Glenn, Bob Ballard, and Edmund Hillary are all “explorers,” men who assumed
great physical risk to push the limits of human understanding. In categorizing
the past in this way, the historian can better examine what human factors play
into the physical act of exploration. Furthermore, the historian can amass
evidence to display that the author of Ecclesiastes was correct in asserting,
“What has been is what will be.” In the case of the explorer- where there is a
frontier, there will the historian find an explorer.
The
role of archetypes is not limited to the role players, but includes situations
as well. In pop culture, commonly used plot lines akin to character archetypes
are referred to as “tropes.” History has similar patterns, such as the first
contact between cultures, droughts, revolutions, etc. As with the ordering of
archetypes, the historian can collect and categorize these tropes. This non-linear categorization of archetypes and
tropes will bring greater clarity to the story of humanity up to the present,
and allow for better contextualization of current events.
TV Trope: Put a monkey in an urban setting
Practical Research
The practical question that
must be asked in response to this approach must be, “how can the historian
accurately pinpoint the objectives that humans seek?” Without the answer to
this question, humans cannot be categorized into archetypes. Human objectives
can be found in a variety of places. In order to find what people believe to be
important, the historian can follow the trail of money. Not unlike Marx in the
belief that money is extremely important to the story of history, it is in
economic investment that the historian can place accurate percentage values on
goals of individual people and groups. For example, in the breakdown of a
household budget, the historian can attribute value to the percentage amount of
currency spent on different goods and services. Similarly, the historian can
discover the objectives of a nation by analyzing the investment of that
nation’s GNP.
Not limited to the study of
money, the historian can also discover objectives in how humans treat their
time. Like money, time is also quantifiable. How a person chooses to manage
their hours, days, weeks, and years reflects their short and long term objectives.
These objectives can range in size and scope from eating lunch, to raising a
child, or, at a national level, the acquisition of property. Time is common to
all humans and events, which makes it an attractive lump of data to mine.
Thanks to the Atlantic for this fun little graph. It appears we just work to watch TV.
In the search for clear answers, the most obvious place for a
historian to look remains primary sources. It is in books, essays, letters,
journals, etc that the historian can find personal revelations. While it is
important to always approach primary sources with a critical eye, there are
many instances of personal revelations revealing accurate personal objectives.
Whether it is Amelia Earhart declaring, “"My ambition is to have this wonderful
gift produce practical results for the future of commercial flying and for the
women who may want to fly tomorrow's planes" or Google’s famous company
motto, “Don’t be evil,” personal revelations provide the historian with the
self-perceived objectives of the people they are studying.
Clearly stated objectives
Each
of these strategies provides data with which the historian can catalog and
organize into archetypes and tropes. These are not the only strategies, as this
philosophy is meant to be flexible in its data collection. Other places in
which historians might look could be demographics, student test scores, or energy
use. The possibilities are vast.
The
Christian Historian
A
Christian historian must pursue truth without fear or hesitation. If it is
believed that God is the root of all existence, then there should be no effort
to shade results, or fear the research of secular parties. In regards to that
which is studied, the telos of
history must always be kept in perspective. That is to say, people and events in human history that
appear evil may be evil, but nothing is beyond redemption. If the culmination
of history is the second coming of Christ, then all that remains is the story
of conflict awaiting resolution in the form of judgment, condemnation and
redemption.
In
regards to divine providence, a Christian historian may not be able to
precisely pinpoint God’s providential works in history, but he may be able to
see God’s redemptive works amidst the conflict. If it is believed that humans
tend toward sin, then any moment of goodness must require divine influence. If
this is the case, then any beauty found in tragedy may be cautiously labeled as
providential. Brad S. Gregory has challenged the assumption that the event of
the Reformation was “good.” He questions whether or not the long-term results
of a very large event truly have the value generally attributed to it. In
response to Gregory, this philosophy would argue that it is not up to the
historian to place value on the totality of an event, as all human events will
never be without sin, nor to label any event as entirely providential. Instead,
the historian can point to aspects of an event, which are good, and label those
as providence in the form of redemption. For example, the human lives lost in
the name of theology during the Reformation are lamentable, but out of that
suffering came an exodus of Christians to North America, who then spread the
Gospel to unreached people groups. On either side of this exodus, the historian
can find evil in the form of murder. Yet, the historian can also find goodness.
This goodness found is tragedy redeemed.
Evaluation
To function, this philosophy assumes
that history as a telos, which is the
Christian God. It assumes the entropy perceived in the universe points to both
the ultimate end of history, and the sinful nature of humanity. This means that
humans will tend toward selfishness even when attempting altruism. The final
assumption is that humans are always seeking personal advantage, or objectives.
If an historian can discover the objectives which humans seek, than they can
categorize historical narratives. The driving force behind this philosophy is
the thesis that history is not the story of how humans have changed, but rather
how we have remained the same. The narrative of history will remain an
unpredictable pattern of archetypes and tropes until the second coming of
Christ, which for some will be extinction, and others, redemption.
Obviously this is not all encompassing, but it points in the direction I hope to go. Thanks for reading, pretending to read, or clicking the youtube links.
In Him,
Jimmy
