For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind. But be ye glad and rejoice for ever in that which I create: for, behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy. And I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and joy in my people: and the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her, nor the voice of crying. There shall be no more thence an infant of days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days: for the child shall die an hundred years old; but the sinner being an hundred years old shall be accursed. And they shall build houses, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them. They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant, and another eat: for as the days of a tree are the days of my people, and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labour in vain, nor bring forth for trouble; for they are the seed of the blessed of the Lord, and their offspring with them (Isaiah 65:17–23).
The story of Christendom will triumph over the story of the kingdom of man. This is because it is tied to the story of one man: Jesus Christ. The story of Christendom has a simple narrative: the transition from wrath to grace. This is an easily understood narrative.
Judaism can provide a narrative based on the centrality of Moses. But it relies heavily on the Talmud, and the Talmud is both obscure and gigantic. Islam can provide a narrative based on the centrality of Mohammed. But Islam does not have a long tradition of developing historical narratives. Its concept of conquest is military, not cultural. It teaches dominion by force, not dominion by ethics. It does not have a developed theory of cultural progress. It looks backward to Mohammed, not forward to the establishment of a worldwide civilization based on shared ethics, science, and economics.
Here is the inescapable reality of historiography. The longer the time period, and the wider the range of discussion geographically, the simpler the story becomes. This is because people have limited memories. They also have limited spare time. They may read one or two books on the history of Christendom or any other civilization. They will not read dozens. The broader the range of discussion, the fewer the details that people can remember. This means that whoever has the most memorable narrative will win the battle for the minds of men. The historical narrative must be tied to key people and events, and it must be structured in terms of the Bible’s historical structure. This is an easily understood narrative: the transition from wrath to grace.
Let me give you an example of the problem of teaching history over a career. When a first-year teacher begins teaching a one-year course on the history of anything, he takes the narrative up to the recent past. But, year after year, he faces a problem: more events have taken place. Some of these events are relevant to the overall narrative. A few of them are crucial. But, a decade out, or two decades out, he will have to stop talking about people or events that seemed to be crucial to the narrative. He cannot add the new events because he does not have additional classroom presentations. He is limited to a specific number of lessons, and he must make the year-long narrative fit. Therefore, decade by decade, he must drop events that he told students at the beginning of his career that they had to remember and understand. New events supersede old events.
This process will go on for as long as humanity studies history. Furthermore, as more national traditions feed into a worldwide civilization, these new stories will replace earlier stories that were believed to be essential in explaining the development of Western civilization. Historians will have to decide which events and representative figures in the history of Western civilization must be removed from the story of the development of a new worldwide civilization. Over time, the story will get less detailed. Over time, the overall narrative will become simplified. It will reflect a relative handful of dominant issues and personalities. This is another way of saying that whoever has the most compelling story of historical development will win the battle. This worldview must have a simple story to tell, and it must be structured in terms of a relative handful of principles.
Christianity has the advantage. Humanism does not. Humanism denies the legitimacy of a single structure of history. Christianity affirms it. Humanism denies there is objective history. Christianity affirms it. Humanism denies that one narrative does justice to the sweep of history. Christianity affirms that a single narrative does justice to the sweep of history. This is the narrative: the transition from wrath to grace, with grace provided through the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ to the right hand of God the Father. That is a simple narrative to understand. Humanism has no comparable narrative.
Compare this with the assertion of humanist philosopher Karl Popper. He argued that there is no legitimate history of mankind. There is no grand narrative. In his book, The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945), he announced: “There is no history of mankind, there is only an indefinite number of histories of all kinds of aspects of human life. . . . But is there really no such thing as a universal history in the sense of a concrete history of mankind? There can be none. This must be the reply of every humanitarian, I believe, and especially that of every Christian. A concrete history of mankind, if there were any, would have to be the history of all men. It would have to be the history of all human hopes, struggles, and sufferings. For there is no one man more important than any other” (Vol. II, p. 270). Here, an atheist tells us what a Christian has to believe. He tells us that all men are equal. Jesus was no more important than your next-door neighbor. He obviously did not believe it, but he felt compelled to write it. Why? Because this is what his philosophy of history told him he had to believe, despite the fact that it is obvious nonsense. Everything is equal to everything else. Such a view makes all human judgment impossible, not just about the past, but about the present. This is relativism extended to the point of insanity. This is what happens when covenant-breakers want to escape from this message: the transition from wrath to grace. They correctly suspect that their views will place them in the ranks of the goats. They deny the possibility of men’s ability to make judgments, rather than affirm that God will do so at the end of time.
Humanist historians are not in position to compete with Christians when it comes to developing the grand narrative of history. They deny that there is any pattern to history. They deny that there can be any grand narrative. As they become more consistent with their presuppositions, they will cease writing the grand narratives. They already have. The last serious grand narrative was Toynbee’s, and that was completed in 1955. It is long forgotten. It was never taken seriously by academic historians. So, they will not write the grand history, and Christians will. The Durants wrote a series of national narratives, but it was not a grand narrative. Humanists are not in a position to produce a grand narrative that is consistent with their worldview. In contrast, Christians are in this position, and as time goes on, they will write an ever-improving grand narrative that captures the hearts and minds of covenant-keepers. Humanists will not have a grand narrative to inspire them, motivate them to change the world, and then judge the angels.
According to the narrative in the Book of Acts, these were Jesus’ final words to His disciples immediately prior to his ascension into heaven. “But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8). This passage is important as a guide for Christian historians. They must bear witness to what the Gospels reported. The Book of Acts follows the pattern in the Gospel of Luke: reliance on narratives. Jesus here called them to be His witnesses. Basic to being His witnesses is telling stories about Jesus, the disciples, and the historical facts in the Book of Acts.
The author of the Book of Acts identified himself in the opening words of the book. He was the author of an historical account of the life of Jesus. “The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach” (v. 1). In the opening words of the Gospel of Luke, we read this: “Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, Even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word; It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, That thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed” (Luke 1:1–4).
The author of both of these treatises was concerned with historical accuracy. He selected narratives as the appropriate format for conveying details of the life of Jesus and the details of the work of the apostles after the ascension of Jesus. This strategy was consistent with the structure of the Old Testament. The Old Testament is filled mainly with narratives about people whose lives testified to the providence of God in history. The Old Testament conveys faith in God by telling stories of how God had intervened in history in order to set apart a people bearing His name. Israel represented Him in history.
The first five books of the New Testament continue this strategy of evangelism. The letters written by Paul, Peter, John, the author of Hebrews, and Jude explain the meaning of the Old Testament and the five historical books of the New Testament. This indicates that the narratives are not self-explanatory. The epistles have been more important than the Gospels in shaping formal theology. But the Gospel narratives provide the stories that have been necessary to persuade non-Christians to take seriously the theological points in the epistles. The Bible is mostly stories. It has a minimal component of what we call theological exposition. It offers theology, but it offers it mainly by means of a series of sequential narratives about people who were singled out by God to represent Him in history.
Evangelism historically has centered on telling the Gospel stories. Successful evangelists have not initiated their presentation of the gospel—the good news—by means of expositions of the epistles. They have spread the gospel by means of the Gospels. The Gospels are filled with stories about Jesus and His disciples and their interactions with common people among the Jews. The Gospels also describe Jesus’ confrontations with Jewish leaders, and, to a much lesser extent, representatives of the government of the Roman Empire. These stories grab the attention of non-Christians. Later, evangelists begin to teach the theology found in the epistles. Their listeners had already accepted the truth of the narratives in the Gospels. They had moved from the legal status of covenant-breakers to covenant-keepers. Only then were they ready to study and apply the theology of the epistles.
Christianity is unique among religions. It has written narratives. So does Judaism. But it also has the epistles, which spell out the details of the implications of the narratives. Judaism does not have a concise body of materials that explains the meaning of the narratives. The Talmud is a gigantic compilation of brief debates by rabbis over obscure judicial issues. This is a disadvantage when compared with Christianity. The New Testament is a comprehensive handbook for personal and social transformation. It offers short narratives that are easily understood by children and people from all other cultures. It also offers short, practical expositions on the meaning of these narratives. The epistles are as authoritative as the narratives.
Preaching has always involved presentations of the narratives and explanations of the narratives that are based on the epistles. In this sense, Bible history and theology are unified. Every church member has access to the narratives and the epistles in one book. With the coming of printing, this has democratized Christianity more than any other religion in history. Access to the narratives and the epistles is open to anyone. The translation of the Bible into other languages has universalized Christianity to an extent greater than any other religion. Today, the Internet delivers these translations free of charge to anyone who owns an inexpensive smartphone and has access to the Internet. Entry-level smartphones get cheaper, and so does the cost of Internet service.
The Bible provides the model for historical teaching. It is composed mostly of stories, but with expositions explaining the meaning of the stories and the application of the stories in daily living. The stories are structured by a consistent system of ethics. These ethical principles are illustrated in the stories, but they are also explained in expositions. In the Old Testament, the wisdom literature provides explanations: Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. The prophets also expounded on the meaning of the stories in order to call people back to obedience to God. The interplay between the stories and the explanations teaches listeners how to interpret stories about the past in ways that are applicable in the present. This skill is then applied to non-biblical narratives.
The Bible’s stories are highly specific. They are stories about a relatively small nation: Israel. The New Testament is the story of how God transferred Israel’s nationhood to a new nation: the church. Jesus told the Jewish leaders: “Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof” (Matthew 21:43). This new nation is universal. What had been local for over 1500 years now became international. The Book of Acts chronicles this transition from localism to internationalism. The ways in which God had dealt with the Israelites provided information to gentiles about how God would subsequently deal with them. Therefore, gentile believers had incentive to study the narratives regarding Israel that are found in the Old Testament. They could learn how God would deal with them. They could learn what to expect from God if they obeyed His law. They also learned what to expect from God if they disobeyed His law.
The Septuagint was crucial in this development. About two centuries before Christ’s birth, Jewish leaders formed a committee of translators to produce a Greek Old Testament. Koine [koyNAY] Greek was the primary language of commerce in the Mediterranean world. Jews were scattered across this world. Alexandria was a favored city by Jews. This translation became the early church’s version of the Old Testament, beginning with the apostles, who repeatedly cited it, not the Hebrew version. In Rome, enough church members were literate in Greek so that they could translate Greek Old Testament passages into Latin at church meetings.
I have argued that there is a central theme in biblical history: the transition from wrath to grace. All of the stories in the Bible after Genesis 2 are governed by this principle and therefore illustrate it. The stories are not random. They are coherent. They are coherent because God’s decree controlled them.
Narratives are sequential. One event follows another. Each event influences what takes place next. People identify with historical sequences because their lives are made up of a series of historical sequences. We are interested in ourselves. That is a law of human nature. That is a constant across all cultures and all time periods. This means that we are interested on our own stories. Unless somebody has Alzheimer’s disease or has suffered a head injury, he has a remembered narrative of his own life. He forgets most of the details, but he has some idea of what he was from about the age of three until what he is today. People like to tell stories about themselves. They like to share stories about “the good old days.” If they are really good storytellers, even their grandchildren may listen to them in between video games. But most people are not good storytellers. Nevertheless, they are always ready to narrate a favorite story. Because of our ability to think historically, and because calendars are basic to our lives, we can usually identify within a year or so when we recollect when a particular event took place in our lives. We can do this from memory. With computers and smartphones, we could probably identify the day when something happened to us. In this, we are unique in history. Consider calendars. Calendars are cheap. Three millennia ago, only kings, bureaucrats, and priests had access to calendars. Calendars were basic to their control over society. Today, nobody controls society because of his access to a calendar. The calendar is a democratic tool of self-government.
I do not remember exactly when I took a graduate seminar in the American Revolution that was taught by Douglass Adair. I had not yet earned my master’s degree. It was probably in the spring of 1966. Adair was one of the founders of the field of colonial American history. He had been an editor of the William and Mary Quarterly. When he assumed editorial responsibilities in 1943, it was a regional journal that published family letters and other obscure documents from the era. Under his editorship, it became the premier academic journal in the field of colonial American culture and history. The new format became known as the Third Series.
There were several high school teachers who had come back to school to get credit, so that they could get raises. He offered this advice. Teach the American Revolution from the point of view of biography. Do not focus on the latest theory of some broad historical movement. Illustrate movements by way of biographies. This is excellent advice for all teachers. People find it easier to remember the past when they can tie the past to specific events and leaders. They can better remember a movement because of one or two major representative figures of the movement.
Why is this good advice? Because of the fundamental biblical principle: cosmic personalism. Individuals are responsible for their actions. God holds them responsible. They answer to God primarily, and then they answer to other people. This is the doctrine of representation. It is a doctrine of hierarchy. There are no broad historical movements without specific individuals who promote the movements.
Biographies are about life and death. They have a beginning, and they have an end. Most people want to believe that they will leave a positive legacy of some kind. They want to believe that they will be remembered. For most people, not many people will remember them, and certainly not half a century after they die. But a Christian believes that God remembers everything. A Christian believes that there is a meaningful sequence from creation until the final judgment. It is all of one piece. So, historical sequence means a great deal to a Christian. To the extent that Christianity has influenced the world, people around the world now think in terms of historical sequence. Around the world, people date each year in terms of the agreed-upon date for the birth of Jesus Christ. Actually, there is no agreement on exactly when He was born, but there is agreement within a few years. People around the world think in terms of linear time only because Christianity persuaded the world that time is linear. Christians also persuaded the rest of the world to adopt an explicitly Christian chronology. Jews resent this, and so they substitute BCE (before the common era) for B.C. (before Christ), and they substitute CE (common era) for A.D. (anno domini – year of our Lord). In humanist historiography, we see BCE and CE most of the time, not B.C. and A.D. I use B.C. and A.D.
Biblical narratives are not always sequential. Genesis 1 and 2 are not sequential. Theological liberals have argued that God’s creation of Adam out of the dust, which is described in Genesis 2, is a rival narrative. This indicates the extent to which theological liberals think that their readers are easily fooled by silly arguments. They imagine that their readers are going to take seriously their argument that a second author intervened generations later to tack on an addendum to the first author’s narrative. The second author was so stupid as to offer a second account of the event instead of rewriting the entire section. The second author expected his readers to be as easily fooled as the readers of articles by theological liberals. Anyone with normal intelligence would figure out that the description of events in Genesis 2 was a clarification of what had been described briefly in Genesis 1.
Christianity was successful in converting tribes in the West by means of the narratives in the Bible. These tribes had no concept of chronology. The Bible’s stories are powerful, irrespective of their chronological identification. But, over time, the converted tribes became aware of chronology. What had been believable stories about Jesus and the apostles became chronologically identifiable stories about the beginning of the transformation of the world outside of Israel. They became stories about the kingdom of God in history. This kingdom expands in history.
There are many ways to write history. There are many topics suitable for historical exposition. But the narrative format is by far the most effective way to enable most people to pay attention to history. People listen to stories. If the stories are good ones, people listen to them several times. This continues through adulthood. People watch their favorite movies several times. They know how the movies will turn out. There are no surprises. But the stories are compelling. People are drawn into the emotional experience of viewing a story. This is why the moving picture has been the most effective storytelling device in history. It combines visual imagery, voices, sound effects, and music to create an experience unmatched by the written word and stage plays. The movie industry in the twentieth century was dominated by Hollywood. Hollywood was dominated by Jews. This began early, no later than 1910. Several of the moguls had been furriers in New York City. They moved West because Thomas Edison controlled the patents on movie cameras. He charged royalties for the use of the equipment. But he found it difficult to enforce patent laws on the other side of the country. His headquarters were in New Jersey. Still, there was no obvious reason for the ex-furriers’ enormous financial success in making movies. It is a curiosity. There were a number of economic reasons for their success, but the main reason was this, in my view: Jews are part of a culture that has always centered on storytelling. This is a Bible-shaped culture. Rabbis told stories. Their listeners learned how to tell stories. Thus, when a handful of mostly secular Jews got access to a technology that was the supreme technology in history for storytelling, they prospered. The only gentile who competed with them effectively was Walt Disney. (This story, meaning a series of narratives, is told in Neil Gabler’s 1989 book, An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood.)
Every society has a theory of its origins. Most societies are governed by the idea that the gods in some way created the universe as an extension of themselves. The biblical account is radically different. Genesis 1 says that God spoke the world into existence. It was the power of His word that created something out of nothing. Modern humanism believes in the Big Bang. It took place 13.7 billion years ago. That is certainly chronological. Cosmic evolutionism has no explanation about the origin of the nearly infinitesimal compressed particle that, in a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a second, became the universe. Whatever that impersonal something was, way back when, it did not stay anything like what it was. There was a radical discontinuity separating what it was then and what it is now. That discontinuity was in part chronological. Also, we are not told the origin of that tiny particle. A clever child asks: “Who made the particle?” Sophisticated cosmologists avoid this question. They have no answer.
The Gospel of John identifies the Creator of the universe as the word. This is the Second Person of the Trinity. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:1–3). “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. John bare witness of him, and cried, saying, This was he of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is preferred before me: for he was before me. And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace” (vv. 14–16). Language is at the center of biblical cosmology.
God spoke to Adam in the garden. Adam understood what God said because Adam understood language. Adam was made in God’s image, so he could understand God. Adam spoke to Eve. In Genesis 3, the serpent spoke to Eve. Eve then spoke to Adam. Both of them spoke to God. Language is at the center of biblical history.
All of this was sequential. All this was based on language. All of this was based on stories. The stories have meaning because God imputes meaning to them. We cannot understand God’s relation to man apart from understanding the narratives that the Bible provides that describe God’s interaction with men. That interaction was mainly verbal. It was based on verbal revelation. It was based on verbal sequence. It was based on memory. This is the way in which God has chosen to communicate with mankind. The final judgment is based on a written account of historical events. “And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works” (Revelation 20:12). Jesus warned: “But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned” (Matthew 12:36–37).
This is why Christian historians should use narratives as the most effective way of communicating the facts of history, the meaning of history, the sequence of history, and the end of history. People understand stories. They have trouble learning theology. Without stories, almost nobody can learn theology. Nobody is supposed to learn theology apart from stories. Stories of what God did in history are the centerpiece of His revelation of Himself to mankind. This fact has not changed as a result of the closing of God’s authoritative verbal revelation with the completion of the Bible before A.D. 70.
Without emotionally compelling, factually accurate narratives that target specific audiences, a Christian historian is not going to convey his view of the past to most people. He can convey his view of the past to other trained historians, who learned in graduate school that they must not rely heavily on narratives. They learned this again when their articles were rejected by editors of peer-reviewed academic journals. There are no courses in graduate school on how to write narrative history. There never have been. The focus of graduate training is on learning the techniques and methodologies for verifying historical arguments, not producing narratives.
The creativity associated with telling a good story is always in limited supply. This creativity cannot be taught in a classroom or in a textbook. It is something of an X-factor. A handful of historians are gifted storytellers. These are the ones who find millions of book buyers. Generally, members of the historical profession are suspicious of such authors and their books. There is silent resentment against them. “If the masses read their books, their books must be substandard methodologically.” But the storytellers have an asymmetric advantage over the academic historians. A person who is a gifted storyteller can learn the techniques of historical research. Very few people who are highly competent in historical research become gifted storytellers.
The most successful historians in terms of book sales were Will and Ariel Durant. They were superb storytellers. They did competent research. There are plenty of footnotes in their books. But they told stories better than their peers did. Yet their summary book, The Lessons of History (1968), is only 100 pages long. There are a handful of potential connections between certain aspects of life and history: biology, race, character, religion, economics, etc. But the authors described no repeatable patterns. They also did not tell readers how they went about discovering patterns in history. That is because they did not believe in patterns of history. They told great stories, but there is no integrating theme in their stories. Millions of people read their books. They enjoyed reading the stories, but the stories did not shape their thinking in any particular way, except possibly on this issue: the origin of the world was cosmic evolution, not God’s creation, the authors insisted. The world is not providential. Thus, in competition for readers, listeners, and viewers, Christian historians have an advantage over their competitors. They think in terms of God’s revelation to man through verbal interactions with men that stretch back to the creation. They have learned their world-and-life view by way of a series of historical narratives. They understand that history is linear from the creation to the final judgment. They understand that what people say and do will have eternal consequences for them. They understand that there is a permanent conflict between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man. This conflict goes on continually in every area of life. Nothing is neutral. Nothing is separated from this kingdom conflict. They understand that the world is governed in terms of God’s laws, which they sometimes refer to as God’s principles. They believe in predictable sanctions in history. God rewards obedience, and He punishes disobedience. In short, there is coherence in history. There is a pattern in history: the transition from wrath to grace.
Humanist historians after 1920 have steadily lost faith in any overarching story in history. As they have lost this faith, their narratives have grown weaker. They have increasingly abandoned narratives. They have substituted sociological categories, economic history, statistical studies, and studies that are structured by means of other social sciences. They have lost faith in what was once called “the great man” theory of historical development. They do not acknowledge point 2 of historiography: representation. Humanists do not see the world in terms of any objective pattern of causation. They have no grand theory of historical causation. Therefore, they have no grand narrative. They do not show their readers or their students how the historical facts they survey in a course or a textbook are related to the lives of the students. They study conflicts in terms of issues other than covenantal issues. From the Greeks until the present, humanists have focused on political confrontations. This is because political confrontations are closer to covenantal confrontations than the other areas of life are. These confrontations are over issues of sovereignty, authority, law, sanctions, and succession. But political confrontations are historically bounded. Political issues change. There is no continuity in the humanist worldview that provides coherence between the past, the present, and the future. There is no integrating theme that holds together the multitudinous historical facts that students are expected to remember at least until after the final examination.
Other issues besides politics have become popular: economic history, technological innovation, scientific discoveries, gender issues, and multicultural issues. The one issue that is almost never taught in the university is military history. Yet wars are found in every society for which there is a record. Again and again, men go to war. Why? The Bible has an answer. “From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts” (James 4:1–3). Humanists ignore this answer. So, I ask: “What are the issues that lead men to go to war? Is there some coherent theme governing military history?” What is known as the fog of war seems to blind the historians. The public is fascinated by military history. Western males enjoy reading about the history of World War II (1939–45). American males read books on Civil War history (1861–65). Yet military historians have little prestige or influence in academia. Military history is interesting to a few humanist historians primarily because of the economic implications of funding armies, or because of the technological developments that result from spending on weapons. But the outcomes of wars hinge too much on specific battles, and the outcomes of battles are problematic historically. How does anyone make sense out of this series of events, expressed in a proverb that goes back to the late fourteenth century. “For want of a nail, the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe, the horse was lost. For want of a horse, the rider was lost. For want of a rider, the battle was lost. For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost, and all for the want of a horseshoe nail.” No form of popular history is more plagued by this phrase: “if only.” If only this mistake had not been made. If only that officer had followed orders. Or my favorite: if only a Confederate officer had not wrapped three cigars in a piece of paper that had on it General Lee’s invasion plans for the battle of Antietam (September 17, 1862), and if only he had not left his cigars in the grass when he left the area, and if only two Union soldiers had not discovered the cigars, unwrapped them, and recognized what was on that piece of paper, and if only that piece of paper had not moved up the chain of command to the top. (We do not know who kept the cigars. Historical records are imperfect.)
Humanism is fragmenting. Humanist historiography is fragmenting. This has been going on for a century. The more money that is available to fund research by university historians, the greater the fragmentation and specialization. There is no unifying theory of history to hold the pieces together. “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put him together again.”
Humanists have a continuing problem: they believe in a meaningless universe. This outlook was expressed by Macbeth at the end of his life.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle.
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
People can remember events if they know something about the people whose presence was indispensable to the event. If it is difficult to discuss an event and its aftermath without being able to identify whose presence was crucial to the event, the average reader or listener finds it very difficult to remember what the event was, what effect it had, and why. Very occasionally, there is a geological or biological event that changes history. The bubonic plague from 1347 to 1350 was such an event. At least a third of Western Europeans died. In cities, it was half the population. We do not know the names of most of the people who reshaped society in response to that event. We do know that it changed European thought and culture. It fostered a loss of faith in the church. But there is nothing else quite like that event in Western history. The Lisbon earthquake of 1755 shook more than the city; it shook people’s optimism about a providential world. That event took place at the same time that the old order was slipping away in Western Europe. But such natural events rarely have long-term consequences. The so-called Spanish flu of 1917 and 1918 killed tens of millions of people worldwide, but it had almost no cultural effect. It was forgotten within just a few years, despite the huge death toll.
Here is a basic fact of life: most people cannot deal with long chains of reasoning. They cannot remember every step. They cannot follow all of the steps. It takes years of specialized training to be able to follow a long chain of reasoning in a narrow academic specialty. In contrast, sequential events lend themselves to creative and exciting stories that stay in people’s memories. Sometimes people remember them, but they do not remember most of the historical circumstances surrounding the event. A major task of the historian is to supply the historical context in such a way that people will remember it. This is not easy.
A good way to help people remember a story is to identify a personal conflict or competition that shaped the story. People like stories about confrontations between good guys and bad guys. Most people want to believe that the historical processes favors good over evil. They want to believe that right makes might, that ethics is more influential than power, and that the pen is mightier than the sword. They want to believe in cosmic personalism. That is because they are personal. They want to believe that God is on their side. They want to believe that there is purpose in life, and purpose is always personal. There is no such thing as impersonal purpose. They want to believe that their plans will come to fruition because the world is structured in such a way as to favor their efforts. They want to impute accurate meaning to the world around them. They are not sure how to do it, but they want to learn how to do it. Bible-based narratives help them achieve these goals.
There is a parallel in popular literature. People want the same kind of confirmation and reassurance from fictional stories that they want from nonfictional stories. They want happy endings for the good guys. They identify with the good guys in the story. In literature after World War I (1914–18), humanistic authors began to write stories in which the good guys were overcome by the forces of evil. This depresses readers. Even worse is a story in which the readers cheer for the bad guys. A highly creative author can write such a story. This is a lot easier to do in motion pictures than it is in short stories and novels. This is why from the mid-1930's until the mid-1960's, there was a private association made up mainly of Christians who made certain that movies did not end with victory for clearly evil people. It was called the Motion Picture Association of America. It enforced something called the motion picture production code. The movie industry conformed to these standards for three decades. Movie producers did not legally have to conform, but they did not want bad publicity from the MPAA.
As a history teacher, your goal should be to help your audience understand what happened in the past. But it is not sufficient for them to understand what happened; they must also remember why happened. It is easier to personalize historical developments then it is to explain complex reasons for historical developments. Complexity is always a factor in history. There is always vastly more documentation than a historian can ever access, let alone remember. (See Chapter 12.) The Christian historian should search for representative historical sequences that illustrate the biblical structure of history. Even better, a Christian historian should look for individuals who represent a major trend in history. There are always competing trends. There are always people who are committed to a rival worldview. The vast majority of people are unaware of the great dividing issues that have shaped history. Thus, when you can identify someone who articulated a position effectively, and who gained a following, and whose following began to shape future events, focus on that individual. Ask this: “Why was he important?”
I recommended this five-part structure of investigation.
1. Identify the confession.
2. Identify the spokesmen.
3. Identify the media.
4. Identify the funding.
5. Identify the eschatology.
The movement’s confession is crucial. It sets forth a worldview. The confession is the basis of commitment. It shapes people’s thinking regarding God, man, law, sanctions, and time. It shapes people’s thinking about sovereignty, authority, law, sanctions, and succession. If people will not commit to the confession, the movement will not have any influence until they do commit. But if they commit to the confession and act in terms of it, and if they recruit others, then this movement may become an important factor. There are few movements that achieve this. There are few confessions of faith that achieve this. But there are some, and you should look for them.
Identify the spokesmen. These are the visible leaders. They represent the movement. Their words motivate followers. Every movement has public speakers. Every movement has someone who writes the books and pamphlets. When writing a history of a movement, the historian must search for these people. It is this issue: representation. Every movement is represented. (See Chapter 12.) Students will remember their names if the historian tells their stories. The stories must identify their context. Identify the media. What were the means of public communication in the historical era you are investigating? How did a movement get its message to the public? Every movement offers a gospel: good news. The good news for one group will be bad news for another group. This is the nature of all good news that is tied to a confession of faith. Consider a contemporary movement. Does the organization publish books? Is it online? Does it have a website? Does it have its own schools? Does it have programs for advanced training? What materials does it use in these programs?
Identify the funding. Every movement has to be funded. Somebody has to pay to get the message out. Who pays? This is not always easy to find out. Read the fund-raising appeals. Find out who donates and why.
Identify the eschatology. What is the movement’s vision of the future? What does it promise to members if they sacrifice for the sake of the cause? This is how leaders motivate followers. Without a positive eschatology, it becomes very difficult to recruit new members and retain the allegiance of long-term members.
If you write a narrative, tie it to one or more people who represent the trend you are studying. Then look for representatives on the other side of the confrontation. What motivates them? People are motivated by a confession. They are motivated by money. They are motivated by fame. But if they do not gain a following, they will gain neither money nor fame. This is why understanding representative figures is crucial. Organizations do not form themselves. Individuals start organizations. They provide leadership. They provide vision. The historian who can show which people exercised leadership has a competitive advantage in telling his story. The more that he can tie personal characteristics to the success or failure of the movement, the more easily his students will understand what happened.
Your goal is to affect the thinking of specific students. Your goal is to confirm or change their confession. This means that your goal is to reinforce or change their covenantal commitment. If you are teaching a group of committed students, then your goal is reinforcement. Your goal is also to strengthen them in their ability to articulate their confession of faith. This teaches them to count the costs of their confession of faith. When they read biographies of people who have made major sacrifices to extend a worldview, they will be better judges of whether or not they want to make a full commitment. They will get some sense of what they may be called upon to sacrifice for the sake of the movement. When they learn about how someone else also made a major sacrifice, and that sacrifice led to institutional success, they may become motivated to imitate that person. It is easier to assess the cost that is borne by an individual than by an organization.
The first step is that you have become familiar with the history of the church, both in the West and in the East. Most Westerners know almost nothing about Eastern orthodoxy and Russian orthodoxy. They need to know this, but first they need to know the history of the Western church.
There are numerous studies on this, but the best place to start is the two-volume set by Justo L. Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity. Read it. Mark it up with a highlighter. Write down the names of people you think deserve a Sunday school lesson. Understand the grand sweep of the church.
The big problem is when you go looking for textbooks that show the history of the church’s development in relationship to its impact on the society around it. A good book on this is written by a secularist, Tom Holland: Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World (2019). Another is Otto Scott’s book, The Great Christian Revolution: How Christianity Transformed the World (1995). But the best book is by Joseph Boot: The Mission of God: A Manifesto of Hope for Society (2016).
Once you have names of key spokesmen, go to Wikipedia and read the entries. Print out the interesting ones. Then follow through on any bibliographical materials that you find in the footnotes. You have to know something about their background. You have to know the stands that they took and why they took them. Your research should probably take at least two years. You should get comfortable with spending at least an hour a day on this project. You want to be informed about what the church has said and done in the West.
You need to get experience teaching. I recommend that your initial audience be Sunday school attendees. Produce a 12-week course: introduction, 10 lessons, and a conclusion. See what interests people. Force yourself to do the research. Get practice talking in front of a group. If this presentation is popular, do another one. Do at least one every year. Your goal should be to produce a dozen of these courses. This is a reasonable goal.
If you are successful as a teacher, set up a WordPress.com website blog and a YouTube channel. Both of these are free. Start putting your lessons online. Create a workbook. Put it in PDF format. Create a discussion leader’s guide. Churches need competent Sunday school courses. All that a church needs to use your materials is a large flatscreen TV and an Internet hookup. This is inexpensive these days. Do not wait to do this until after you have produced a dozen courses. Do it after you have produced the first course, assuming that it was well received.
I recommend targeting adults. Most adults know almost nothing about church history. It is unlikely that they are going to go out on their own to do what I have recommended here. Somebody will have to do it for them. That might as well be you.
Christians are in a better position to tell compelling, meaningful stories than humanists are. Christians have a view of the world that is providential. It has purpose. They believe that God created it and sustains it. The world is not random. It is structured in terms of a long-term plan: the transition from wrath to grace.
If you can persuade Christians of the truth of what I have just written, that would be a serious contribution to the extension of the kingdom of God in history. If you can persuade them to be confident about what God has done for His church in history, and then begin to take action in their own lives on the basis of this confidence, that would be an even more serious contribution to the extension of the kingdom of God in history.
Christians need to be motivated to take action. They have to understand that what they do is significant in history. Their lives are significant because they are part of a comprehensive providential plan governing all of history. Christians should be looking for ways to serve their fellow man, thereby serving God. They should study the lives of Christians who have made this kind of personal sacrifice, and who have left legacies behind to be imitated and extended. This is why I recommend focusing on biographies. Biographies of successful Christians can be highly motivational.
I decided to write this book on Wednesday, September 1, 2021. I announced this to my subscribers on September 3. I completed the first draft of the manuscript on Friday, October 22. I posted the Preface on Saturday, October 23. I continued posting chapters every day (except Sundays) for a month. This project took seven weeks. It was a part-time project. I post three articles a day, six days a week, on my website. I also respond to questions posted by subscribers on my site’s forums. As far as I know, nothing like this book has ever been published. This is not a complicated book. First, it offers a thesis regarding the biblical structure of history. It is highly specific: five historical principles in support of a theme. The theme is this: the transition from grace to wrath (brief), followed by the transition from wrath to grace. This is a simple yet comprehensive theme. Second, the book offers a thesis regarding the implicit, unstated humanist theory of the structure of history. Third, it offers a strategy for producing a revisionist Christian historiography that follows the five-point biblical structure of history. Conceptually, this is simple. Once again, I used the five-point biblical covenant model as a cookie-cutter. It works for me, and it works for my readers.
Why am I the first historian to produce anything like this? This is late in an intellectual war that has been going on for over 500 years. Renaissance humanists began offering their version of the history of Western civilization no later than 1500. They launched a successful guerilla operation against the ideal of Christendom. Their historiography reflects this. Humanism’s offensive strategy keeps escalating. The Enlightenment after 1700 replaced the Renaissance’s guerilla war strategy with a frontal assault. By 1910, secular humanists controlled most of the institutions of higher education in the United States, and all of the most prestigious institutions. Harvard went Unitarian in 1805. By 1870, it had gone secular. Humanists had been in control of higher education in what we call Germany ever since 1800. That was seven decades before the creation of Germany.
Christian scholars have been outgunned for half a millennium. But their surrender had begun at the beginning of the university system in 1100. They relied from the beginning on Aristotle to carry their intellectual water. Unlike the Gibeonites, who hewed wood and carried water for the Israelites, Aristotle poisoned the intellectual well. Christians surrendered intellectual authority—first principles—to Greek humanism by way of Aristotle. They had done this before: their surrender to Plato, beginning in the second century. They never reclaimed this authority in the name of the Bible.
Kant’s dualism had replaced the Greeks by 1880. Yet by 1880, Darwinism replaced Kant in the last bastion of cosmic purpose defended by Kant: intelligent design. Darwinism denied cosmic purpose until after the unplanned evolution of man. Classical education, the ancient Christian compromise with autonomy, was abandoned by higher education. The elective system, pioneered at Harvard after 1870, buried what little remained of classical education. Students were no longer interested.
Today’s students are no longer interested in studying history. This offers a great opportunity to Christian historians. Meanwhile, humanist historians are moving from offense to defense. They have lost faith in both history and historiography. This loss of faith began no later than 1930. It has escalated since then. Students today are abandoning a visibly sinking ship.
Becker in 1931 announced everyman his own historian. Today’s historians-in-training are steadily shrinking in number. Beard in 1933 described written history as an act of faith. Today, few disciples are committing to this faith. I am a modern-day Becker. I want every Christian to be an historian. I am also a modern-day Beard. I want far more Christians self-consciously writing history as acts of faith. I offer this book as both a recruiting tool and a training manual. It is one more step in a long walk: the transition from wrath to grace.
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