I was never any good at history in school; I gave it up as soon as I could, prefering languages instead. I hated the rote memorization of years and events and their consequences.
I remember clearly when history came alive for me. It was in the second term at Oxford, in a modern Japanese history class by Ann Waswo. We were given a title for a seminar - "Discuss the implications of the Japanese Emperor's renunciation of divinity", or something like that. We were given no reading; find it out for yourself, come and discuss it at the seminar. So we looked through the history books and the contemporary sources, the newspapers and so on, and we found something very strange. Some people seemed to think that the Emperor was worshipped as a god; others denied this. They couldn't both be right.
Suddenly we were plunged without warning into the depths of historiography. Now I felt I could create in history classes, something which was unthinkable before; I could evaluate the sources and bring my interpretation to the seminar. History wasn't just a simple timeline of events - there was something much more complicated but much more delicious going on.
But I've also learnt that history can and does teach us about the present. In the same way that no man is an island here and now, we are all part of the span of history, and this is particularly true of our brothers and sisters in the church in ages past. This is why I have such an interest in patristics: because we have had this conversation before. That is, since there is nothing new under the sun, we find that all the debates that we're having now have been discussed and sometimes even dealt with many years ago by people much closer to the action.
Now, though, it dawns on me that the majority of people are ahistorical; they don't share the same high view of history. In the same way as people can be ethnocentric - not being able to see beyond the modus operandi of their own culture - people can also be, as it were, aeonocentric - unable to see beyond their own age. One of the things that the Modernist Enlightenment taught us was that we were for the first time able to investigate things rationally and reasonably for ourselves without relying on the authority of others. One of the things that the Postmodern Enlightenment will hopefully teach us is that that is a load of rubbish.
For instance, and I apologise for picking on the UCCF but it's such an easy target. From Athens to Jerusalem, UCCF Religious and Theological Studies Fellowship*, claimed that the Enlightenment gave us historical textual criticism; for the first time people were thinking about the textual variants in the Bible and trying to piece proper meaning out of it.
Funny, I thought. I'm sure we've had this conversation before. Of course those without a high view of history would not be able to cast their minds back through history and recall...
Here there is a textual difference between the Latin version and some of the Greek manuscripts. The Latin says that death reigned over those whose sins were like the sin of Adam, but those Greek manuscripts say that death reigned even over those whose sins were not like Adam's. Which of the two readings is the correct one? ... The Greeks have different readings in their manuscripts. I consider the correct reading to be the one which reason, history and authority all retain. For the reading of the modern Latin manuscripts is also found in Tertullian, Victorinus and Cyprian.Ambrosiaster, Commentary on Paul's Epistles, late 4th century
Of course, Ambrosiaster now appears to have been wrong on that particular piece of textual analysis, but he was doing it, and did it throughout the commentary. This was not an Enlightenment innovation. That is our historical bias coming in again.
There is a serious issue here. Those without a clear view of where we've been in the past will not be able to see where we're going in the future.
* I can't tell you which issue or give an exact quote because it was on the freebies table and someone took it before I could grab the quote, and their website is a year out of date.
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