Furnishing the Theological House
A Reformed
Evangelical Appraisal of the Historical & Theological Tasks
Gregory Johnson • Saint Louis University • December 1997
(Bibliography & Notes follow)
The historical task is the discipline of interpreting present evidences of the past; that is, it is the task of doing history. R. G. Collingwood argued that scientific history, what we would call modern history, is properly a history of thought. Historians do not have access to the events they hope to investigate, since those events lie buried in the past, so the historian must re-enact in his or her mind the thoughts of people who lived in the past. This he does by questioning present evidences, with a goal of reaching beyond the events themselves (the outward) to the inward, the thoughts involved in the events.[1] Since the theological task is one which deals primarily with beliefs, with thoughts, with the "inward" (but not to the neglect of the outward), Collingwood's understanding of the historical task seems an appropriate one to adopt. History is the discipline of interrogating evidences of the past with a view toward re-enacting in the mind the thoughts of the past.
What is the relationship between this historical endeavor and the practice of doing theology? What hath Germany to do with Jerusalem? Does the current academic practice of history have a place in the theological enterprise? An evangelical and Reformed Protestant approach to theology begins and ends with scripture. Indeed, the nineteenth century Prince of Princeton, Charles Hodge, defined theology as "the science of divine revelation so far as those facts concern the nature of God and our relation to him, as his creatures, as sinners, and as subjects of redemption."[2] The theological endeavor seeks to come to a greater understanding of God and humanity's relation to God as defined by God through revelation.
Before proceeding, it should be noted that all knowledge by its very nature is theological knowledge, since all knowledge is held by people who have theological assumptions through which they interpret reality. In this sense all history is theology, since all history is similarly done by people holding theological assumptions. But heretical theological knowledge is not in view in this paper, nor is all knowledge in view simply because it has been interpreted theologically. By theology, for this paper I, like Hodge, mean the knowledge of God and man's relation to God as he has revealed himself. The theological endeavor is the discipline of gaining this kind of theological knowledge.
I. THE FRONT DOOR: History has Nothing to do with Theology
In seeking to construct his theological house, the Reformed evangelical places a sign over the front door prohibiting entry to all except Scripture. It is again Charles Hodge who wrote, "The Bible, and the Bible alone, is the religion of Protestants."[3] This principle of sola scriptura is a first principle in Reformed dogmatics. By this slogan it is meant that only the Bible has the ultimate authority to bind the conscience absolutely. Again, though there are numerous authorities— parents, civil magistrates, church elders—and all are worthy of respect and obedience whenever possible, only Scripture is recognized as having the power to bind the conscience absolutely. All other authorities, including reason, the church and her tradition, are viewed as subservient to this ultimate authority.
1. Sola scriptura defined.
By speaking of the sufficiency of scripture, Reformed Protestants mean that quality which the Old and New Testament together as one canon possess, which might be called their comprehensiveness. The scripture is complete, containing all that is necessary to accomplish the redemptive purpose for which they were given. This does not mean that the scripture is exhaustive in the sense of revealing to humanity everything that is true, even in those areas it addresses. And Protestants further hold that evident reason from the text is a part of the text's meaning, so that theology today can address issues that were not addressed directly by the biblical authors themselves. The Westminster Confession of Faith puts it this way, "The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture."[4] Similarly, witness the Belgic Confession, "for since the entire manner of service which God requires of us is described in [Scripture] at great length, no one... ought to teach other than what the Holy Scriptures have already taught us."[5]
All this is not to deny the possibility either of natural theology or of natural law, which the Reformed affirm. This creational revelation is a true revelation of God, his existence, power and essential attributes, as well as his law. But as ardent Augustinians (at least touching soteriology), such revelation is seen as fruitless due to humanity's fall into sin. Man is an idol factory, Calvin said, and whatever is revealed is suppressed and corrupted as the rebellious human heart seeks out other objects for its affection. What humanity needs is redemption, and redemption is not revealed in creation. Played out on the field of human history, God redeems through his mighty deeds on behalf of his covenant people, his saving acts centering upon the incarnate, crucified, risen and ascended Jesus of Nazareth. The record of these events, entrusted by Christ to his apostles, was infallibly recorded and interpreted under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in the documents later collected as the New Testament.
2. Sola scriptura defended.
If I could continue this grand plunge into classical Protestant dogmatics, it would be helpful to answer the often repeated objection that Protestant churches receive the canon of scripture on the authority of the church, by which is usually meant the Roman Catholic magisterium, therefore making the Protestant doctrine of a sufficient scripture seem naive. Orthodox Protestants do not understand themselves to be acknowledging an infallible church by receiving the scripture, but see themselves as submitting to those scriptures just as the early church submitted to those scriptures by its act of receiving them.
Along this same line, the Reformed do not see the church's collecting of the New Testament books as an infallible process, though we believe that the church was, in fact, correct in its canonizing of those books. The church submits to the scripture by setting apart those books bearing evidence of apostolicity, having been produced by the apostolic community and therefore obediently received by the church. The apostolate thus provides the key link between the authority of Christ and the authority of the New Testament. The eyes of faith therefore see in the canon a fallible (though we believe correct) collecting of infallible books.
3. The historical enterprise
does not get us beyond sola scriptura.
This theological argumentation brings us back to the question at hand. What is the theological relevance of the historical task? If history's purpose is to re-think the thoughts of those in the past, then history of itself offers little to theology. The Bible alone, the Reformers insisted, was the ultimate source of Christian theology. Only in the scripture has God communicated Christian, that is redemptive, theological knowledge.
And only scripture can provide the value judgments which make up the heart of all theological knowledge. History investigates the past, but the past cannot say "should". The past which history investigates does not and cannot provide value judgments. It cannot define what is true or false, or good or evil. Even a doctrine's having always been believed fails to justify its ever having been believed. The fact that Christians in fourth century Vicenza practiced the Lord's Supper in a particular manner cannot justify their having done so. For this task, scripture is necessary. The past does not provide theological knowledge, and so the historical method ultimately cannot provide theological knowledge. God and God's relation to men is not discovered through an investigation of human history.
Events do not interpret themselves. This is a key plank in Hayden White's argument against narrative in The Content of Form. He speaks of the "artificiality of the notion that real events could 'speak themselves' or be represented as 'telling their own story.'"[6] In short, contrary to the assertions of positivists, events do not interpret themselves. Even within the scope of redemptive history, God's mighty acts are not presented as self-explanatory. Rather, divine actions are followed by a divine interpretation. The crucifixion was not a self-explanatory event; its theological significance as an atonement whereby a wrathful God was made propitious is known only by revelation. This significance had to be revealed, first directly by Christ, then further in the pages of the New Testament documents.
4. The fact of a sovereign God
does not get us beyond sola scriptura.
Granted, within a Reformed and evangelical theological system, all human events are products of the divine will. Again, the Westminster Confession states:
God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin; nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.
Although God knows whatsoever may or can come to pass, upon all supposed conditions; yet hath he not decreed anything because he foresaw it as future, or as that which would come to pass, upon such conditions.
By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestined unto everlasting life, and others are fore-ordained to everlasting death.[7]
Even this strong affirmation of the sovereignty of God in history, however, does not provide for the possibility of gaining theological knowledge through the historical enterprise. While everything believed and confessed within the church has been the outworking of God's eternal purpose in history, so too have sin and unbelief been the outworking of the plan of God. God is totally sovereign over all thoughts, desires and actions, yet man remains responsible for his actions. Divine sovereignty does not identify any action as good or bad, but only as having taken place under a sovereign God. As Paul anticipates the reprobates' objection in Romans 9:19, "One of you will say to me: 'Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?'" so he answers their suggestion that divine sovereignty implies divine acceptance, saying, "But who are you, O man, to talk back to God?... Does not the Potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?" The fact of God's sovereignty of itself does not provide the value judgments which only the scripture can authoritatively provide.
Still, the reality of a sovereign God does provide a narrative for history, but a narrative of which humans only know the broadest outline. The beginning, creation, is revealed in both creation and scripture, the end, a second coming, a new heavens and new earth, revealed in scripture only, and the means of reconciliation, Christ, similarly revealed, just as the basic direction of history, the advance of Christ's rule from a tiny mustard seed to a great tree, is also known only through the pages of scripture. Through revelation, we can know we are living in relation to God who is Lord of history, but value judgments are still needed to interpret the details of the past. That is, scripture is needed for us to know what our place is in the eternal plan of God.
5. An "infallible
developing authority" does not get us beyond sola scriptura.
John Henry Newman argues that, since doctrine by its nature develops over time, the Christian must assume a priori an infallible developing authority, which he identifies as the Roman Catholic magisterium. By making the infallibility of the church an assumption, Newman therefore needs not defend the notion from its Protestant critics. I would propose, however, that the appearance of an infallible developing authority can not be assumed a priori. For this task, I appeal to precedent, that is, that the covenant people of God (Israel) got by for its first fifteen centuries without an infallible developing authority. Indeed, this covenant people had teachers and priests ordained by God, but they were a very fallible group of priests and teachers. These scribes could at times be found so mistaken as to identify the Messiah as a mesith, a beguiler of the people, and lobby the Romans to crucify him. During this millennium and a half, doctrine developed. The resurrection of the dead, an increasingly explicit messianic impulse, and numerous feast days all developed—but without an infallible developing authority. Granted, Christ would one day come to set right the wrongs, just as he will come again to do the same, but the fact remains that precedent exists on this type of question. And this precedent does not follow Newman's a priori argumentation. Authority? Yes—but a fallible authority which functions under and is to be corrected by the scripture. So investigation into the church's tradition by itself cannot justify a belief as being right or true.
Eamon Duffy in his The Stripping of the Altars, for example, though making no appeal to an infallible church, argues very persuasively against what Whig historians had labeled the decline in popularity of a tired church in late medieval England. This narrative of decline is demonstrated to be inaccurate through appeal to church accounts which demonstrate very generous and voluntary giving to the church during this period. Through appeal to evidences such as lay devotional books and lay primers Duffy demonstrates that the narrative of decline was at best overstated, and at worse directly false. Providing alternate interpretations of the evidence to which Whig historians had appealed, Duffy seeks to demonstrate that traditional religion in England was vibrant and Christian.[8]
If Duffy is successful in proving that religion to have been vibrant, one would question whether he can prove it to have been Christian. Granted, if by Christian Duffy means involving Christ in the mind of the participants, then perhaps Duffy's argument is one which can be reached through the historical method. But again, if by Christian Duffy means that the activity was in accordance with true Christianity as it ought to be expressed, then his method cannot in my opinion gain this knowledge. Such an affirmation would require a standard by which true and corrupt Christianity is distinguished. Such an affirmation would require a perspective of objective Christianity by which all christianities are judged. Again, this value judgment is beyond the scope of historical investigation. Such discernment requires theological categories which Reformed evangelicals believe to be drawn from scripture alone.
6. Not even Foucault can get us
beyond sola scriptura.
In his The History of Sexuality[9] and other works, Michel Foucault presents an analysis, not so much of events as of the discourses through which people speak of their world. In his work, Foucault presents discourse as a social construct whereby people exercise creative power. Through discourse, we define a thing as such and so exercise control over it. All knowledge thus involves the exercise of power, not merely by those at the authority end of power relationships, but by everyone and within all relationships, since all relationships involve knowledge and power. Rejecting any notion of a universal human nature by which a common human experience can be discerned, Foucault's system understands human perceptions of "reality" (in quotes, since no one can objectively perceive whether or not a reality actually exists) to be the product of discourses involving power. Truth is a subset of discourse, so that one can speak only of his or her perception of reality, with no appeal outside of the system possible to prove or disprove that system. In this sense, Foucault's approach, itself an exercise of power through the establishment of a discourse defining discourses as such, is radically relativistic.
Standing outside of Foucault's discourse, Reformed evangelicals find Foucault's work brilliant and insightful but not compelling. Truth no longer exists, except within a relative discourse. Falsehood no longer exists, except in that people decide to create a category and to identify such a category as that which is false, the contents of the category being invented as such by those who choose to speak of it. Good no longer exists, nor does evil, except as people choose to create such categories and fill them as they please. In the end, even Foucault's assessment of the issue is really not insightful at all, in that the concept of insight assumes a reality which is discovered, and reality does not exist for Foucault except as Foucault chooses to create it by speaking of it, and he doesn't really speak of it much since he seems skeptical about whether or not it exists—at least exists in reality.
Of course, it can be argued that Foucault could not live out his own relativism. He opposed discrimination against homosexuals on “moral” grounds, for example. A system such as Foucault's is unlivable, since there is no basis for appeal in "reality" to those who hold what Foucault could only identify as differing viewpoints. Foucault's approach leaves no ultimate reason for condemning an Auschwitz. As the late Francis Schaeffer once argued, if a position is unlivable, it is not in accordance with reality—that is, it is not true. Schaeffer was fond of speaking of an elderly lady trying to cross a busy street. A passerby would have three options. Either the passerby could help the elderly lady across the street, or he could ignore her and hope she didn't ask for help, or he could push her in front of a car. There is no compelling reason why one approach should be favored over the other two, and the fact that one approach is favored is evidence that right actually exists. Foucault's position cannot be lived. This should be evidence that his system does not correspond to reality.
If there is a God, using the verb "is" in its classic sense of being in reality, then assuming God to be omniscient, by definition his perspective is an objective perspective. By definition his discourse is the true discourse by which all other discourses are judged to be objectively accurate or inaccurate. Indeed, this is precisely the message of Ecclesiastes. All the peculiarities of human living—eating, drinking, working with one's hands—are meaningless "under the sun". The key to human life lies outside of this world; humanity has no significance on its own. But with life grounded in God, there is nothing better than to eat and drink and work with one's hands. Humanity is not a sufficient ground for knowledge; communication from God is necessary to make sense of reality. Revelation is key to overcoming Foucault's predicament.
Over against Foucault's untenable system, true and false do actually exist apart from human perception and apart from human discourse. Some discourse is objectively right. And some discourse is objectively wrong. Granted, this does not imply that we have revealed to us all of the answers to every question—it was argued at the beginning of this paper that a sufficient scripture is not exhaustive even in those areas it addresses. But many elements of truth and falsehood are revealed in the Bible's objective discourse. Its doctrines—God, creation, fall, redemption, its moral precepts—together provide an interpretive grid within which objective knowledge may be approached, even if not fully grasped because of human finitude. Still, God has condescended to communicate to humanity using both human language and a human person, his Son. This reality, incarnation and the inspiration of Scripture, provides the objective and comprehensible basis for appeal outside of one's system to an objective perspective which is now partly reachable through grace.
Truth actually exists—in reality. To use Schaeffer's term, one can speak of true truth. And coherence is an evidence of this truthfulness, not only the noncontradiction of beliefs within a system, but the ability of a system to actually be lived out. This provides the possibility of moving outside of one's discourse, outside of one's narrative or understanding, to move closer to the divine objective perspective. As we see our discourse failing to account for all the "data" encountered, we can question it and change our discourses. All the while scripture is understood as the supreme discourse, the discourse above all other discourses, the Protestant principle of sola scriptura refusing to permit a relativizing of truth.
Particularly with respect to the study of scripture, evangelicals often speak of a hermeneutical spiral, what others often call a hermeneutical circle. As one encounters new experiences, he brings new questions to the text of scripture, yielding new answers. These answers in turn challenge the readers' system, the eyes of faith increasingly succumbing to correction as yet other questions are brought to the text and yet other implications noticed. The direction here is circular, approaching the text again and again from within a system, but there is also a linear direction as the reader inches ever closer to God's perspective, correcting his discourse to make it in line with God's objective discourse. This is where the historical enterprise will sneak in Calvinist's theological house through the back door, nicely evading the sola scriptura posted on the front of the house.
Having no doubt made many enemies in the first half of this paper, in the second half I hope to say I am sorry. And as I continue to investigate the relationship between the historical and theological tasks, I will seek to make works of restitution properly in keeping with my crime without abandoning the theological discussion presented thus far.
II. THE BACK DOOR: History has Everything to do with Theology
As mentioned above, the historical enterprise, though having been excluded as an ultimate source for theological knowledge by the Calvinist doctrine of sola scriptura, nevertheless enters the theological endeavor through the back door. While less visible, the historical task will remain crucial to the Reformed evangelical's furnishing of his the theological house. While the actual discipline of history cannot provide theological knowledge in the sense that the Reformed defined theology—as the knowledge of God and his relations with men— history can serve as a means of better understanding that apostolic scriptural deposit given to the church and handed down through the ages. Indeed, I would suggest the historical method is a necessary means if the theological task is to be done well. History is a tool for use in the theological house, not the furniture itself, not even the bad furniture. But the historical enterprise is still a tool, and an important one at that. In what follows I demonstrate some ways in which history enters through the Calvinist's back door, and some reasons why the Calvinist lets history in.
1. Redemptive history is real
history and therefore subject to historical investigation.
Scripture presents itself as the divinely inspired account of God's mighty acts within history. Because the Christian faith is one which stakes its existence upon matters of historical fact, its historical truth claims must be open to investigation by use of the historical method. Paul told the Christians, "If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins."[10] Because appeal is made in the biblical account to matters of real human history, the historical method can enter to investigate these claims. At this point, the stakes are high—all or nothing. Either Christianity is based on accurate history and is true, or the religion is based on inaccurate history and is futile. With this kind of thinking evidently circulating through the apostolic community, it should come as no surprise that Luke stresses to Theophilus that he had carefully investigated everything from the beginning, insisting that this history had been handed down by those who from the first were eyewitnesses.[11] Similarly, John tells his readers that he spoke of that "which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched."[12] Christian orthodoxy can know no distinction between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith; Christianity is a religion claiming a factuality grounded in human history.
Still, while affirming the rightfulness of applying the historical method to the investigation of biblical historical claims, it must be cautioned that the historical method is not a "neutral" method. As a tool used by humans with all their biases, the historical method can claim no ultimate objectivity. The Jesus Seminar, for example, with its positivistic and naturalistic presuppositions, can claim a scientific objectivity when in fact its assumptions are rigorously predetermined by the Seminar's metaphysical assumptions. Such research declares as a matter of principle that miracles cannot exist (since they are unrepeatable), then proceeds to announce to Newsweek, Time and U.S. News and World Report that scientific historical investigation has concluded that Jesus did not, in fact, rise from the dead. To add insult to injury, such scholars further suggest that Christianity's historicity does not really matter, trivializing a faith that refuses to be interpreted in such mythical categories. It was this species of liberal Protestant scholarship, itself but a continuation of Adolph von Harnack's skepticism a century earlier, which Emil Brunner best summarized as "unbelief".
It can be suggested that the great distance between the events of scripture and the present era are likely to make any future historical insight into them unlikely. And it is questionable, apart from discovery of the corpse of Jesus (which could never be identified as such anyway, since Jesus did not leave a DNA sample for comparison), whether or not history is the proper vehicle to discern the events themselves. The historian is much better equipped to analyze what people thought about the event, how they interpreted it, than to judge whether it actually happened. And beyond the events themselves, the divinely inspired theological interpretation of those events, as argued earlier, is beyond the scope of historical investigation. Still, the Calvinist has cracked open his back door, and he sees a German selling tools.
2. Reading the Bible is like
reading the mail of people who died 2,000 years ago.
One of the finer tools this German offers at the Calvinist's back door is insight into the cultural and historical background of scripture. The biblical documents are communicative events which took place almost twenty centuries ago, making historical investigation vital to the central hermeneutical task of the theologian. If the archaeologist were in view in the preceding section, the linguist or biblical scholar is in view here. The theologian seeks to get within the world of the text, to understand not only its language but its culture and historical setting, to investigate the concerns that precipitated the communication, and to question what was meant by the language used. The theologian seeks to understand and re-enact the thoughts evidenced in the biblical documents, which is an historical task.
Like Boswell (though not necessarily agreeing with his conclusions), the theologian must realize that terms change meanings, and that even in a given culture there is a semantic slippage whereby words have multiple meanings. Thus the historical enterprise is a necessary hermeneutical endeavor in order properly to understand, not only historical documents generally, but the Christian scriptures specifically. Again as above, though, the historical method is not neutral, but involves value judgments which may be based in either believing or unbelieving presuppositions.
3. Doctrine develops within
history.
While the above two concerns involve the use of the historical method within the theological enterprise, the academy nevertheless tends to classify them as something other than history, be it archaeology or linguistics or biblical studies. This third concern deals most directly with what the academy classifies as history, particularly what is often coined church history. Here the back door German pulls out his finest equipment. Looking beyond the fact of scripture in itself and beyond the linguistics of the hermeneutical task to the church's understanding of Scripture, that understanding which has developed within the past, it becomes apparent that the historical task is vital to the practice of doing theology.
While rejecting his a priori assumption of an infallible developing authority, it is nevertheless evident that Newman is correct in contending that Christian doctrine has developed within history. Though the underlying principles were implicit in scripture and in the church's practice from the beginning, it nevertheless took centuries for the church to develop fundamental doctrines such as the Trinity and the two natures of Christ. Similarly, I would suggest that it took over fourteen centuries after Paul before the doctrine of forensic justification was clearly articulated, a doctrine Protestants believe not merely implicit but explicit in Romans, Galatians and Philippians. But the doctrine was not articulated until Martin Luther brought a series of questions to the text that yielded the understanding that split Christendom from halves into thirds.
The development of doctrine should be expected; it is the outworking of the hermeneutical spiral on a larger scale, the process by which the church in ever changing historical contexts brings ever different questions to the scripture, interrogating it with new concerns without forgetting the old concerns that had brought the theological development to its current state. In this way, the church through the ages grows in her understanding of apostolic teaching. Innovation therefore does not necessarily disprove a doctrine. Rather, innovation should send the church back to the sources, back to the scripture, to test whether or not a teaching is biblical. Jaroslav Pelikan is therefore right in arguing that the absence of specific formula (be they Catholic or Protestant) does not imply an absence of the idea which they express.
The historical task is thus significant for the Reformed and evangelical theologian, since it is a necessary investigation if he is to understand how his church's doctrine developed. Twentieth century Christians are not the first generation of believers to approach the text of scripture, and we do not bring to the text all the questions which have been brought to it by other Christians in other ages. The task of church history is the task of discerning how believers in the past interrogated the text, what they believed, how they practiced their faith and why, how they responded (inwardly as well as outwardly) to the situations they encountered. Church history is therefore a necessary corollary to the theological task.
Understanding gained through historical investigation opens the door for the church to question its system, to challenge and correct (or, more often, to better nuance) its dogma and practice based on the new insights into scripture which the theologian carries home from his historical endeavor. The church's developing yet always imperfect understanding of the sufficient scripture develops further as new questions are brought to it, not merely questions raised in our own era, but questions raised anew by those long since departed.
Even here, of course, the historical method cannot be considered a neutral method. Reformed scholars have perhaps tended to read Augustine as a proto-Protestant, skipping the next millennium to land safely in Wittenburg in the early sixteenth century. Likewise, it could be suggested that some Roman Catholic scholars have tended to define the current position of the church as the "traditional" Christian view, sidelining those earlier figures who disagree with the current position as "exceptions" beyond which one is to look to define what was developing. In this way the past is always defined as the developing present, regardless of what other forces may have been at work, so that church history always has as its purpose the defense of the status quo, while doctrinal changes are explained by appeal to unchanging "principles" which can be made progressively generic as new doctrinal changes require. (Catholics are of course not the only guilty party here—Whig interpretations of the medieval and reformation era immediately come to mind.) The historical method is a tool, but one used by people who have biases which cannot always naively be "avoided" as if the scholar stands in a position of objectivity. Scripture gives a divine interpretation of numerous events, and gives some guidelines for interpreting others, but the fact remains that scripture does not propose to interpret for us all events. All human scholarship is by definition biased scholarship, which is not to reject such scholarship, but merely to be aware of its limitations.
A
Note on Narrative: How to Write History
The narrative has been perhaps the form most identified with the historical enterprise. With its organization of "facts" into a story with beginning, middle and end, the narrative is a form which assumes a plot which the events purportedly tell. Hayden White is surely correct when he argues that the narrative is in fact the least objective historical method, since facts do not present themselves as pre-interpreted. Rather, the "significance" of facts is a moral category based upon prior value judgments which become evident only in the history's "conclusion", which explains why those facts recorded were recorded and why others were not. Narratives are not so much drawn from data as they are imposed upon data. It cannot be denied that the narrative is an easily manipulated form.
The value-driven nature of the narrative can be seen by a comparison of the respective narratives of A. G. Dickens and Eamon Duffy regarding the English reformation.[13] For Dickens, the English reformation is understood positively as the development of a Protestant vision for the Christian life, as the reform of the church after centuries of corruption, as a step in the larger narrative of advancing liberty in the Western world. For Eamon Duffy, the English "reformation" was an attack on traditional piety, a shattering of the meaningful and vital religious consensus which had characterized late medieval England. While it can be debated whether one narrative is closer to the "facts" than the other, neither scholar is neutral. The narrative assumes a plot, and a conclusion. Some evidence is selected, while other evidence is ignored because it either does or does not contribute toward the advancing conclusion.
The structuralist approach of John Bossy and of the earlier Annales historians attempts to avoid some of the biases inherent in a narrative approach. By looking at what Fernand Braudel termed the longue durée, by which he meant the constancy within a civilization rather than merely the long period of time, the historian can discern the larger structures of society that remain unchanged within a civilization. When those structures themselves begin to change, then a civilization draws to an end and a new civilization arises in its place.
But this structuralist approach itself is not free from bias. The exclusion of individuals (kings, popes, theologians) into the category of insignificance is itself a heavily value-driven move, flowing from prior assumptions which are at least vaguely Marxist, even if freed from the limiting control of economics. Are social structures the most important of all possible objects of study? What about theological structures? Certainly important figures like Augustine and Thomas, Luther and Calvin have greatly influenced people, not only in their own day, but up to the present. The structuralist approach is equally guilty as the narrative approach of bias, so that it becomes alongside the narrative but one more limited, human method of historical investigation.
In theory, a Reformed doctrine of divine sovereignty requires that there is in fact a narrative within the past. The difficulty comes when humans, being neither omniscient nor omnipresent, seek to decipher that narrative. It could be suggested that the narrative approach is not "bad" of itself; indeed, it remains for many the most natural means of writing history. Perhaps a narrative approach is but an approximation of the "true" narrative behind the narratives, an imperfect account of events which, with all its biases, remains the most satisfying presentation possible. If this is so, then historians may have to tolerate competing narratives which give complementary perspectives upon events, all the while acknowledging that no single human perspective can be assured of either full accuracy or finality.
Beyond history's ancillary use for the theological task presented thus far, there is a broader perspective which I will only mention, which sees all true theology as an historical enterprise. Indeed, from one angle it could be said that the theological task is a subset of the historical task, since, to use Collingwood's definition of history, the theologian seeks to re-enact in his mind the thoughts of Christ and his apostolate, through the primary use of their surviving relics, the New Testament. (Still, the analogy fails, since the evangelical theologian will view this biblical record as a source with authority as well as an evidence.) This framing of the question, however, seems reductionistic in light of the developmental nature of doctrine and so the historical task remains a tool in the hands of the theologian, and an important tool fashioned by the finest of German craftsmen—but still only a tool and not the theological task in itself.
When
furnishing his theological house, the Reformed evangelical hangs a great sign
over the front door that reads "Bible Only—No Solicitors." But then this Calvinist home owner quietly
sneaks down the back stairs and lets the historical enterprise in through the
back door, having been persuaded by the salesman with the German accent. And it should be added that this historical
enterprise is not merely the ugly sofa bed which stays in the basement; it is
not just another piece of furniture, not even a less impressive piece, in the
house of pure dogma. No. The historical task is a necessary corollary to the theological task, an
important tool more like a paint
brush or a vacuum cleaner,[14]
or perhaps it is the dolly used to move the furniture around, without which the
house would not be well furnished.
Through the historical enterprise the theologian finds new questions
with which to interrogate the Scripture, with a view toward inching ever closer
to the objective divine discourse revealed within its pages, further developing
the church's message as she confronts the new situations of the present and
coming ages.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bloch, Mark. The Historian's Craft. New York: Vintage Books, 1953.
Boswell, John. Same Sex Unions in Premodern Europe. New York: Vintage Books, 1994.
Braudel, Fernand. "The Longue Durée" in On History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Collingwood, R. G. The Idea of History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946.
Dickens, A. G. The English Reformation, Revised Edition. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991.
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[14]I fear these illustrations are not sufficiently flattering to the historical task. Perhaps I could suggest that a twentieth century middle class discourse undervalues vacuum cleaners precisely because they are necessary.