History E-Book

Nathan A. Finn

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Serie: Reclaiming the Christian Intellectual Tradition
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 162

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

A robust understanding of the past has the power to shape our perspective on the present and plans for the future. In this introduction to the study of history, a historian helps students grasp what it means to examine and explore history from a distinctly Christian perspective. In addition to opening students' eyes to the riches of the past, this readable guidebook models an approach to history that embraces the fundamental beliefs and convictions that make up the Christian worldview. Part of the acclaimed Reclaiming the Christian Intellectual Tradition series, this volume will be an invaluable tool in the hands of those seeking to engage with the past with God in mind. Includes illustrations, reflection questions, and a list of resources for further study.

Leseprobe

HISTORY

A STUDENT’S GUIDE

Nathan A. Finn

History: A Student’s Guide

Copyright © 2016 by Nathan A. Finn

Published by Crossway1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law.

Cover design: Jon McGrath, Simplicated Studio

First printing 2016

Printed in the United States of America

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-3763-9 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-3766-0 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-3764-6 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-3765-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Finn, Nathan A.

History : a student’s guide / Nathan A. Finn.

    1 online resource. — (Reclaiming the Christian intellectual tradition)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4335-3764-6 (pdf) -- ISBN 978-1-4335-3765-3 (mobi) -- ISBN 978-1-4335-3766-0 (epub) -- ISBN 978-1-4335-3763-9 (tp)

1. History—Religious aspects—Christianity. I. Title.

BR115.H5          

261.5—dc23                              2015021111

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

For my beloved wife, Leah Phillips FinnYou have walked with me and encouraged me and challenged me and supported me and, most important, loved me as I have pursued the vocation of Christian historian.

CONTENTS

Cover PageTitle PageCopyrightDedicationSeries PrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: History and the Christian Worldview1   Understanding History2   Historical Interpretation3   Faith and the Historian4   History: An InvitationQuestions for ReflectionGlossaryResources for Further StudyGeneral IndexScripture Index

SERIES PREFACE

RECLAIMING THE CHRISTIAN INTELLECTUAL TRADITION

The Reclaiming the Christian Intellectual Tradition series is designed to provide an overview of the distinctive way the church has read the Bible, formulated doctrine, provided education, and engaged the culture. The contributors to this series all agree that personal faith and genuine Christian piety are essential for the life of Christ followers and for the church. These contributors also believe that helping others recognize the importance of serious thinking about God, Scripture, and the world needs a renewed emphasis at this time in order that the truth claims of the Christian faith can be passed along from one generation to the next. The study guides in this series will enable us to see afresh how the Christian faith shapes how we live, how we think, how we write books, how we govern society, and how we relate to one another in our churches and social structures. The richness of the Christian intellectual tradition provides guidance for the complex challenges that believers face in this world.

This series is particularly designed for Christian students and others associated with college and university campuses, including faculty, staff, trustees, and other various constituents. The contributors to the series will explore how the Bible has been interpreted in the history of the church, as well as how theology has been formulated. They will ask: How does the Christian faith influence our understanding of culture, literature, philosophy, government, beauty, art, or work? How does the Christian intellectual tradition help us understand truth? How does the Christian intellectual tradition shape our approach to education? We believe that this series is not only timely but that it meets an important need, because the secular culture in which we now find ourselves is, at best, indifferent to the Christian faith, and the Christian world—at least in its more popular forms—tends to be confused about the beliefs, heritage, and tradition associated with the Christian faith.

At the heart of this work is the challenge to prepare a generation of Christians to think Christianly, to engage the academy and the culture, and to serve church and society. We believe that both the breadth and the depth of the Christian intellectual tradition need to be reclaimed, revitalized, renewed, and revived for us to carry this work forward. These study guides will seek to provide a framework to help introduce students to the great tradition of Christian thinking, seeking to highlight its importance for understanding the world, its significance for serving both church and society, and its application for Christian thinking and learning. The series is a starting point for exploring important ideas and issues such as truth, meaning, beauty, and justice.

We trust that the series will help introduce readers to the apostles, church fathers, Reformers, philosophers, theologians, historians, and a wide variety of other significant thinkers. In addition to well-known leaders such as Clement, Origen, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, and Jonathan Edwards, readers will be pointed to William Wilberforce, G. K. Chesterton, T. S. Eliot, Dorothy Sayers, C. S. Lewis, Johann Sebastian Bach, Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, George Washington Carver, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Michael Polanyi, Henry Luke Orombi, and many others. In doing so, we hope to introduce those who throughout history have demonstrated that it is indeed possible to be serious about the life of the mind while simultaneously being deeply committed Christians. These efforts to strengthen serious Christian thinking and scholarship will not be limited to the study of theology, scriptural interpretation, or philosophy, even though these areas provide the framework for understanding the Christian faith for all other areas of exploration. In order for us to reclaim and advance the Christian intellectual tradition, we must have some understanding of the tradition itself. The volumes in this series seek to explore this tradition and its application for our twenty-first-century world. Each volume contains a glossary, study questions, and a list of resources for further study, which we trust will provide helpful guidance for our readers.

I am deeply grateful to the series editorial committee: Timothy George, John Woodbridge, Michael Wilkins, Niel Nielson, Philip Ryken, and Hunter Baker. Each of these colleagues joins me in thanking our various contributors for their fine work. We all express our appreciation to Justin Taylor, Jill Carter, Allan Fisher, Lane Dennis, and the Crossway team for their enthusiastic support for the project. We offer the project with the hope that students will be helped, faculty and Christian leaders will be encouraged, institutions will be strengthened, churches will be built up, and, ultimately, that God will be glorified.

Soli Deo GloriaDavid S. DockerySeries Editor

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Some books are planned years in advance. Others providentially drop into your lap. This book falls into the latter category. I have been reflecting on the material covered in this book for over fifteen years, first as an undergraduate history major, then as a graduate student studying the history of Christianity, and now as a professor who teaches church history to undergraduates and graduate students and historical method and historiography to doctoral students. I have debated these topics with colleagues, taught them to students, and discussed them with my family and close friends. But I never thought I would write this book. I am grateful to David Dockery for his kind invitation to contribute this volume to the Reclaiming the Christian Intellectual Tradition series and to my editors at Crossway for their assistance along the way.

I am also grateful to numerous individuals who have assisted me as I have written this book. David Dockery and Gene Fant, formerly the President and Executive Vice President for Academic Administration at Union University, invited me to spend a sabbatical at Union during the first half of 2014. Most of this book was drafted during those five months in West Tennessee. Justin Taylor is not only one of my editors at Crossway, but he has also been a regular dialog partner for several years on the relationship between faith and history, a topic I discuss at length in chapter 3. Conversations with others over the years have also helped sharpen my thinking in various ways; I am especially grateful to Stephen Eccher, Keith Harper, Michael Haykin, David Hogg, Steve McKinion, Miles Mullin, Steve Weaver, and Ryan West. Several friends and colleagues read an earlier draft of this manuscript and offered suggestions that I am certain have significantly improved the book. I want to thank Richard Bailey, Keith Harper, Tommy Kidd, Danielle Renstrom, and John Wilsey for making this a better book. Of course, any errors and shortcomings that linger on are my own.

Final thanks are due to my wife, Leah, and my four children: Georgia, Baxter, Eleanor, and Fuller. They were flexible enough to relocate to another state for six months and gracious enough to share me with this book and several other writing projects during that time. Once we returned to North Carolina, they were patient with me as I finished this book while also assimilating back into my regular teaching routine and launching a new Center for Spiritual Formation and Evangelical Spirituality at Southeastern Seminary. In reality, though, my thanks to Leah in particular extend back to long before I undertook the actual writing of this book.

Leah, you have been by my side since the earliest days when I first considered pursuing the vocation of Christian historian (remember that conversation at Zaxby’s in Vidalia?). While friends and colleagues have come and gone over the years, you have remained my most constant conversation partner on the topics discussed in this book, as well as just about every other topic under the sun. Leah, you have been a blessing to me for every second since I first winked at you in the college cafeteria (everyone knows that wink is why you sat by me that day). I am the historian—and the man—I am today in large part because of you. This is not the first book I have written, nor is it the biggest, but it is the one that encapsulates the heart of my work as a historian more than any other. Thus, it only seems fitting that this book be dedicated to you.

INTRODUCTION: HISTORY AND THE CHRISTIAN WORLDVIEW

Most of all, perhaps, we need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion. A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village; the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age.1

C. S. Lewis

The words quoted above are taken from an address C. S. Lewis first gave in 1949. Lewis was a renowned scholar of medieval literature, a popular Christian apologist, and the author of the beloved Chronicles of Narnia series of children’s books. Though he was not a professional historian by training, as both a scholar and a Christian, Lewis understood the importance of the past. The past takes us places. The past provides needed perspective. The past keeps us humble. Lewis prized the past so much that he famously suggested that the reading of old books is preferable to the reading of new books. “It has always therefore been one of my main endeavours as a teacher,” Lewis writes, “to persuade the young that firsthand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than secondhand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire.”2 Any historian worth his or her salt would agree.

Unfortunately, not everyone would agree that knowledge of the past is valuable—or at least interesting. I have taught history courses for almost a decade to well over a thousand undergraduate students, seminary students, and research doctoral students. More than a few have informed me that they are not really that “in” to history. A few have even nodded off in class—doubtless a reflection of their lack of sleep rather than my abilities as a teacher! Truth told, I can remember a season in my life when history seemed less than appealing, though that changed my junior year of high school in an advanced placement United States history course taught by Coach Joe Haluski. At best, many people have a utilitarian view of history; they care to the degree they find history useful for the stuff that really matters in life. Almost everyone can quote at least a paraphrase of George Santayana’s famous quip, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”3

The purpose of this book is to provide an introduction to the discipline of history from the perspective of a Christian worldview that is shaped by the great tradition and is in dialog with other key voices in the field. In keeping with the purpose of the Reclaiming the Christian Intellectual Tradition series, I am writing primarily for an undergraduate audience, especially those who wish to major or minor in a field such as history or history education. However, I hope this book will also prove useful to graduate students, college professors, teachers, home educators, public historians, and even armchair historians—anyone who is interested in the study of the past. It is not intended as a comprehensive introduction to history. There are many important topics I discuss only in passing or even pass over completely such as historical fallacies and questions of causation, contingency, or counterfactuals.4 This book will be most useful if it is read as a companion volume to a standard introductory historical textbook that covers these topics and others in a more substantial manner.5

HISTORY AND CHRISTIANITY

History is important for several reasons. History is normally considered one of the core disciplines in a modern education. Furthermore, history is foundational to the other disciplines one might choose to study. Every discipline arose at a particular point in time, developed in particular contexts, and possesses a history unto itself. Any good English teacher, ethicist, philosopher, political scientist, musician, doctor, lawyer, pastor, or businessperson has some awareness of the history of his or her vocation. Students who aspire to become historians need to understand foundational issues such as the nature of history, different approaches to history, and the various ways the study of history benefits historians and others. Christian students in particular also need to understand how to address these topics from the perspective of a Christian worldview and how to engage the controversial issue of the relationship between one’s faith and the study of history.

Christians should be keenly interested in studying the past since the very truth of the Judeo-Christian tradition is dependent upon certain historical events. Some religious traditions are ahistorical; whether the events referenced in their sacred writings really happened has no effect on the religion. This is not true for the Christian religion, which is at its root a historical faith. Christianity is grounded in events that Christians believe were real, historical occurrences. For example, we believe that at particular points in history Abraham migrated from Ur to Palestine; Moses led the Israelites out of Egyptian slavery; David became the king of Israel; Isaiah and Jeremiah served as prophets; Jesus of Nazareth preached and was crucified; and Paul established churches all over the Roman Empire. Furthermore, Christians believe that the miracles described in the Scriptures are just as valid historically as the more mundane events recorded. In fact, the most important events in Scripture are the miraculous, especially the incarnation of Jesus Christ and his bodily resurrection from the dead. When Christians recite the Apostles’ Creed, they confess that Jesus “suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. He descended into hell. On the third day he rose again from the dead.”6 The truthfulness of Christianity depends upon the historical validity of the events recorded in the Bible.

Christianity is a historical faith. Yet, the Bible is much more than simply a historically rooted—and historically accurate—book. The Bible also provides Christians with a particular worldview that affects every aspect of our lives. According to Philip Ryken,

A worldview—or “world-and-life view,” as some people call it—is the structure of understanding that we use to make sense of our world. Our worldview is what we presuppose. It is our way of looking at life, our interpretation of the universe, our orientation to reality.7

As Albert Wolters rightly suggests, “everyone has a worldview, however inarticulate he or she may be in expressing it.”8 Your worldview provides the framework for how you answer life’s ultimate questions. Where did humanity come from? What is the meaning of life? Is there a God or gods who are in control of this world? Is there such a thing as right and wrong? Does life continue after death? Is knowledge even possible? As your worldview helps you answer these questions, it in turn influences everything about you, including all of your actions, attitudes, and priorities.

The Christian worldview is rooted in the story of God’s creation, humanity’s fall into sin, and the redemption accomplished through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ—what has been aptly called the true story of the whole world.9 It helps us to think rightly about God and live rightly before him. It gives shape to our worship, witness, and ethics. It provides the proper grid through which we should interpret all of life—including history. In chapter 3, we will elaborate on the Christian worldview and discuss some specific ways that it ought to inform a Christian approach to history.

THE GREAT COMMANDMENTS AND THE CHRISTIAN HISTORIAN

Within the broader story that makes up the Christian worldview, we find many motivations, priorities, and ethics that arise from the biblical narrative. Along those lines, the two “great commandments” represent a key biblical theme with particular importance for Christian historians. In Matthew 22:34–39, a lawyer asks Jesus’s opinion about the greatest commandment in God’s law. Jesus responds by giving two commandments that are closely related to each other. The greatest commandment is to love the Lord with all your heart, soul, and mind. The second is to love your neighbor as yourself. When all is said and done, the most important difference between a Christian historian and a non-Christian historian is primarily a matter of motivation. The great commandments speak directly to this point.

For the believing historian, historical inquiry—as with every other aspect of life—is ultimately an act of worship done for the Lord. Paul writes, “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31). This includes the study of history, which should always be to the Lord and for his glory, whether the subject is the history of Scotch Presbyterian immigrants in the Appalachian mountains or the history of agriculture in medieval Europe. Quality research that conforms to the highest standards in the historical profession brings glory to the God who alone is perfect and who is reflected in our own imperfect attempts at excellence.