History is An Attitude
by Robert Barnes, MDiv., helpful and insightful friend

Most Christians have a built-in appreciation for history, for the Bible is fundamentally a history book. As Christians, our worldview and all that flows out of it is founded upon our understanding and suitable application of history. Unlike other religions, that treat history as a myth to be parsed from our own experience, Christianity demands we take history seriously.

G. K. Chesterton wrote an important book to aid in the study of history called The Everlasting Man. He points out that contrary to the wife- beating, neandrathalic sub-human image of ancient man peddled by practically every magazine and book in print is the evidence showing that ancient man was very civilized, artistic, loving, and showed amazing skills at propagating the race. His book is a good example of what it means to apply Christian, critical thinking to the subject of history. I commend it to you, especially the first few chapters, as a precursor to your own investigation of history.

The goal in approaching history is to know and understand it. In most disciplines, one's motivation toward a task plays an important part in the final product. For instance, if your goal in taking up jogging is to stop feeling guilty for being overweight, I doubt your time in the two-mile will be anything to brag about. The study of history is no different. If your goal is to stop feeling guilty for not reading more history, you will have little taste for the work necessary to meet your goal.

Winston Churchill said, "To test the present you must appeal to history." This sensible reasoning has been turned backwards by most pundits, who test the veracity of history by the need of the moment. History becomes a puppet on a string that prances to whatever political or religious beat is popular. Professional historians are no better in their use of history, with an increasing intellectual agnosticism making history seem more and more dim. This agnosticism affected the influential Karl Barth, leaving the Protestant church infected with his troubling dialectical views of history and religion. "Gee, thanks."

We can understand why the pundit would treat history like Gumby. They have an interest in developing a line of evidence to show that their favorite person is in a fine, historically verified tradition. But why does the historian do so? This makes all the sense of a theologian or pastor gutting his religion of the supernatural. Oh, I forgot, they do that all the time.

As Herbert Bufferfield said, 'What history does is to uncover man's universal sin. " There is no doctrine that is so attested to by such a magnificent preponderance of evidence than is the doctrine of original sin. Saint and sinner alike, while having a need to understand history, will purposefully obscure what certitude we have of historical actions so as to avoid the overwhelming evidence against them and their kind. This one and other reasons like it have a way of blunting the zeal of those who would study and understand (two very different things, by the way) history.

Having said this, how do you study history? My presupposition is we must seek out a multitude of voices. History is a precious gem, which, if we are to understand it, must be seen from different angles. "The winner writes the history" is a jaded, but true statement. No one source is sufficient, and the writer of that source would be the first to tell you this. A good example of an over-dependence on one source is the current rage over Flavius Josephus' works. Preterists of all flavors have used his works as an external proof of their belief that many or all the New Testament prophecies were fulfilled around the events of AD 70. While Josephus is a decent historian by 1st century standards, he is just one man. As his works are forced to bear the incredible weight that some Preterists have put on his testimony of the events of AD 70, the faults and cracks in his work are quickly revealed. It only highlights the importance of having multiple sources, multiple perspectives, as we try to understand and verify the events of the past.

This leads me to my first practical point, which is that a study of history must be based on a study of actual history, not someone else's retelling of history. You must read primary sources. Taking ancient Greece as an example, read (in this order) Plutarch, starting with his work Parallel Lives. Read Herodotus' history, that covers the history of the world up to the 5th century BC (Oxford University Press, 1998 is the recommended edition). Then pick up the events surrounding the Peloponnesian War with Thucydides' work, published by Free Press, 1996, edited by Robert Strassler. Xenophon's Hellenica continues at this point, taking us up to the 4th century. Arrian describes the next point in Greek culture, the reign of Alexander the Great, in his work Anabasus of Alexander. These authors have enough overlap to provide perspective, yet they focus on a time in history that is critical to our understanding of the rest of history. What happened in ancient Greece and in the next world power, Rome, is the bedrock of our Western history. I advise you to focus on this period for the next few years and you will reap a harvest many times what you have sown.

What if you want to get the big picture? Chris Schlect, not a noted historian by any means, but more knowledgeable than I, suggests Western Civilization by Jackson Spielvogel (3rd ed., West Publishing, ISBN 0314096744) or The Western Heritage by Kagan, Ozment, and Turner (6th ed., Prentiss Hall, ISBN: 0136173837). Buy the big, hardback version if you can, as they get Mr. Schlect's nod for being the better value. Both will cost you $70-80 new, $20-40 used.

You may say, 'Gosh, Robert, that's a lot of books to buy. I found this great CD-ROM that has all the great histories of the universe on them for $129.99. I'll get that and just search through all the histories whenever I need information. And I've got the Internet, too!'

Sigh. I am king of the CD-ROM, but I must warn you to avoid this temptation. CD-ROM's and other search tools do to the study of history what giving a calculator to a first-grader does to the study of mathematics. You must read to have understanding. The ability to access data is good, but it is a cheap grace. Wisdom comes through reading, and with our current technology, reading is best done with books, not from a computer screen. To understand history is more than reading a big book on a certain period, but it is certainly no less.