Table Of ContentGod,
History
and Historians
An Anthology
of Modern Christian Views of History
Edited by
C. T. McINTIRE
New York
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
COPYRIGHT© 1977 BY OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, INC.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
God, history, and historians.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. History (Theology)—Addresses, essays, lectures.
I. Mclntire, C. T.
BR115.H5G63 901 76-47428
isbn 0-19-502203-3
isbn 0-19-502204-1 pbk.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
PREFACE
I dreamed. I saw Saint Augustine alive as you or me.
—BOB DYLAN, 1968
A people without history is not redeemed from time, for history is
a pattern of timeless moments.
—t. s. ELIOT,
“Little Gidding,” 1942
^hristian views of history in the twentieth century.
since 1939_Ts thd theme of this vohTmu.oL&i^YS^s the
table of contents reveals, tHe^ntlrdfs are people of learning and
insight—historians, philosophers, theologians, and writers from
many Christian traditions. In their writings they take us to the
interdisciplinary terrain where religion, philosophy, and history
meet. The implications of what they show us reach into many
fields of study and everyday living.
The renewal began in the 1930’s and 1940’s as a response to a
series of rnnrmiripn(pl raiastrnphps and crises inaugurated hyrtie
-first wnrTri w£r~A new awareness of history~contributed to a re¬
thinking of theology, ethics, and the church. More generally, a
growing sense of the inadequacy of the secular and liberal beliefs
about history and human nature which dominated the civilization
stimulated a quest for alternative certainties. The authors of these
essays, for the most part, were among those who found a satisfying
alternative in Christian views of history in the lineage of the bibli¬
cal prophets, Paul, and Augustine. The crises of the age induced
others to follow different avenues. Some thinkers have turned out¬
side western civilization to Buddhism, Taoism, or other Oriental
religions. A few looked to the pagan or classical roots of our cul¬
ture. Many more have found a revitalized Marxist view of history
and human nature appealing, while others have placed their hopes
in conservatism.
The renewal of Christian views has continued through the
1960’s and 1970’s as many writers have used their understanding
PREFACE
of history to illuminate some basic issues of theology and her¬
meneutics, revolution and social change, philosophy of history,
culture, and historiography.
There was a day when Christian views of history prevailed in
western civilization. Saint Augustine, that fifth-century Christian
bishop of the unlikely place called Hippo, now vanished in North
Africa, left his legacy in a Christian vision of human destiny which
was worked into the very structure of the whole civilization. Simul¬
taneously there developed a Christian historiography which ran
through Bede, Dante, Bodin, Bossuet, and Acton.
Sometime, probably during the nineteenth century, Christian
views of history lost their privileged position as the civilization un¬
derwent a radical and pervasive secularization. In general culture,
by the 1920’s, a secular idea of history as progress, especially as
measured by capitalist economic growth and liberal political
achievement, became preeminent in North America and western
Europe. In historiography, the secularization begun by Maehia-
velli, Voltaire, and Gibbon came, via rationalism, positivism, and
historicism in the nineteenth century, to dominate the field in the
twentieth.
The regeneration of Christian views of history in our time dem¬
onstrates the belief of these authors that a Christian perspective
possesses ongoing validity in a secular age. The renewal reestab¬
lishes a bond with an ancient tradition while it develops entirely
fresh insights germane to the new circumstances of contemporary
history. Through all their diversity and disagreement the writers of
these essays offer to us discoveries which are beneficial to theol¬
ogy, philosophy, and history, and perhaps even more generally to
our secular culture.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The theme and major theses which I put forward in this volume of
essays derive from my work in the seminar in philosophy of history
and historiography at the Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto. I
wish especially to thank the participants in the seminar since 1973
for their involvement. To my co-workers at the Institute for Chris¬
tian Studies since 1973, the Senior and Junior Members and sup¬
porting staffs, who provide a creative community in which to teach
and research, I thankfully dedicate this volume.
I am very grateful for invaluable comments and leads from a
number of people who kindly read my introductory essay and
looked at the table of contents—Herbert Butterfield, Martin E.
Marty, Hendrikus Berkhof, George Marsden, Albert F. Gedraitis,
and A1 Wolters. Professor Marty gave some very special support to
the project for which I am particularly thankful. Robert Swierenga
suggested one of the selections, and W. Stanford Reid gave helpful
criticism. Various staff members of the libraries of the University
of Toronto made the work go easily. Mary Carolyn Kennedy Mcln-
tire shared in every aspect of the work from beginning to end, and
I am deeply thankful and indebted to her for it.
C. T. Mclntire
Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto
CONTENTS
c. t. mcintire, Introduction
The Renewal of Christian Views of History
in an Age of Catastrophe 3
I
THE MEANING OF HISTORY
CHRISTOPHER DAWSON
The Christian View of History 28
KENNETH SCOTT LATOURETTE
The Christian Understanding of History 46
REINHOLD NIEBUHR
The Foolishness of the Cross and the Sense of History 68
EMIL BRUNNER
The Problem of Time 81
RUDOLF BULTMANN
Christian Faith and History 97
WOLFHART PANNENBERG
Revelation As History 112
GUSTAVO GUTIERREZ
History Is One 133
PAUL TILLICH
History and the Kingdom of God 157
ARNOLD TOYNBEE
The Christian Understanding of History 176
CONTENTS
II
THE NATURE OF HISTORY AND CULTURE
HERBERT BUTTERFIELD
God in History 192
KARL BARTH
The Christian Belief in Providence 205
c. s. LEWIS
Historicism 224
JACQUES MARITAIN
Laws in the Historical Development of Mankind 239
HERMAN DOOYEWEERD
History and Cultural Development 261
t. s. ELIOT
Cultural Forces in the Human Order 273
WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES
God in Nature and History 291
III
HISTORIANS AND HISTORICAL STUDY
E. HARRIS HARBISON
The Marks of a Christian Historian 330
HERBERT BUTTERFIELD
Historical Scholarship and Its Relation to Life 357
ARTHUR S. LINK
The Historian’s Vocation 373
HENRI-IREN EE MARROU
History and the Historian Are Inseparable 390
GEORGES FLOROVSKY
The Predicament of the Christian Historian 406
ERIC COCHRANE
What Is Catholic Historiography? 443
Bibliography 466
Index 473
GOD,
HISTORY,
AND HISTORIANS
C. T MclNTIRE
Introduction
THE RENEWAL OF
CHRISTIAN VIEWS OF HISTORY
IN AN AGE OF CATASTROPHE
Christianity and History
While Hitler annexed Czechoslovakia in the spring of 1939 and
then invaded Poland in the fall, Reinhold Niebuhr delivered his
Gifford Lectures in Scotland on the nature and destiny of man.
Niebuhr recorded his sense of the monumentality of these events
in a diary partially serialized in The Christian Century.1 His lec¬
tures possessed a timeliness that created a sensation among his
hearers. Making use of Augustine and the Bible he challenged the
prevailing views of human nature and history and declared them
failures before the experience of contemporary history.
He reworked the lectures as the war unfolded. In 1943 he
published the ones on history as volume two of The Nature and
Destiny of Man, with the subtitle, Human Destiny. “The belief
that informs these pages,” he wrote in January 1943, “is that the
Christian faith represents deeper sources of power for the fulfill¬
ment of life than has been assumed in the main currents of mod¬
ern culture.” 2
Niebuhr’s lectures mark a beginning point in what has be-
4 C. T. McINTIRE
come a widespread renewal of interest in a Christian view of his¬
tory.3 During the late 1940’s book after book and article after ar¬
ticle by a diverse set of authors appeared on the theme of
Christianity and history.4
Professor E. Harris Harbison of Princeton University com¬
mented on this phenomenon in December 1951 at the meeting of
the American Historical Association in New York. In a paper on
“The ‘meaning of history’ and the writing of history,” he said he
believed there was “a kind of Augustinian revival of interest in the
meaning of history.” Its proponents included theologians and phi¬
losophers, and it had begun to influence even the writing of his¬
tory by historians.5
In a book review published in the first issue of History and
Theory, in 1960, Harbison expressed his appreciation of the
number and the creativity of the publications on Christianity and
history which continued to appear. He wrote.
Whether these works mark the swansong of an expiring Welt¬
anschauung, or whether they herald a vigorous Renaissance of
Christian thought it is perhaps too early to tell. But it is already clear
that it is no mere revival of the conception of history which domi¬
nated Western thinking from Augustine to Bossuet.
His own essays on the subject were collected posthumously in
1964 under the title Christianity and History.6
The renewal of a Christian view of history about which Har¬
bison wrote, and which continued into the 1970’s, acquired the
proportions of a major movement of contemporary thought. The
main contributors to it are represented in this anthology. They
include notable historians—Butterfield, Dawson, Link, Cochrane,
Marrou, Toynbee, Florovsky, Latourette, Harbison—as well as
some of the most creative Christian theologians, philosophers, and
writers of our time—Niebuhr, Tillich, Barth, Bultmann, Pannen-
berg, Berkhof,7 Gutierrez, Maritain, Dooyeweerd, C. S. Lewis,
T. S. Eliot. They come from Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox tra¬
ditions. The Protestants are Methodist, Anglican, Reformed, Lu¬
theran, Baptist, Evangelical. They have lived and worked in the
United States, Great Britain, France, Switzerland, Germany, The
Netherlands, Canada, and Peru, and their influence has extended
to many other countries. Most have had something to do with the
