Our judgments of value are characteristically dependent upon attitudes peculiar to our own place and time. If we universalize these attitudes, as though they were Platonic realities, and assume that they have a validity for all time, we turn history into a mirror.... And when this happens, history, although it may seem to flatter us with the consoling message "Thou art the fairest of all," becomes merely an instrument for the cultivation of our own prejudices.
The problem with Robertson is that he just made a value judgement "dependent upon attitudes peculiar to our own place and time." Just because our value judgements are historically conditioned does not mean that they are historically determined and therefore relative. Christians believe that God has revealed his value judgments through the books of nature and Scripture, and that we can know them, since we are made in his image.
Do we need to guard against turning history into a mirror of our own ideals and hatreds? Yes! How do we do this? Well, we can start by constantly checking our ideals and hatreds against Scripture which has universal "validity for all time." In this way, we can submit our judgment to God, so that "our' ideals and hatreds are actually God's and not a personal prejudice.
We can also be upfront about our worldview and admit that our interpretation of the universals can be off. Thus we invite others to evaluate our interpretations from their perspective, so that we can learn from each other in all humility. By balancing what is absolute with our finite and fallible understanding, we can also stand for something without being prideful and obnoxious. We can be firm and soft, instead of being squishy and self defeating. Cantor/Schneider go on:
Lord Acton ... took a somewhat different stand: he warned that it is the historians first duty "not to debase the moral currency." By this he meant that the historian must always point out what is good and what is evil in the actions of men in the past. But in order to do this justly, we must first establish what they actually did; and we must also have an understanding of what the men of a particular era in the past considered to be right and wrong (43).
We are moral beings who instinctively evaluate for right and wrong, but we can table our Christian perspective for a moment, while we do the historical task. Once we've understood someone or something on its own terms, then we can bring in the biblical perspective. If we perform the historical task first, we are able to perform the biblical task more faithfully, since it will be based on an accurate understanding. Before we critique we better understand what we're critiquing.
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