A Wilberforce to Be Reckoned With

Amazing Grace by Eric Metaxas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Wilberforce is the embodiment of Chesterton's quip, "The only thing to be done with the ideal is to do it." Wilberforce and his group not only brought slavery to an end in the British empire but also re-christianized Britain with their reformation of manners.

Manners here refers to how man relates to his fellow man. Britain was so barbaric at the time it's hard to imagine that the Victorian Age was coming. The Victorians had their excesses to but it was an incredible improvement over the barbarism of the gladiatorial-esque cruelty to animals, prostitution, and incivility in the streets. By advancing his Christian worldview Wilberforce liberated Britain from Enlightenment racism and paganism.

My only criticism is that the book is short on critique of Wilberforce though there are a few. He comes off as a can-do-no-wrong-hero. Even heroes have their flaws and he would be even more believable if we knew more about them. The book is well written, truly inspirational, and all the more moving because the story is true.


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Don't Bow Before Reputation

G. R. Evans is a well respected Medievalist, who wrote a book about the roots of the Reformation. Her work was endorsed by some of the best in the biz, who now probably wish they would have read as closely Carl Trueman. Trueman's review was so devastating that IVP has pulled the  book and will re-release it after a major clean up.

There are at least three lessons in this:

1. History writing requires exacting attention to detail.
2. You need an editor who doesn't take your word for it or bow before your reputation.
3. A book you haven't read don't endorse, or it may end in remorse.

See the review here
or copy and paste this into your browser:
http://www.reformation21.org/articles/you-cannot-judge-this-book-by-its-cover-a-review.php

A Parable of Bulverism

I'm going to riff off of Douglas Wilson riffing off of C. S. Lewis.

Bulverism, as Lewis defined it, is dodging your opponent's argument by psychologizing him. Your treat him like a psychological patient who needs your evaluation to explain why he came up with such a ridiculous argument in the first place.

So what was his inferior state of mind that produced the silly argument? Hmmmm.... Let's see (says the faculty at Enlightenment U). He's obviously so weak he needs a crutch. So he invents a God to help him through life.  

No! Wait (says Freud)! He misses his papa, so he invents a heavenly father to hold his hand every step of the way.  

No! Here it is. He doesn't live up to his goals so he projects a perfect image of himself into the sky and calls it God. Yeah! Yeah!  

Wait, (says the patient) but how do you explain the incarnation Feuerbach?  

Oh that's easy (says the philosopher). You see that projection got a little intimidating after awhile, so man just brought it back down to earth in the form of Jesus, so he could pat his God on the head and say "There, there. Your not so scary. You love me so much you're going to die and rise again to save me." 

Now let's all go to bed and rise tomorrow to live wiser lives (says the Lady of the Green Kirtle). 

What about Thomas's Five Ways (says the patient)? 

Oh, don't you know that philosophers have pointed for years out that those arguments don't really prove anything scientifically. Thomas' only use now is on my couch. That will explain everything.  

But aren't there grave difficulties in psychoanalyzing the dead (says Roland Bainton the perfectly sane historian)? 

No, not when they really need you (says the faculty of Enlightenment U in their most updated accent).

Debating Instead of Demonizing

Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation by Joseph J. Ellis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Founding Brothers by Joseph Ellis is lively, well-written book, which argues that the founders succeeded not because they liked each other or got along, most of the time they didn't, but because they resolved their differences by doing politics face to face.

Ellis writes in vivid images and analogies but is sometimes too wordy for his own good. For instance, Ellis demonstrates that Adams wanted, in modern terms, to "deconstruct" all romanticized accounts of the founding. But this is because Adams thought the historians of his day didn't do justice to the greatness of his own contribution. Ellis writes: "At its nub, his [Adam's] critique of the historical fictions circulating as seductive truths was much like a campaign to smash all the statures, because the sculptor had failed to render a satisfactory likeness of yours truly" (217). What a vivid and memorable sentence, but could've been more effective if shortened into a  punch.

Ellis goes on to show just how much the ambitious Adams wanted to be the central figure of the American pantheon of heroes. When Adams was hidden between the lines given to Washington and Jefferson, he wanted to grab the pages of history and start shredding. Privately he mocked Washington for his lack of classical education and once referred to him (though not cited in Ellis) as "old mutton head." Ellis says Washington read mostly newspapers.

Adams was almost post modern in wanting to show that reality defies neat dissection into good guys sporting white hats and bad guys in black hats. He especially wanted to expose Jefferson's betrayals of the Adam's administration. He also wanted to vindicate himself to his critics showing, among other things, that he was responsible for averting war with France in 1800 and not interested in creating an Adam's dynasty by passing on the presidency to John Quincy.

Ellis shows that Adams was jealous of Jefferson because the July 4th Declaration of Independence came to be seen as the defining moment of the new nation. Instead, Adams pointed to the debates in Congress that made that declaration possible. It turns out that Jefferson hadn't participate in those debates, shy as he was, but Adams held forth there and won the day when, on MAY 15, 1776, "Congress passed a resolution calling for new constitutions in each of the states" (242-43).

This was definitive, Adams thought, because the states were creating "separate and independent American governments" and thus breaking with their British Charters. This was the true and original declaration of independence. He looked back on Jefferson's writing of the Declaration as a historical accident that occurred because Adams himself deferred to his junior partner in order to give him something to do. Why couldn't people like his historian friend Mercy Otis Watson see John Adams as the ultimate American hero that he was?  

Ellis also argues that historians do their best work when they realize that history doesn't look inevitable at the moment when it was happening. Historians must give uncertainty back to the actors in the historical moment, while also considering the outcomes from the modern vantage point. He writes: "We need a historical perspective that frames the issues with one eye on the precarious contingencies felt at the time, while the other eye looks forward to the more expansive consequences perceived dimly, if at all, by those trapped in the moment. We need, in effect, to be nearsighted and farsighted at the same time" (6-7). Ellis is the master of using alliteration like "contingencies" and "consequences," which stick in the mind. He is the truly rare combination of a competent historian and clear writer. He proves his thesis in spades showing how the founding fathers were indeed brothers who succeeded not because they didn't clash, but because they looked at each other across the table of creative compromise.

Unfortunately, many of the compromises, like the three-fifths compromise, just prolonged the debate until the slave question erupted into civil war. The founding fathers also feuded over whether federal or state power had ultimate sovereignty. This too was finally settled by civil war, and yet the debate goes on in the fallout over how much federal power should be wielded over states, private individuals, and corporations.

In terms of feuding fathers, one squabble went out with a bang, but Ellis argues that the Burr-Hamilton duel was an anomaly. Most quarrels were settled like the Hamilton-Madison argument over whether the federal government should shoulder the burden of state debts after the Revolution. Hamilton, the federalist of federalists, wanted the government to assume this responsibility for the states it was going to rule. Madison feared this would make the states dependent upon and thus subservient to federal power. Jefferson invited the two disputants to dinner, where Madison promised not to make it a hill to die on as long as the future capitol would reside in Virginia. Jefferson and Adams feuded over Jefferson's role in paying a newspaper to print libels against Adams when they were serving together as President and Vice President. Adams had some newspaper men thrown in prison under his controversial "Alien and Sedition Acts" and probably wished he could do the same to his VP. But even this row resolved itself as the two "explained" themselves to each other through statesman like correspondence in their twilight years.

It was the Founders way to feud, and then work it out after "looking each other in the eye." The founders successfully created a new nation because they talked, broke bread together, and lived cooperatively. They would probably be amazed that their union is still together and using their legacy to debate the same issues. But today's political wars tend to be fought on the impersonal battle fields of cyber space and the air waves. Could we accomplish more by settling our differences in community, instead of demonizing each other to our constituents in the partisan media outlets or over twitter or facebook? I think Ellis's Founding Brothers suggests we could.


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Did Peace in 1919 Lead to War in 1939?

Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Good read about the wrap up of WWI. MacMillan tries to revise the accepted wisdom that the Allies botched the peace, which lead directly to the second world war. It's true that Hitler would play to the German people's wounded pride and resentment after the war. It came to be known as the "Dictat" or "dictated peace." The Germans especially hated the "war guilt clause" of article 231, which laid all responsibility for the war at the doorstep of German "aggression."  Ulrich Brockdorff-Rantzau blew up and refused to sign the Treaty of Versailles. When the allies rearmed, the Germans sent two representatives to pen their names to the treaty. Did this lead directly to WWII? MacMillan says this is too simplistic.

MacMillian argues that the Germans deceived themselves into thinking that they hadn't lost the war. MacMillan points out that it wasn't a mere armistice or cease fire. The Germans gave up all occupied lands and surrendered their navy. The Germans also allowed themselves to believe that Woodrow Wilson could deliver a non-punitive peace. Germany had taken Wilson's advice and become a republic. But Wilson was one of four on the supreme council, and he had to compromise to get anywhere. David Lloyd George, prime-minister of England, and Georges Clemanceau, prime-minister of France, were out for reparations, revenge, and security. Their people had lost more than America, and they stood to lose more in future elections. They convinced Wilson to shrink Germany and give the rhineland to France as a neutral zone. Wilson would compromise as long as he could get the League of Nations. Meanwhile the league was loosing ground in the US, and Wilson's own country would never join.

Lloyd George did change his mind about some of the reparations. "Treat them like the enemy and they won't disappoint." But Wilson had already reached his compromise limit. The treaty would have to stand as is. John Maynard Keynes famously said, "It was harder to de-bamboozle this old Presbyterian than it had been to bamboozle him.” Keynes wanted to rehabilitate Germany economically. A prosperous Germany would be a peaceful Germany.

The big four were more realistic than they've been given credit for. Lloyd George said: "The English public like the French public, thinks the Germans must above all acknowledge their obligation to compensate us for all the consequences of their aggression. When this is done we come to the question of Germany's capacity to pay; we all think she will be unable to pay more than this document requires of her."

MacMillan argues that the German sense of betrayal cannot account for the rise of Nazi Germany. Prior to the Great Depression, the German people wouldn't give the Hitler the time of day. He was too radical. Once they hit rock bottom, radical solutions were given a hearing and Hitler got his chance. MacMillan can write well and she shows how so much of modern history, including the formation of Iraq, goes back to Paris 1919.


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Blue Empires

I've been grading a lot of papers recently about the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and it seems to me that the empire was not on the brink of social, moral, or spiritual collapse. Edward Gibbon had argued that Christianity had contributed to an otherworldliness that made the Romans militarily and economically absentminded.

The Christian Emperor Constantine however had been a life long soldier and was anything but lax militarily. He brought in a pax Romana of prosperity that rivaled that of Caesar Augustus. Peter Heather points out that the Eastern side was even more permeated with Christianity, and Constantinople thrived until the Ottoman conquest in 1453. If anything, Christianity prolonged the existence of the Western empire and then resurrected it in 800 under Charlemagne. Blood-sports did continue despite Constantine's ban. But at least such spectacle was disapproved of by the leader and the growing Christian population, who made up only about 10% of the empire at the beginning of Constantine's reign in 406.

Rome and the Western Empire fell for a myriad of reasons, which all led to a weakening of the military in the face of ever more powerful barbarian tribes who had Attila the Hun breathing down their necks. While Christianity counter-acted social factors the damage had been done and the Barbarians would not be stopped.

Romans had become self-absorbed and were no longer replacing themselves with children. Rodney Stark, in The Rise of Christianity and The Victory of Reason, documents how large families came to be seen as too costly to people's careers of political advancement and self-indulgent lifestyles (See also Peter Leithart's Defending Constantine). This despite Caesar Augustus giving tax breaks to those who made the sacrifice of bringing more than two natural born Roman citizens into the world.

Depopulation, while again counter-acted by large Christian families, left a void that the Barbarians began to fill in the fourth century, when they were hired to fight in the Roman military. This created a conflict of interest however, because barbarians sometimes found themselves fighting against their own tribes who were trying to migrate into Roman territory. Heather says that the Romans created their own conquerors by enriching them through trade and equipping them with military knowledge. It doesn't take long for the enemy to notice the hand your playing and learn to play at the same game. The weakened Romans didn't know how to counter their own military strategies and weapons when used against them.

Rome had expanded through a plunder economy which eventually ran out once the empire was so bloated it was about to pop. When they needed more money they started minting more coins. When the gold and silver started running out, they coated cheaper metals which led to hyper-inflation. The now near-sighted Romans, instead of investing in finding more mines, started hyper-taxing the provinces. When the provincials couldn't pay, the empire forced the wealthy provincials to make up the short-fall.

All this led to disgruntled population defended by an under-funded military trying to protect an over-expanded empire. Once the contractions started, the barbarians gained momentum and the rest is history: Alaric in 410, Vandals in 455, and the Foederati in 476. By the end, there was no more Western empire to occupy, and so the new barbarian ruler was given a title under the Eastern Emperor in Constantinople.    

Makes one wonder what will happen to the American Empire? At least the blue sections.

Mosaic

I've been grading a lot of position papers recently on the authorship of the Pentateuch (first five books of the Old Testament). It seems that the argument for Mosaic authorship runs thus:

The "giving" of the contents of the Pentateuch is associated with Moses, who is also described as writing specific sections. It seems likely that he would have written all of it given his education in Egypt, previous access to ancient sources, his being an eye-witness of most of the events, and a prophet who received special revelation from God. This is supported by testimony from the rest of the Old Testament and New Testament that attributes "the law," the traditional way of referring to the Pentateuch, to Moses.

Perilous Navigation

David McCullough:

History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.

The Not So Slippery Greece

Ancient Greece: From Prehistoric to Hellenistic Times by Thomas R. Martin

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Solid overview but with no substantial thesis. Martin focuses on the plight of the common man, women, and slaves whose existence changed little from down through the ages. Martin documents it as "nasty, brutish, and short" no matter the period: prehistoric, classical, or hellenistic.

The prose is accessible though not not especially memorable. Discussions are informative with a few quotes from the primary sources but more would've been welcome. The arts are given a fair shake as well as the philosophers. The dramatic changes in society via Themisticles, Pericles, etc. are understated and it comes across a little lifeless. On the positive side, Martin is clear, generally concise, and great for giving the reader the big picture. It filled in a lot of gaps for me while leaving me disappointed that the glorious moments seemed a little "ho-hum."

My main criticism is that author's personality seems to hide beneath a veneer of objectivity when he could've revealed it by arguing various theses or points of view. This approach usually makes for more interesting reading than the objective approach. I would rather an author take a position and try to be fair to his opponents than be dull and uninteresting by trying to "appear" objective.

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Whose Freedom?

Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James M. McPherson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

McPherson is excellent at capturing the drama of the war, the execution of the general's strategies, the personalities that animate the history, as well as the political and moral issues at stake. It is truly a tour de force.

His basic theses is that both sides were crying freedom. The South wanted freedom from Northern tyranny, but they were also fighting to maintain slavery. The North sought to preserve the union and the abolitionist cause came increasingly to the fore as Lincoln's views progressed. The slaves cry for freedom was the most profound.

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Twentieth Century Europe

Twentieth-Century Europe: A Brief History by Michael D. Richards

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A concise, well written overview of Twentieth Century Europe's changing political and worldview landscape. The prose lacks vivid, lived body detail and is often less than memorable. The lack of flare is more obvious in the political and social history sections, while the worldview chapters tend to be stronger. More primary source quotations would've enhanced a basically solid treatment.

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Why Limit History to "What" and "How"?

Historians' Fallacies : Toward a Logic of Historical Thought by David Hackett Fischer

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Great critical thinking when it comes to historiography. The logic chopping is a little pedantic at times but the overall affect is greater clarity on how to reach responsible historical conclusions. I paraphrase Fischer's method in the following way:

The goal of the historian is a self-aware subjectivity

that seeks to see things as they are objectively,

by stating a problem

and seeking empirical solutions

through posing questions

that fit the subject.

His treatment of the fallacies of causation and misleading questions are especially good.

The problem however is that Fischer thinks historians should spend all their time answering "what" and "how" questions and avoid trying to answer "why" questions. Now "why" would he say that? Well he tells us. He says that the "why" questions deal with metaphysical issues that yield no fruitful or definitive results . Even if that is true, and I don't believe it is, the metaphysical questions are still the most interesting to beings who can't be reduced to the physical realm. Let me acknowledge that I do agree that there is a metaphysical fallacy, but it consists of abusing metaphysical questions not excluding them from the outset.

I don't believe that Fishcer's scientific "what-and-how-only-approach" is much better at producing certainty either. For instance, "what" kind of document is the Constitution of the United States and "how" did it come to be? Well, some say that it is primarily influenced by British Capitalism ("the pursuit of happiness"), others that its primarily influenced by French ideas of equality ("all men are created equal") , others that the classical idea of a well informed, upstanding citizenry is the primary influence ("the consent of the governed"), others say Christianity and the Puritan moral vision is still calling the shots ("endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights"). To complicate matters there are those who argue that the Constitution is a betrayal of the Declaration of Independence and others that it is basically faithful to it and still others who believe that it is an almost pure extension of its values.

"How" did it come into its final form is tricky as well, since fifty-five delegates operated behind closed doors and were hopelessly divided between two factions of independently minded men like Madison and Hamilton on one side and Sam Adams and Patrick Henry on the other with guys like Washington caught in the middle. To make this even more confusing, some think that Madison caved to the anti-federalists by drawing up the Bill of Rights and others that he was tossing them some hushpuppies to shut their mouths so that the Constitution would pass.

I also hope that this makes it clear that you may distinguish the "why" from the "what" and "how" and even "who" questions, but you will never separate it from those topics. What God has joined together, let no man, even a respectable historian, put asunder.

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Scandalizing the Scandal

The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind by Mark A. Noll

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Puritans who settled Massachusetts combined heart-felt devotion to Christ with a love of theology. They practiced a vigorous intellectual life centered on the Bible and embraced cutting edge science like inoculation against disease. By the time of the First Great Awakening however, this tradition had degenerated into a formal and lifeless orthodoxy. Noll argues that during the First Great Awakening evangelicals like George Whitfield tried to revive the church with biblical preaching and a theatrical style that appealed to the masses and called for an emotional response.

Whitfield unwittingly contributed to the anti-intellectualism of the time and promoted an anti-institutional Christianity that would abandon the intellectual centers of the culture. This "biblical democratism" meant that the Bible does not belong to me as part of a historical community known as the church, but it belongs to me as an individual. For most evangelicals the Bible became a book dropped from the sky for self-help purposes (97). Jonathan Edwards resisted the anti-intellectual tendencies of experience based revivalism, but evangelicals continued to abandon the life of the mind and have been paying the price in academic credibility ever since.

Noll cites creation science as exhibit A, because it fails to allow the book of nature to help us interpret the book of Scripture. Charles Hodge and B. B. Warfield were better in this regard than evangelicals who seem to think it's a virtue to abandon cutting edge scientific research to unbelievers and fight for a twenty-four hour creation days (which is not even the historical position of church fathers like St. Augustine). The abandonment of the front lines of research is one reason why evangelicals haven't developed any major research universities.

Where evangelicals did try to maintain intellectual credibility, they articulated Christian truth in the secular, rationalistic, and mechanistic language of the Enlightenment. This was a cultural accommodation that tempted the church give up the home field advantage it enjoyed during most of Western civilization. Noll calls Witherspoon, Hodge, and Warfield to account for making revelation dependent on reason for its plausibility.

In concert with the Enlightenment marginalizing Christian faith to the private sphere, Noll points out how dispensationalism, the holiness movement, and Pentecostalism compounded the scandal by putting forth a Christianity that turns the things of earth “strangely dim.” No one polishes the brass on a sinking ship, as they say. Noll reminds us that what is distinctive about American Christianity is not necessarily essential to the gospel. Thus evangelicals need to rediscover history.

Noll also points out that evangelicals have preserved the one thing that can revitalize the Christian mind--the gospel. Thus Noll is still a fan of his own tradition, and he calls evangelicals to scandalize the scandal by reentering the intellectual centers of cultural without compromising the gospel and the authorty of biblical revelation. This means reaffirming that since God is the author of both Scripture and nature the two books interpret each other as we press on. Noll also promotes a Reformation theology that embraces a comprehensive view of the world that affirms the goodness of creation and the need to redeem it with Christian action.

Since Noll published Scandal in 1994, evangelicals have continued to rediscover history and press forward with scientific research in intelligent design and the human genome project ( a la Francis Collins who doesn't seem to be a fan of Intelligent Design, :(). But much of the church growth movement continues to play to our radical individualism with its focus on self-help and personal success. Evangelical Christians still need to be challenged by Noll to scandalize the scandal.

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Machen is the Man!

Toward a Sure Faith: J. Gresham Machen and the Dilemma of Biblical Criticism, 1881-1915 by Terry A. Chrisope


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Well written and insightful account of Machen's struggle with doubt posed by historicism and higher criticism of the Bible. Chrisope deftly tracks Machen's development as a historian and New Testament scholar, showing that Machen resolved his doubt by honest grappling with history and the Bible's truth claims. Machen worked through his questions while teaching at Princeton and founding Westminster Theological Seminary.

Machen came to the conclusion that higher criticism proceeded from the anti-supernatural bias of the Enlightenment. This bias does not arise from the text or its historical context and inevitably warps biblical interpretation. This is because historicism reduces history to naturalistic causes and cannot adequately deal with the historical truth claims of the Bible.

Paul said if Christ is not raised then our faith is in vain. This claim was falsifiable. The fact that the church still exists can only be explained by the fact that no one could disprove the Christians. Machen exposed historicism as a modern idol and clung to the Faith that had called him to faith.

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Review Essay of That Noble Dream: The Objectivity Question and the American Historical Profession

That Noble Dream: The 'Objectivity Question' and the American Historical Profession by Peter Novick

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Novick gives a fantastic analysis of the changing views on the questions of objectivity and subjectivity in American historiography. How Novick, a European historian, could write so comprehensively and with such depth and for almost 650 pages is amazing.

He is admittedly a historicist, which, he says, "means simply that ... thinking about anything in the past is primarily shaped by my understanding of its role within a particular historical context, and in the stream of history" (7). I was glad to hear him define it that way, because historicism usually means that history is to be explained solely in terms of naturalistic historical causation, which is a sophisticated way of saying that the historian has an anti-supernatural bias. But that doesn't come into play so much on the question of what American historians think about the "objectivity question."

Novick begins with the original objectivity project of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when historians thought they were following Leopold von Ranke's dictum of telling history "wie es eigentlich gewesen" (as it really was). Turns out that Ranke wasn't a pure objectivist who was only trying to be empirically faithful to his sources. Ranke meant telling history not so much as it "really" was but as it "essentially" (eigentlich) was. This meant that through history we access the essences of things, which is more a Romantic than scientific view.

Regardless, the pure objectivist school thought that the purpose of historiography was the scinetific sel-elimination of the historian from the task of researching and presenting history. The historian went into the library the way the scientist enters the laboratory. He collected the facts, which spoke through the historian who was merely a kind of secretary taking dictation. Studies would proceed until all texts and artifacts would have interpreted themselves and historians would have put themselves out of a job. Hard to believe, but Novick painstaking documents it.

Then come the new historians: Fredrick Jackson Turner, Carl Becker, and Charles Beard, whose work spanned pre and post WWI. They hit a nerve when they pointed out that WWI exposed the fact that the Enlightenment "victory of Reason" didn't happen. They also revealed that, far from being objective, most historians had been involved in WWI propaganda, pretending that the allies were good little boys on the way to Sunday school when the evil German bullies picked a fight.

Becker and Beard made it impossible for historians to to go back to their pre-war confidence in objectivity. Then came the expansion of professional history, where objectivity was a function of academic Ph.D. programs, whose graduates went on to work for the Allies of World War II. Once again, American historians aligned themselves with their national power, which didn't encourage their critical faculties. Speaking the truth to power only meant providing sobering military intelligence and lessons from the past, not necessarily telling the truth to power about power. In other words, historians knew who buttered their bread. After the war, historians tended to succumb to the temptation to justify Allied actions, which sometimes meant concealing the whole story or unrealistic appraisals of FDR and Churchill. The new objectivity was not about personal detachment but about being on the right side--the side of the West which now included America. This is also when the Western-Civ class was born.

Novick points out that Christian historians like Kenneth Scott Latourette acknowledged their Christian view of history and defended it as superior to naturalistic and relativistic notions from historicism. Novick points out that they were better than most who tried to keep their ideological commitments a secret. This was also the age of purportedly objective journalism, which Novick explodes with admissions from the journalists themselves.

Other historians, like Karl Popper and Richard Hofstader, abandoned old objectivist notions of "detachment" and "self-elimination" for much more honest "self-examination" and "historical complexity." They argued that historiography was objective and scientific in so far as its claims were falsifiable, positing a kind of "normed objectivism."

With the advent of the sixties every group became their own historians, as black and feminist historiography privileged the newly liberated perspectives of those who had suffered as part of their social group. Partisan scholarship proudly dealt objectivity another blow.

Chapter fifteen tells the story of the postmodern resurrection of subjectivity and the demise of almost any meaningful notion of objectivity. Historicism and relativism had taught historians to bracket moral questions and merely be faithful to the sources, but Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) took the issue of subjectivity even further.

Kuhn, following Michael Polanyi, argued that science doesn't take place in the abstract but within a "paradigm." A paradigm is an accepted model that is, by its very nature, freighted with worldview commitments promoted by the current scientific orthodoxy. Polanyi argued that science and dogma are not antithetical, but are, in the experience of the scientist, wed together in a committed relationship. The scientific community enforces the paradigm to control dissent and promote indoctrination. Thus science is no cure for subjectivity (a lesson that the current crop of new atheists, like R. Dawkins, hasn't learned). According to Kuhn, however, scientific revolutions can and do take place suddenly when the old paradigm (like Newtonian physics) is overthrown by a new paradigm (like Einsteinian physics) which accounts for the problems encountered under of previous paradigm.

Michel Foucault expanded the idea of the paradigm to the "episteme" which included relationships between the sciences and between the sciences and the culture at large. Together they enforce an oppressive "regime of truth" in society.

Richard Rorty argued (in unison with the new paradigm) against stable foundations of any kind. With that foundation squarely in place, his antifoundationalism left us only with a common solidarity in an ongoing conversation. Rorty said: "What matters is our loyalty to other human beings clinging together against the dark, not our hope of getting things right…. Our glory is in our participation in fallible and transitory human projects, not in our obedience to permanent nonhuman constraints" (541). I wonder if he was attempting to get "things right?" Novick points out that Rorty "urged ... the substitution of 'solidarity' for 'objectivity'" (571). So I guess we have solidarity in our subjectivity by which we may say a fond farewell to our former illusions of objectivity. I guess the rest of us must obey this "permanent nonhuman" constraint.

Jacques Derrida chimed in arguing that the relationship between the sign and the thing signified was arbitrary. This means that words and the concepts they signify are not dictated by the words themselves, but by their authors and the readers who play with words and concepts. Thus, words aren't transparent windows on history but opaque symbols revealing "nothing outside the text." Words also subvert their authors by revealing the power play the author is trying to put over on his readers. Isn't the power play signified by the words in the author and thus outside the text? Maybe I don't understand Derrida, but regardless, this pointed the way to new hermeneutic of "Deconstruction" or reducing texts to power.

For literary critic, Stanley Fish, it is the community that teaches interpretation and the interpreter doesn’t discover but makes “ ‘texts, facts, authors, and intentions’.” Standards of right and wrong exist not in the text but within the community. Fish said this is why we can’t agree on an interp of a Shakespearean sonnet though it’s only fourteen lines. "Rational debate is always possible," he hoped, "not, however, because it is anchored in a reality outside it, but b/c it occurs in a history, a history in the course of which realities and anchors have been established, although … they will have to be est. again" (544). If our debates aren't anchored in reality itself but only in a history of literary study then literary history must transcend reality? But if literary history is part of reality, then he hasn't really helped us, has he? Also, if there's no reality outside the community then what do separate communities appeal to when the debate one another? Other communities, themselves, or what? And how, if right and wrong exists only in communities, does anyone ever change communities?

Novick doesn't critique these guys (like I've been doing) but only concludes that "the center does not hold," adding that: "In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did that which was right in his own eyes." Thank goodness the post-modern community isn't the true Israel. Thank God that the sacred text of the true Israel doesn't end with the book of Judges. The Christian meta-narrative doesn't end in self-defeating despair. It doesn't end in the cynical resignation to power plays and apathy toward meaning.

The relativism of Becker and Beard and the postmodernism of Derrida and Fish have done us a great service by making us more aware of how our preconceptions affect our interpretations and how words get out of our control and reveal our self-centered power plays. Peter Leithart, in Solomon Among the Postmoderns, has argued that Postmodernism reveals that everything under the sun is mere vanity and chasing after the wind, which is the point of Ecclesiastes. But unlike Ecclesiastes, Postmodernism ends in the despair of futility, because it rejects God as the basis of knowledge. It rejects his normative interpretation of the world that is revealed in nature, Scripture, and ultimately in the final judgment.

I would give Novick five stars if he would have taken a sane position on the issue and not written in academia-ese. He once refers to something inconsistent as "problematically consistent." My students choked on this kind of stuff. One student said he tried to understand Novick and another that he tried to slit his wrists with Novick.

Mark Noll's "Christianity and the Possibility of Historical Knowledge," responds well to Novick. Noll argues that only the Christian view of knowledge can restore our confidence in reliable knowledge of any kind. This is because God created the world and us in his image, so that we can know his world. We can trust our senses and our reason because God created them to receive and unlock nature and Scripture. The world can be penetrated by our minds because they are made like God's mind, which knows his world perfectly. The correspondence of our minds to the creation is finite and fallible, especially because of sin, but can also be reliable. The link between the something in my head and the something outside it is established at creation and sustained by God's power upholding his creation.

Thus, I would argue that objectivity is seeing and knowing the world and God as God sees and knows the world and himself. This is humanly possible because we are made in his image, and he has revealed himself in the world but preeminently in the Word made flesh and made text. R.C. Sproul said: "We can grasp the infinite, but we cannot hold the infinite within our grasp." Thus scientific and historical knowledge, as well as personal knowledge of ourselves and each other, can correspond to objective reality or Truth.

But Noll also points out that knowledge is a product of our individual points of view, and thus no two people will ever come to exactly the same perspective. Noll also notes that the Christian view of the fall into sin resonates with relativism. I would argue that what postmoderns call "power" Christians call the sin of ambition and pride. These prejudice our perceptions of the world, but the only response left is not "more power to my power play." The Christian response is: "I repent of my grabbing for power, and I die to self in order to seek God's revelation." In this way, we may, like Noll, steer a course between Scylla of scientific objectivity and the Charybdis of relativism, without falling into the trap of either.

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Berlinski on History

In a recent discussion with the Discovery Institute, David Berlinski remarked about the danger of reading history backwards from our present concerns:

It is a mistake to read back into the recent past the political and emotional structure of discussions now current.

Reading things backwards is vulgar as intellectual history and false to the facts – vulgar because it assigns an aspect of permanence to our own obsessions; and false because it distorts the play of forces playing just a few decades ago.

The Truth About History!

History: A Very Short Introduction by John H. Arnold

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Arnold gives a good practical guide with concrete examples, demonstrating the joy of historical discovery and reliable reconstruction of the past. He surveys the history of history, rejecting scientific approach of Leopold von Ranke ("only to say how it really was") while trying to navigate away from the pure relativism of private stories.

Arnold rejects the concept of "Truth" as an illusion of certainty, but clings to "truth" as fidelity to the sources (56). But, I ask, who determines that? Arnold ultimately appeals to consensus: "Truth is therefore a process of consensus, as what operates as 'the truth' (what gets accepted as 'the true story') relies on a general, if not absolute, acceptance by one's fellow human beings" (115). Arnold applies this to Hitler and the Holocaust, "The consensus is rightly so strong on this topic that we know the Holocaust to have been an act of astounding evil" (120). So if this consensus is right, can a consensus be wrong? If so, how do you decide? Go back to the sources? But that can only provide another consensus at best.

Now, what if Hitler would have won? Would the consensus and thus the truth be different? I would say no! And thank God he didn't win. Thus we must appeal to something beyond consensus as even Hitler was operating on a consensus of fellow Germans he had persuaded.

We can only judge Hitler to be evil by appealing to Truth. This resonates with the moral beings we are, and calls for humility, because we don't always see the truth clearly or act in accord with it. It can be abused as a mere grasp for power, as with Hitler. But the Truth has a power of its own that would have defeated him even if he had won the war. Thus we submit our appeals to Truth to the Truth. As a Christian, I acknowledge my point of view, test it against the books of Scripture and nature, and see what comes of it. It's a journey but not an aimless one. We must seek the Truth.

Arnold strikes the post-modern pose of skepticism toward meta-narrative, saying, "In tackling the problems that face us, we have become suspicious of people spinning us great tales, and wish to pay more attention to the details of true stories" (91). This is a false dichotomy. Truth includes but must ultimately transcend mere fidelity to details. Otherwise your just "keeping score."

Arnold does come up with three good reasons for doing history: enjoyment, thinking outside of one's present time, and thinking "differently about oneself" (122). We need to have fun in the past, explore "an alternative world," and make historical arguments that give us the ability to change. But without Truth, whose to say it was for the better?

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The Perks of Being an Historian

Cantor/Schneider in How to Study History speak eloquently of the joys of the profession:

History is probably the best field for the student whose main aim in college is a sound liberal [i.e. freeing] education. History is concerned with all that man has thought and done, and a history major combined with inidividual courses in literature, philosophy, art, music, and the social sciences introduces the student to all facets of human culture and experience. Deans of law shcools and schools of journalism believe there is no better undergraduate preparation for postgraduate professional study in their fields than the knowledge and methods acquired by the history major.... The historical profession offers unsurpassed intellectual and emotional satisfactions of the college teaching....

Cantor/Schneider then add:

and attractive remuneration as well [what?!!] (135-36).

The Historical Task

Cantor and Schneider in How to Study History comment on the intersection of historiography and ethics. They quote D. W. Robertson:

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.

Advise for Students of History

I've been reading How to Study History by Norman Cantor and Richard Schneider and ran across some good advice for the historian in all of us:

If you are a beginner, the reading of one secondary book in history each week should be enough--but just barely enough--to enable you to build up the necessary skills of reading quickly, which include finding the thesis of a book in a few minutes, learning to recognize the devices of various fundamental interpretations, and finally storing in your memory some approximate awareness of the contents and subjects covered in the book so that you can use it later as a reference.... To be sure, once the pressures of graduate work ease and the new pressures of writing, teaching, and having a deeper and closer interest in primary sources take over, the professional scholar's reading of secondary sources will decrease with time. But even so, most good scholars still try to read at least one secondary source each week and to keep up with the periodical literature, and in general try to stay abreast of the literature of their own fields of interest....

The first aim in reading any secondary should be to determine as soon as possible what the main point of the book is--to find the central conclusions the book is trying to prove, and to recogonizethe historiographical point of view represented ... i.e. the assumptions and value judgements upon which the author bases his conclusions....

To find the main point of a book, you should read the introduction, the first chapter, and the last chapter before you read any other part of the book....

With the main point as a central focus, everything else to be discovered by the student as he reads the book will have a frame of reference.

The authors end the first part of the book with these observations:

The one theme that has recurred ... has been the need for the active perception, for creative and imaginative interpretation in the use of all types of historical materials. Neither primary sources nor secondary sources will offer any significantly meaningful insights to a passive reader who seeks merely to recognize their contents. But the student who has acquired the basic principles of anlyzing sources, and who through diligent study learns by practice and by observing the work of other historians to apply such priciples fluently, will find hismelf fully prepared and well informed for the next major step in his development--the wrinting of his own original historical papers.

Don't we all learn by imitation? And then we learn to develop our own voice, point of view, interests, and come up with something ours.