HISTORY IN THE MAKING
(book review)
by Randall Hillebrand
The first question that needs to be answered here is what is
history? There are many definitions for the word history. One of the
simplest definitions probably is that "History is just one darn thing
after another." Another definition might be "things in the past."
Swanstrom's definition though takes more into account. First of all
he says that the definition of history needs to state that history is
the record of significant events. Otherwise everything would be
considered history such as the different times that Pope Gregory the
VII sneezed. A second thing that Swanstrom takes into account in his
definition of history is that historical events are not things that
happen on a regular basis such as daily or weekly, etc. (i.e. a
holiday). So this aspect of a historical event would then be stated
as something that is generally unrepeated. There is one other part of
the definition of history and that is the fact that history itself
cannot be studied. To actually study history, a person would need to
be able to travel back to the time of the event. Since this is not
possible in this life, then all we can do to uncover as close as we
can what actually happened is to study the records from that time in
history. Then what is the definition of history? History is a study
of past records of significant and generally unrepeated events.
The next question that needs to be answered is what is the job of
a historian? The job of a historian is many. They must first define
what period of history they are going to study. When this is decided,
they must next search out primary and secondary information (either
documents, artifacts and/or people) from that period of time. Once
they have found the information covering that period in time, their
next step would be of assimilating that information and then
formulating it into as complete, accurate and unbiased form that they
can.
A couple of questions may arise from my last statement when I use
the words complete and unbiased. The first question may be, "How will
I know if the the historian was complete in his study or not?" The
answer to this would be that you would not know unless you took the
time and effort to study the subject yourself. Either doing the same
type of research that the historian did or by checking his work
against a number of other historians who have studied the same events.
When the historian does his research, he needs to decide what is and
is not important. Being human, as all historians are, they could make
a mistake and leave something of importance out. On the other hand,
they could purposely leave something out to make the time in history
they are writing on look differently than it actually was. The second
question that you may have is, "Can a historian truly be unbiased?"
No they cannot. A historian cannot be totally unbiased, even if he
decides to report strictly the cold hard facts. This is because he
must determine what the cold hard facts are which in itself is a
biased process. But this brings up another controversy in what the
work of a historian should be. Some feel that a historian should
report the cold hard facts so that his readers can make up their own
minds. But others think, as does Swanstrom, that the historian should
comment on the significance of the events in study. Swanstrom feels
that the historian, a person who probably knows more about the event
than anyone else living, should give his reader the benefit of his
knowledge on the subject by giving them his conclusions that he has
reached after the long years of his study. Swanstrom also said,
"Furthermore, bare facts about the past, without any comments
concerning their significance - without any admiration or blame,
without passion - tend to be lifeless and dull, sometimes even
meaningless."
How Christianity affects the work of the historian will be dealt
with next. The Christian historian Swanstrom says will look at
history through Christian glasses. What he is saying here is that
Christian historians will look at history from a Christian
perspective. When they look at the past they will see the hand of God
working throughout the history of mankind. This also gives the
Christian historian a definite advantage over the secular historian in
that when the Christian historian comes to a period of time that deals
with Christianity (much of the last 2000 years), he will better be
able to understand what they were thinking, feeling, hoping for, etc.
Or when he studies a man like Adolf Hitler, he can walk away knowing
how and why a man could do what he did. He can know that it is more
than just wanting to raise up a superior race and to illuminate a
perceived inferior people, but that the total depravity of man and the
work of Satan against God's chosen people was also involved.
Secularists say that the Christian perspective makes our glasses very
tinted and that we only see things from one perspective, which of
course is wrong if it differs from the way in which they see things.
But of course Christians can make the same claim about the secularist
historian in that they see history through a secularly tinted set of
glasses in which they do not see the work of God in man's history.
Other ways in which Christianity affects the work of the
historian are as follows. The Christian historian should belabor the
area of absolute truthfulness when presenting a piece of research. He
needs to be sure that he does not present history in such a way that
history says what he wants it to. Also, the Christian historian
should never distort the truth of history in an attempt to further the
cause of Christ. This would be lying and opposed to the teaching of
scripture. Another way in which Christianity should affect the work
of the Christian historian is through his value judgment of history.
Especially in this day and age, people judge things by their personal
standards. The Christian, as well as the Christian historian, needs
to make value judgments based solely on the word of God and nothing
else.
My personal reaction to the book was a positive one. Not ever
having studied history with much interest (or many other academic
subjects) until becoming a Christian, I was not aware of the many
things that need to be considered in the area of historical research
or in the study of history itself until having read this book. I was
very surprised to see the evangelical stand taken by Swanstrom in this
book. From my limited exposure and understanding of the majority of
historians that claim the title Christian, they are usually liberals.
So to see this strong stand for the Word of God made the book that
much more credible to me. Again being limited in my understanding of
the area of history and the writing of history, this book seemed to me
to be very thorough in its coverage of the subject though not very
indepth in each topic discussed. But I felt that the book
communicated well the subject matter in the pages it was given and
would highly recommend it. This would have been a good book for me to
have read before taking American Church History and Evangelism. I
suppose that is one reason why Church History is a prerequisite to the
former mentioned.
