God and Culture . . .
LESSONS FROM HISTORY
Most of us have heard of Will Durant and his wife
Ariel, the popular historians, and some of us have read from their
voluminous (10 volumes) The Story of
Civilization. Few of us, however, may realize
that Mr. Durant was 81 when he finished the last volume on “Rousseau
and Revolution”, and that it won him a Pulitzer Prize. That
within itself is a lesson from a historian, if not from history. Too
many of us sell ourselves short as we grow older.
But Mr. Durant and his wife were not content to produce
a prizewinning volume in the sunset of life, for they have now
written what they choose to call The Lessons
of History. We are not handling this book and
are not trying to sell it, but a reference to it may be appropriate
in view of our own idea as to what a Christian philosophy of history
should be. That is to say that a Christian should most certainly have
a philosophy of history, and that he should believe that God teaches
lessons in history. He is the God of history and he is a
history-making God.
The Christian may gain deep insights into the meaning
of history in reading the Durants. This book is their summarizing
essay of all their historical research. It is the essence of what
history has to say to man, as they see it, and they manage to pack 40
years of historical studies in a concluding statement of around a
hundred pages. It is suggestive of how God speaks to man through the
record of man’s own civilization. If there are lessons to be
learned from history, the Christian believes that God himself is the
teacher.
The Durants conclude from their studies that no society
has ever managed to build a moral culture without the aid of
religion. In saying this he also recognizes the role of sin in the
story of man, that sin is as old as history itself.
They do not accept the old adage that history repeats
itself. Rather they insist that there is no certainty that the future
will repeat the past, and that every year is its own adventure. This
sounds like the way a Christian should talk about life. They also
contend civilization is not something that a culture inherits, for it
must be learned and earned by each generation anew.
The Durants do not see in history a reflection of a
glorious past, nor does a knowledge of the past cause them to long
for “the good old days.” As they observe crime in our
time, student demonstrations, race riots, and all the rest, they
conclude that “The situation is normal.” This may sound
strange coming from historians, but so it is, and the lesson is
important. Whatever is happening, however good
or evil it may appear, history teaches us that the situation is
normal.
It reminds us of Dickens’ opening lines in A
Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of
times; it was the worst of times.”
History does not beckon us to long for the good old
days, but to work for the good new days. As the Durants put it: “In
recorded history we find so many instances of goodness, even of
nobility, that we can forgive, though not forget, the sins. The gifts
of charity have almost equaled the cruelties of battlefields and
jails.”
As important as any of history’s lessons is its
reflection of human nature. In its pages man can see what manner of
creature he is. “Known history shows little alteration in the
conduct of mankind,” say the Durants. “The Greeks of
Plato’s time behave very much like the French of modern
centuries; and the Romans behaved like the English.” In history
man can see both his folly and his glory; it is both a chamber of
horrors and a celestial city. Yet history bears witness to
regeneration. It proves that man can change from evil to good.
Besides all this the Durants see in history what the
Bible calls “a great cloud of witnesses.” To them history
is “a spacious country of the mind, wherein a thousand saints,
statesmen, inventors, scientists, poets, artists, musicians, lovers
and philosophers still live and speak, teach and crave andsing.
History is alive and it speaks with a thousand voices. God is its author and he stands in its shadows.—the Ed.