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.


Index of Articles of Interest    Home

  1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 | 75 | 76 | 77 | 78 | 79 | 80 | 81 | 82 | 83 | 84 | 85 | 86 | 87 | 88 | 89 | 90 | 91 | 92 | 93 | 94 | 95 | 96 | 97 | 98 | 99 | 100 | 101 | 102 | 103 | 104 | 105 | 106 | 107 | 108 | 109 | 110 | 111 | 112 | 113 | 114 | 115 | 116 | 117 | 118 | 119 | 120 | 121 | 122 | 123 | 124 | 125 | 126 | 127 | 128 | 129 | 130 | 131 | 132 | 133 | 135 | 136 | 137 | 138 | 139 | 140 | 141 | 142 | 143 | 144 | 145 | 146 | 147 | 148 | 149 | 150 | 151 | 152 | 153 | 154 | 155 | 156 | 157 | 158 | 159 | 160 | 161 | 162 | 163 | 164 | 165 | 166 | 167 | 168 | 169 | 170 | 171 | 172 | 173 | 174 | 175 | 176 | 177 | 178 | 179 | 180 | 181 | 182 | 183 | 184 | 185 | 186 | 187 | 188 | 189 | 190 | 191 | 192 | 193 | 194 | 195 | 196 | 197 | 198 | 199 | 200 | 201 | 202 | 203 | 204 | 205 | 206 | 207 | 208 | 209 | 210 | 211 | 212 | 213 | 214 | 215 | 217 | 218 | 219 | 220 | 221 | 222 | 223 | 224 | 225 | 226 | 227 | 228 | 229 | 230 | 231 | 232 | 233 | 235 | 236 | 237 | 238 | 239 | 240 | 241 | 242 | 243 | 244 | 245 | 246 | 247 | 248 | 249 | 250 | 251 | 252 | 253 | 254 | 255 | 256 | 257 | 258 | 259 | 260 | 261 | 262 | 263 | 264 | 265 | 266 | 267 | 268 | 269 | 270 | 271 | 272 | 273 | 274 | 275 | 276 | 277 | 278 | 279 | 280 | 281 | 282 | 283 | 284 | 285 | 286 | 287 | 288 | 289 | 290 | 291 | 292 | 293 | 294 | 295 | 296 | 297 | 298 | 299 | 300 | 301 | 302 | 303 | 304 | 305 | 306 | 307 | 308 | 309 | 310 | 311 | 312 | 313 | 314 | 315 | 317 | 318 | 319 | 320 | 321 | 322 | 323 | 324 | 325 | 326 | 327 | 328 | 329 | 330 | 331 | 332 | 333

 

Home | Bible versions | Bible Dictionary | Christian Classics | Christian Articles | Daily Devotions

Sister Projects: Wikichristian | WikiMD

BelieversCafe is a large collection of christian articles with over 40,000 pages


Our sponsors:   W8MD sleep and weight loss center