On May 12, 2005, Donald Kagan, Sterling Professor of Classics and History at Yale University, delivered the Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities. Speaking “In Defense of History,” he made three points that I would like to apply to the dangerous trend of marginalizing history in much of contemporary preaching.
First, I begin with one of Kagan’s concluding remarks. He said, “It has been increasingly harder to persuade people that they have anything to learn from history . . . .Religion and the traditions based on it were once the chief sources for moral confidence and strength.” ((Donald Kagan, “In Defense of History” (34th Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, Washington, DC, May 12, 2005) National Endowment for the Humanities, http://www.neh.fed.us/whoweare/kagan/lecture.html (accessed July 8, 2009).))
That this is true in much of the contemporary church is evident, as historian Steven Ozment noted, “The longest shelves in local bookstores and libraries are filled with fiction, self-help, and current events (mostly the lives and politics of American leaders)–immediate, self-referential information serving personal amusement and struggle.” ((Steve Ozment, “Why We Study Western Civ.” in The Public Interest (Winter 2005): 113.)) Of course this reinforces the shameful truth that the church is following rather than challenging culture.
Second, Kagan said, “For history is a discipline in which the improvement of understanding is not impossible, random, nor merely cyclical, but cumulative.” ((Kagan, “In Defense of History”.)) This statement came after he challenged his colleagues to rid themselves of the mindlessness of postmodern claims such as history is merely opinions to oppress and all truth is relative and objective history is non-existent–except of course the postmodern’s claims concerning history, truth…
The great biblical scholar, J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937) wrote, “Christianity is certainly dependent upon history . . . if religion be made independent of history there is no such thing as the gospel. For ‘gospel’ means ‘good news,’ tidings, information about something that has happened. A gospel independent of history is a contradiction in terms.” ((John Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing, 1923), 121.)) Those who shun history in their misguided zeal for relevance are their own worst enemy and guarantor of their future irrelevance if they are indeed successful.
Third, Kagan said, “History, it seems to me, is the most useful key we have to open the mysteries of the human predicament.” ((Kagan, “In Defense of History”.))
Without history, man will never know himself. The fall of man is a historical event, which allows man to see himself rightly, without which he will neither have a true self-image or view of God. In addition, history is the insuppressible and irrefutable testimony to the depth to which man fell, and as Jonathan Edwards noted, “[T]he language of God’s redemptive love.” ((Summarized by George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 488.))
The preacher’s invitation for listeners to believe the gospel, one that is either devoid of history or contains whimsical notions of it, is both unconvincing and unintelligible.
