catapult magazine

I’m really glad I took the time to plod through this classic by Tolstoy. The author really starts kicking it into high gear around page 837 or so.

I know it’s a long shot that anyone else is reading this right now too, but I’d love to talk about it here. I’ll just put the hook out there for anyone to bite. It’s an excellent book to read at this or any other time in our history.

I don’t know anything about this “inner person” idea. We know all men’s hearts. We know that they are sinful. But I’m talking about discerning spirits, straight out of 1 John. And Paul is very clear on this issue too. He does not let us off the hook when it comes to judging right from wrong. Now that the Holy Spirit is given to us, we have great responsibilities. I distrust any historian that shirks her or his responsibility to put events in a meaningful context.

ps. I don’t recall that Paul’s “seeing in a mirror darkly” bit was intended to tell us that we’re incapable of or should not try to discern right from wrong. But I’ll look at that passage again.

part of my problem grant, is that you continue to persist in the assertion that just because one knows that the heart of man is sinful; that means you know the heart completely. it is disturbing that your analysis of the hearts of men stops there. humans are incredibily complex creatures and an explanation that stops with sin as an explanation for all of human history begs the question what are we doing here? why are we even having a discussion about history? why does scholarship exist? for that matter why did man ever do anything? think anything? why don’t we all lay down and die because we know men’s hearts are sinful and that answers all questions.

i am not suggesting that one should not to an extent hold oneself and others responsible for right and wrong actions; there is also a certain amount of room in historical writing for doing so. but one should contain such judgements to actions and not extend them to the heart of another. i used the ‘seeing in the mirror darkly’ to demonstrate that one does not see all ends, i.e. it is not possible for even the wisest among us to know all the results from a particular action or the particular causes. thus, one, particularly the wisest in this world, must not be hasty in dealing out death and judgement.

Grant and Carolyn (is it Carolyn?), I hope you won’t mind my butting in on your conversation. It’s one I have been interested in on and off since I took historiography at UTD. Historiography seems to be in a state of crisis, and like you all, I’m interested in a Christian philosophy of history, a Christian answer to this crisis. I have a few ideas, but probably more questions than answers.

I agree that we have responsibility to discern spirits and judge between right and wrong, and that the Spirit greatly aids us in these things. I have always thought, however, that we judge based on externals: words and actions. “By their fruits you shall know them.” And in 1 John, John tells us how we discern spirits: “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is from God.” 1 John speaks of testing spirits based on their confession, again, on an external. I’m not sure exactly how this relates to history.

All men’s hearts are sinful. I love the way Calvin put it: when we view the heart from the right perspective, we see a “teeming horde of infamies.” Are we saying that the historian has to sift through it all? (Maybe I shouldn’t say “we.”)

At some point I’d like to get back to the genre question as well.

it is carolyn, but i am curious how you know? not that it is wrong; do i know you (anton)? just a little odd.

anyway, i too prefer the idea of judging based on action. i think i mentioned before the term human activity, it is abit of a loaded phrase but i like it. given the range of ideas that i have considered thus far within the history of philosophy of history it seems to capture the sentiments that xns attempt to express when writing a historical piece and also an idea that post-modernists can understand.

discerning spirits i guess would function in the same way but i tend to be reticent to talk about spirits in the context of writing about history. i have always thought about discerning spirits in the context of personal tempation and grace. i prefer to think about the human heart and its sinfulness in historical interpretation in terms of how the actions of each person combine hurtful and merciful actions towards fellow humans- in turn translates as disobedience and obedience towards God simultaniously.

any thoughts?

Carolyn was just a guess based on “crlynvn.” I don’t know you…sorry for the confusion.

In our times (as I understand them) the discussion of history is moving away from the terms “subjective” or “objective.” The meanings of these words are a bit naive. We can’t know history objectively, but we aren’t for that reason cast into pure subjectivism. I think making a distinction between facts and interpretations is useful. Facts can be known, but historians have to make sense of those facts. In writing history, they present only certain facts and try to interpret their significance. A story emerges. Thus, history is the “subjective” view of the historian. So far so good. What drives me nuts, though, is when people (including many students in historiography) say that because facts and interpretations are “subjective,” history is nothing more than a big club. “History is written by the conquerors.” “History is the story told by the powerful to perpetuate their power.” Undoubtedly in some cases, history was used so brutally (in Russia for example), but history does not always have an axe to grind. Sometimes historical research unearths facts and evidence that accepted “histories” cannot sustain. One history may make greater sense of everything we know than other histories. THose other histories are then exposed as inadequate in light of furhter research. Because of this trend, it is possible (though it by no means always happens) that we know “history” better than the original people who lived that history. People living years sense will be better able to make sense of these postermodern times we’re living than we ourselves will be able to.

Still a few questions remain in my mind. Do Christians make for better historians? If so, why? Should the genre of history be expanded from primarily descriptive prose to include stories, novels, poetry, etc?

it is totally cool anton; i was just wondering because i have a tendency to meet people and then forget who they are. so i was curious if that was the case here. :D

anyway, i am not certain that i agree with your (anton) division of history into just facts and intrepretation. to a certain extent the people in historiography that drive you nuts anton are right. the facts that filter down to historians centuries later are very much a product of the powers that be, if you will, during specific periods. the most common historical record is in the written form and the only peoples, in most places and times, that knew how to read and write were members of the aristrocracy. therefor, large sections of primary sources have already been through a filtering process. so in fact many written sources actually do have an axe to grind, because a treatise, letter, newspaper clipping, or book all come from a specific persons perspective and the evidence, knowledge, and perspective that any given person relied upon to form opinions. on the other hand the range of possible primary sources in the past hundred years has widened, so a historian might consider farming records, weather patterns, geological shifts, etc. anything to widens the vision of what the lives where like of ‘ordinary people’.

i don’t think that xns tend to make better historians than other peoples. it is all on a scale and xn historians tend to be obsessed with studying the church and its influence on x,y, or z. xn historical thought also tends to be positivistic with a slightly xn slant (thinking particularly of noll and hatch here). so their work is not necessarily bad but it is tends to be a bit simplistic. hmm, you might want to read my earilier posts on what i think of novels, stories, and poetry taking a place in the genre of history. i am not broadly opposed to using a novel, etc as a historical source in a given period to demonstrate period specific ideas but as an actual medium to convey historical thought i would have to say no.

Fair enough. There are no such things as “brute facts.” Historical evidence comes to us already filtered. But does that mean that we can’t know anything at all about the past? Are all histories hopelessly filtered and re-filtered? Of course not. Admittedly, the historian has to assess the quality and value of his or her sources. As you noted, some sources are more given to filtration than other mediums. But even in highly filtered mediums there may be positive data that can be reclaimed. In many cases it’s possible to dialogue with the author. You and the originator of your source have different assumptions and biases, but oftentimes these biases can be accounted for. The existence of the biases alone may be valuable for historical research. A study of mulitple sources may reveal inaccuracies in some sources, for all biases aren’t the same and thus they don’t all construe the material (or in radical cases, lie) in the same way. If an historian can sift the evidence and judge between reliable and unreliable data, he or she can write more or less accurate history. Through peer criticism (another person scrutinizing the historian’s judgments), various histories can be judged more or less accurate. Flaws can be exposed.

I guess the point is that having biases and assumptions (as all people inevitably do) doesn’t necessarily mean that you are bound up in them. A person can conscientiously set them aside to the best of his or her ability and write more accurate history.

Also, I do think that there can be a fruitful, bidirectional relationship between contemporary historical accounts and original source material. Contemporary historical accounts take into account the biases and quality of original sources, and original sources expose the biases and quality of contemporary histories.

In the end it is possible to know something true about history. It’s a matter of what quality of truth you’re looking for. It’s certain we won’t know history as God knows it.

Aristotle is kicking my ass, so I thought I’d impose him on you Tolstoy buffs. He anticipated this argument a few years back. His book ‘Poetics’ or ‘The Poietic Art’ deals with these questions though he’s not really talking about ‘history’ per se. Here’s the quote—I hope it can make a little bit of sense even though it’s out of context.

“If it turns out that the poet is making his work out of actual events, he is none the less a poet — a maker: for nothing prevents some actual events from being the sort of things that might probably happen, and in such a case the poet is the maker of those events.”

‘Fiction’ then, according to Aristotle, is the unsullied ideal so long as it resembles reality. It’s ok to use ‘facts’ insofar as they don’t detract from the real-seeming-ness of the piece. Does Tolstoy’s historical commentary detract from the believability of the entire narrative?

dan, in a way you bring us back the question of the genre of history. What sort of literature ought one to expect a history to be? What sort of literature do you assume a history to be?

I don’t suppose that Aristotle had histroy in mind when he wrote the quote you brought up. He seems to be addressing a situation where a poet finds him or herself writing about actual events, something different than history (at least as I normally conceive of history).

What are the genre expectations for history? Most of the histories I have read are descriptive. You certainly wouldn’t mistake them for good novels! I have read one historian who plays with the genre of history: Barbara Tuchman, who wrote a number of books (The Proud Tower, A Distant Mirror, etc.). Her books are more interesting than many of the histories I’ve read. There’s also a book called “Clan of the Cave Bear” (I hope I’ve got the right title) that takes archealogical evidence and reconstructs stories based on them. I’ve taken an archealogical class and none of the assigned text books were nearly as interesting as the few stories I read in this book. Why don’t more historians learn to captivate their audiences by telling a good story instead of describing one?

I’ll throw that out for discussion.

Aristotle’s “Poetics” is relevant here because, from what I understand, it has much to do with interpretation. How someone interprets the “facts” of reality is very important. I have been suggesting that history, invented as an “objective” scientific discipline during Modernism, has built-in biases just as history during ancient times had its biases in favor of the conquering king. In a postmodern world, history belongs to whoever writes it. After modernism, we realize that the stories we tell about the “facts” or “events” change. They acquire new value. Columbus’ discovery of America changes from a triumph of European man to the beginning of a tragic genocidal movement against Native Americans. All story-telling (history-writing) has built-in judgments of value, even those histories that claim to be “objective”. Objectivity, then, becomes a value of such a story-teller.

History in a postmodern era starts to seem somewhat relativistic. If events have meaning only in the way that they’re told, then meaning continues to change as cultures change. A Christian understanding of history, though, is quite a different thing, because meaning is fixed in the future. Because God involves himself in history, all events can only end in the Lordship of Jesus Christ. This ought to give Christians an advantage in interpreting the events that go on here and now, but unfortunately we’re still far from perfect.