Somewhere around 1970 to 1971, when I was a 9th grader in Mrs. Reed’s world history class, I decided that I would be a history major and from there become a history teacher. Unknown to me, in 1971, a philosophy professor at Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana, named Gordon Clark published a book titled Historiography: Secular and Religious. Directly and indirectly, Clark would in time come to influence my understanding of history. Unfortunately, I was not a child prodigy and I could not have understood Clark’s book back in 1970. I am a slow learner, but an appreciative one.
History majors generally have a bit of explaining to do. It’s easy enough if you justify majoring in history as background for law school. Perhaps, you can also pass muster if your goal is being a college professor. Generally, history is viewed as a field you study simply so that you can teach it to others. Generally, the ultimate motivation for majoring in history is given in that profound answer: “I find history interesting.”
Fair enough. I certainly hope my dental surgeon finds teeth interesting. But at some point, in the study of history a person must think beyond names, dates, chronologies, and part time jobs to supplement a meager income. The question “What is history?” is somewhat more illusive than it appears. The simple answer is, “That which happened in the past.” There are at least two major problems with this answer. First, there are a seemingly infinite number of things that happened in the past. Second, many of the facts from the past, such as the fact that I rode a bicycle as a young boy, are not the stuff of history.
There is a place in the study of history for archives. Much of archival history is local history. Some small towns, particularly those isolated from the sprawling, engulfing monsters of progress and growth, commemorate their local historic landmarks, old houses, and perhaps famous residents on engraved monuments. Recollecting the past and noting those places where Washington slept are worthwhile.
There is an entertainment value as found in books, movies, and the history channel. Also, we have a recurring sense that knowing our national heritage helps preserve the ideals of our country. Then there are the platitudes, such as “history repeats itself” or “those who do not learn from the mistakes from history are bound to repeat them.” The first one implies a sort of determinism that precludes human decision and the second one implies that the history faculties of a few major universities could solve all problems.
Maybe the view of history as archives, entertainment, and interesting material explains the lack of attention in the topic of historiography. Most history majors are not required to take a course in historiography and few elect to do so. Historiography is defined as “the body of techniques, theories, and principles of historical research and presentation.” That definition is enough to send most history students scurrying back to the Civil War seminar discussion of the third day of the battle of Gettysburg.
Dr. Clark’s book will not satisfy those looking for historical and biographical facts and anecdotes that draw students to history, His book will not actually satisfy those needing to understand historiography itself. In some ways, this work, like much of Clark’s writing, is concerned with the presuppositions governing thought. As a professor of philosophy, Clark was also concerned with demonstrating the inescapable bonds between philosophy and history. Clark said, “[H] istory must, with all other subjects, be fitted into a comprehensive system of philosophy” (page 22) and his sense of the utility and justification for studying history as found in “the position it holds as a part of an all embracing philosophy” (pages 18-19).
He also said,
Of course no one denies that there are many historians who pay no attention to metaphysics or theology. However, this is not a good reason for supposing that history is independent of philosophy. It merely means that many historians have not examined and are unaware of their philosophical presuppositions. (Page 191)
But Clark did not envision a walkway between the philosophy and history departments as the cure for ailing or degenerate views of history. Noting that “presuppositionless experience is an impossible philosophy,” he lined the key choices as “naturalistic scientism, existential hunch, or the Biblical revelation with its miraculous supernaturalism.” (Page 371) As a thoroughly Calvinistic thinker, Clark was convinced that apart from a Christian approach to history, the whole field of study was meaningless. He said, “Augustine’s acceptance of divine revelation, the Biblical plan of divine predestination, with its final judgment…, gives a more consistent view than any other…. (page 371)
Clark did not write the kind of book that deals with traditional historiographical topics. Such topics would include schools of historical views, use of primary and secondary sources, causality, and matters of style and viewpoint. He was more concerned with critiquing the problems with deterministic views of history, Marxism, Positivism, and progressivism. Also, he examined such issues as objectivity and moral judgments in historical studies. Since Clark was by profession a philosopher, it is aptly noted on the back cover of the book that some who read the manuscript thought it included “too much history to suit philosophers and too much philosophy to suit historians.” The blurb goes on to commend the book and author for being willing to “mix religion, politics, ethics, and epistemology all on the same page.” It goes on to say, “The interdepartmental, comprehensive viewpoint is needed.”
Those words “interdepartmental” and “comprehensive” explain something about Clark and a host of his spiritual intellectual colleagues who dominated Calvinistic thought in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. James Jordan, in his essay “The Closing of the Calvinistic Mind,” and more recently, Andrew Sandlin in his essay, “The De-Intellectualization of the Reformed Movement” both discuss the intellectual firepower of those Calvinist worldview thinkers of the twentieth century. I have discussed the same thinkers in my “Calvinist Worldview Thinkers in the Wilderness Years” series of writings and lectures.
At the time that Historiography was published, Clark was the editor of a series of works called the University Series (Philosophy Studies) published by Craig Press. Joining Clark were such Calvinistic thinkers as R. J. Rushdoony, David Freeman, E. L Hebden Taylor, Henk van Reissen, William Young, Herman Dooyeweerd, and Cornelius Van Til. Locked in a room together prior to their current congregating at Jesus’ feet, their particular theological differences might have led to a major brawl. United by the publishing vision of the illusive Charles Craig, they—and others—formed an incredible brigade of Calvinistic intellectual thought.
Harry Blamires brilliant book The Christian Mind, which appeared in 1961, opened with the words, “There is no longer a Christian mind.” In the main he was right. And 31 years later, Mark Noll was right when he began The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, saying, “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.” But both of those works overlook those interdepartmental and comprehensive viewpoints then being formulated and published by Calvinist thinkers.
As has been pointed out by Jordan and Sandlin, it is not as though these men were producing polished completed works. These men were explorers, not artists. They are all theologically grounded and myopic in their Calvinistic convictions. Scriptural foundations were ultimate and unchanging and Scriptural presuppositions guided their writings. Clark himself argues his positions for three hundred and seventy pages and then concludes that the intellectual differences can only be solved by conversion. As he says, “One must be regenerated. One must be born again. And the change is something logic cannot do. God alone is able.” (Page 370)
These Calvinist writers were, in many senses, as out of step with their times, as an Amish carriage going along a major interstate. The books they wrote were often weighty, plodding, and heavy with footnotes and scholarly discussion. There was little in their titles, subjects, style, and viewpoints that catered even to that smallest of audiences—Christians of Reformed persuasions. Still they read, thought, wrote, and taught others. They were models of scholarship, intellect, and faith.
In Historiography, Clark does not teach his reader what to think about history as much as he teaches him how to think about history. The particular historians and schools of history, particularly Marxism, are now dated and forgotten. In an age before the end of the Cold War, the rise of computers, feminism, deconstruction, and other current trends, the issues and concerns were different. Clark’s focus on Barth and Bultman might even seem far out of place in a book on history.
But Clark’s writing seems more like a conversation in his study; however, a conversation that is much more monologue than dialog. Clark’s entire book is an extended number of reviews and analyses of scholarly books he had read. He quotes long sections of the authors he analyzes, emphasizes key points relevant to historical thought, branches off continually into philosophy, and throws out a few theological objections along the way. Much of the book is difficult reading unless one is familiar with the author that Clark is discussing. Even his humor is often so dry that one can easily miss it. Parts of the work either echo or are taken directly from Clark’s book A Christian View of Man and Things, which would be the better work to start with.
The high point of the book is chapter nine where Clark discusses Augustine’s City of God. He says, “Too obvious to escape notice and too important to escape mention is Augustine’s constant relating of history to ethics, of ethics to theology, of everything to everything so as to form a comprehensive system.” (page 234) From this book and the larger body of Clark’s writings, it is obvious Clark too thought in terms of a comprehensive system. He went on in this section to criticize secular writers who wanted to divorce history from ethics, ethics from theology, and epistemology from academic knowledge.
One wishes that Clark had written a more extensive study of Augustine’s approach to history. Surprisingly, his section on religious theories of history goes from Augustine to such modern theologians as Karl Barth and Rudolph Bultmann. One wishes that Clark had dealt with more Christian historians, like Herbert Butterfield and Philip Schaff, rather than with theologians. Clark devoted his life to battling the theological and philosophical fads and perversions of his day. He was much more concerned with theological liberalism and neo-orthodox theology than he was with history. But his ultimate connection of modernist theology to historiography is telling: Secular historians may have been wrong at many points, but they did not disregard the historical documents with the “arbitrary and inconsistent abandon” that theologians treated the Bible.
Clark quoted Augustine statement, “We must lay down holy scriptures first as the foundation of our following structure.” (page 245) The recurring theme of Clark’s study of historiography that emerges throughout his discussions of men and issues is this necessity of recognizing Scriptural revelation. Amidst the fog of intellect and the haze of scholarly discussion, Clark’s insistence on Scripture for the understanding history blazing and clear.
Historiography is now published and distributed by The Trinity Foundation in Unicoi, Tennessee (http://www.trinityfoundation.org/).
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