UNDERSTANDING HISTORY

EMERGING CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVES

Abstract

Until the dawn of the Age of Reason a dual conception of history, which had gradually been evolving since the early Middle Ages, was the universally accepted way in which Christendom regarded the past. It is implicit in the eighteenth-century phrase, history sacred and profane. Accordingly, the total of human historical knowledge could be divided into two quite distinct types, differing on account of the disparate sources from which they came. Sacred history was the history of the world as it was divinely and therefore without any error disclosed in the Bible. This history was complete and superior in itself not only for all its past since the creation of the world, but also for all its future until its consummation in the Last Judgment. This sacred history was also known as the salvation history, meaning thereby that it was necessary to be included in this sacred history if humans wanted to arrive at salvation in the next life. There was no choice possible. Until the final disintegration of the medieval world-view in the eighteenth century, world history, also known as profane history, had to be fitted into the periphery of this sacred history of the Bible, as it had been since the time of Orosius in the early fifth century CE. This conception of sacred history, supposed to be derived from the infallible teaching of the Bible, and supplying the framework into which all other histories had to be somehow accommodated, survived among the Christians until after the close of the Age of Reason. Profane history or world history, as contrasted with this sacred history or salvation history, was purely a human enterprise which had no goal and no meaning. There was, therefore, an absolute qualitative difference between sacred and profane history. Everything except the sacred history was secondary, a marginal reality. Hence, world history, as a whole, was held in low esteem by many Christian theologians.