The Meaning of History

The title of the book by T Keith Windschuttle — which has been favorably reviewed in the Wall Street Journal — is a most promising one: The Killing Of History: How A Discipline Is Being Murdered By Literary Critics And Social Theorists (Macleay, 1996). The author has been a lecturer in history, social policy, sociology and media studies at a number of Australian academic institutions. But, alas, what is said in this hook also, ironically, “kills” history.

Now, there’s a lot in this well-researched and documented- in-detail book that is good. Windschuttle deftly shreds what is called “an array of French-inspired literary and social theories which deny that truth and knowledge about the past are possible,” the claim that “there is no fundamental distinction between history and myth or between history and fiction.” He does, indeed, as his book’s dust cover says, offer “a devastating exposé” of these absurd views.

Windschuttle demolishes such current fads as cultural studies; social theory; the omnipotence of signs or semiotics; structuralism and ethnohistory; poststructuralism; relativism; induction; poetics; Hegelianism and Marxism; radical scepticism; and more. In example after example, in great detail, frequently using their own methodologies, Windschuttle shows how what the advocates of these schools of thought have written is hogwash.

The author says (Preface, page 3) that his aim is to show that “despite all the present claims to the contrary, history can be studied in an objective way and there are no philosophical obstacles to the pursuit of truth and knowledge about the human world.” But, on page 177, it becomes clear that Windschuttle’s “aim” is seriously off-target. Indeed, he seems to see no real target at all. He writes: “The historical process is not moving inexorably in any one direction or towards any goal or end; it has no hidden pattern or itinerary waiting to be discovered. The job of the historian is not to search for some theory that will reveal all, nor some teleology that will explain the purpose of things. Rather, it is to reconstruct the events of the past in their own terms….. What happens in history, therefore, is never random, but neither does it conform to any deep-seated design.”

On page 231, disputing the notion that “selection is determined by importance and importance is determined by values”—that such presuppositions are necessarily determinative — Windschuttle says: “The obligation historians have is to try and shake off their own values and pursue the truth. This may be difficult but there is no reason for it to be impossible.”

But, of course, it IS impossible, for anybody, to “shake off” his own “values,” when viewing anything. As Cornelius Van Til and Dr. Rushdoony, among others, have taught us, there is no such thing as brute factuality, what Windschuttle calls reconstructing events of the past “in their own terms.” This is a dangerous illusion.

Windschuttle even goes so far as to say (page 173) that “the philosophy of history is itself an illegitimate method for understanding the course of human affairs.” Dismissing the notion “that there is one key that can unlock history,” that “there is one concept that explains all,” he admits such a view “has always held a powerful attraction.” As examples of this wrong-headed view, sliding into abstraction, he lists, incredibly, in the same breath: The “Christian Salvationist view of history”; Marx’s materialism; Darwin’s concept of natural selection; Hegel’s theory of history.

Windschuttle explicitly rejects the idea that the “particular framework or paradigm theory” we have “dominates our thinking.” He disagrees that those who believe they are “free from ideology” are “merely deluding themselves.” He disputes the assertion that facts “only make sense within an ideological framework and so theory is held always to be prior to empirical observation.” He says the “big problem” for such claims “has always hinged on the question of where the major thinkers of each paradigm themselves get their ideas. If everyone was really locked within a theory or an ideology, no one, not even the great theorists, could free themselves.”

Exactly! Precisely so! This is true. Everyone, even “great thinkers,” are “locked within” some kind of presupposition. There is no neutrality regarding “facts.” And since he raised the question, it is appropriate to ask of Windschuttle: Where, sir, do you get your ideas concerning where people do or do not, should or should not, get their ideas?!

Where Windschuttle—who, obviously, does not have a Biblical/Christian view of history, the true view of history because this is God’s Word — “kills” history is by denying that history has any “one direction, goal, end, purpose, deep-seated design.” He is, when all is said and done, a humanist. And as Dr. Rushdoony writes in his book The Biblical Philosophy Of History (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1979): “The humanist faces a meaningless world in which he must strive to create and establish meaning. The Christian accepts a world which is totally meaningful and which in every event moves in terms of God’s predestined purpose, and, when man accepts God as his Lord and Christ as his Savior, every event works together for good to him because he is now in harmony with that meaning and destiny (Rom. 8:28).

“Man therefore does not create meaning; instead, having rebelled against God’s meaning, having striven to be as God and himself the source of meaning and definition (Gen. 3:5), man now submits to God’s meaning and finds life therein. For the humanist, the dynamics of history are in titanic man, as he imposes his will and idea on the world. For the orthodox Christian, the dynamics of history are in God the Creator, and man accepts those dynamics and rejoices in the blessings thereof when man accepts Christ as Savior and then follows the leadings of the sanctifying Holy Spirit. For him, the Bible is the authoritative and infallible word of the triune God.”

Dr. Rushdoony adds: “Thus, the consequence of every philosophy of history which denies the God of Scripture, His infallible word and His creative act, is to open the way for the terror of man under nature and under the divine and messianic state.... Biblical doctrine is not formulated in abstraction.... It is revealed in history and, in writing, woven into the context of the history of God’s covenant with man. The Old Testament is a long record of such history, and the New Testament also. The doctrines expounded in the Epistles are not stated in abstraction but in terms of the realities of heresies, church problems, the revelation of Jesus Christ, and the destiny of God’s elect people. History is important precisely because it is totally meaningful because of God’s eternal decree and act of creation.

“The Council of Jerusalem declared, ‘Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world’ (Acts 15:18). History is in the hands neither of chaos nor of the social scientist but in the hands of a sovereign and triune God. Any adherence to chance, monism and dualism, and dialecticism as well, reduces history to frustration and gives no hope except the hopelessly totalitarian answer of social science. The eternal decree of the triune God alone assures meaning and victory for life and history... there neither can be nor is there law, society, justice, structure, design or meaning apart from God.”

Dr. Rushdoony says, as if replying directly to Windschuttle: “Agnostic and atheistic historiography begins with a fundamental act of faith, the faith that God has nothing to do with history. This assumption has nothing to do with science or history: it is a pre-theoretical axiom with which all factuality is approached. Lucretius stated it openly and clearly: ‘The basic principle that we shall assume as our standing point is that nothing has ever been created by a divine power.’ By this act of faith, history is declared to be man’s area of operation exclusive of any divine determination or operation.

“Having made this assumption, these scholars then proceed to apply it to history. History becomes simply men’s development and struggling in a mindless universe. This application is then taken as ‘proof’ or the assumption which produced this view! Clearly, this is circular reasoning: it is reasoning from faith to faith, and it is guilty of the very process of which it accuses the Christian.”

Dr. Rushdoony says: “Because all things are made by God, nothing is understandable in terms of itself but only in terms of God the Creator. No fact, nor man, can he understood in reference to itself alone, or to any created combination, but only in terms of God. Remove God, and, eventually, you remove meaning... every attempt to do without God leads also to an elimination of values.... The issue is clear: no God, no meaning.”

Amen.