Introduction

Everyone has notions of history. Some even pretend to despise it. Yet Carl Becker (1873-1945), the famous American historian, offers a poignant retort when he says “Everyman is his own historian.” That is, even the person who claims to hate history is actually a historian. Each person, in the day-to-day remembering of past personal activities, performs all the essential operations involved in historical research. History is not a scholarly activity. It is a basic human function. The person who claims to be bored by history is only bored by other people’s history.

What follows are seven quotations that encourage you to be historically informed, because, as Becker goes on to say, “The history that lies inert in unread books does no work in the world. It is the remembered past—always a small and necessarily inaccurate portion of the past—that works upon the present and shapes it.”¹

#1 William Faulkner, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”²

This famous quote comes from Faulkner’s novel Requiem for a Nun. The idea is that in our struggle to overcome the difficulties of the past, we are bound to the past. Since you can't undo the past, the only meaningful option is to learn from it as you struggle forward.

# 2 Blaise Pascal, “Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science.”³

The scientific method is an estimable thing. It reveals the laws of science. It tells about mass and acceleration; about the earth rotating on its axis; and what will happen if you drop a carburetor or a kazoo off the Leaning Tower of Pisa; and how in the name of all that is improbable does that askew tower manage to stay upright instead of toppling over like a tipsy vicar on roller skates?

Such scientific knowledge doesn’t tell about the stories or the souls of those upon whom the sun rises and sets. It doesn’t tell about how grace and transcendence can animate a dead spirit to life. Because there are different kinds of truth, we need the study of science and the study of history. Science explains how God created and sustains His creation; history reveals why. It tells the unfolding story of God's work in the world. History illumines the role of science, but science cannot illumine the role of history.

#3 Martyn Lloyd-Jones “The whole climate of opinion today … is inimical to the idea of looking back and learning from previous history.”⁴

Martyn Lloyd-Jones is explaining and critiquing the theory that history is, in the words of Henry Ford, “bunk,” by which Ford meant that people should live in the present, not in the past. This is a common criticism of history, that history is only concerned about what has already happened, that it’s a mistake to look back upon what is gone and done. It is a preoccupation with the future that ho-hums the study of history. For example, in A Brave New World, the Director explains their rejection of historical knowledge, “But then most historical facts are unpleasant.” Later the Controller explains their rejection of Shakespeare with, “Because it’s old; that’s the chief reason. We haven’t any use of old things here.”⁵

The problem is that living only in the present is animalistic. Humans remember the past in a way that animals can’t. Humans remember the past generations, tell their stories, and learn from them. This is one reason that humans understand their nature—human nature—whereas animals don’t understand their nature—animal nature.

What Ford failed to realize is that living well in the present requires knowledge of the past.

For example, imagine one night you wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. On your way, you stump your toe and it hurts. You take that personal history and tuck it away in the back of your mind. The next night you wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. What happens if you live only in the present while ignoring the past? You stump your toe again. But what happens if you access your knowledge of history and remember stumping your toe the night before? You avoid stumping your toe a second time.

#4 Edmund Burke, “In history a great volume is unrolled for our instructions, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind.”⁶

There are moral lessons we should draw from history. In the words of Rowan Williams, we should expect gifts from the past. But those gifts often look like ungoverned demonstrations of pride, selfish ambition, greed, revenge, lust, sedition, and hypocrisy. History is filled with a long train of disorderly appetites. If the past is studied without care, it might plunge the student into death rather than propel them into wisdom. But, as Titus Livius concluded, “The study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind; for in history you have a record of the infinite variety of human experience plainly set out for all to see: and in that record you can find for yourself and your country both examples and warnings: fine things to take as models, base things, rotten through and through, to avoid.”⁷

#5 Plutarch “Using history as a mirror I try by whatever means I can to improve my own life and to model it by the standard of all that is best in those whose lives I write. As a result, I feel as though I were conversing and indeed living with them; by means of history, I receive each one of them in turn, welcome and entertain them as guests and consider their stature and their qualities and select from their actions the most authoritative and the best with a view to getting to know them. What greater pleasure could one enjoy than this or what more efficacious in improving one’s own character?”⁸

Plutarch provides a sunnier vision of studying history than Burke. Whereas Burke assumes the past will provide mainly negative examples, Plutarch assumes the past also contains figures truly worth emulation. People are going to emulate someone. Most young people count celebrities as their heroes, which is like choosing the loudest rooster to run the farm. Christians should hunger for historical heroes to counteract the superficiality of secular culture and the evangelical church.

How should you be wise and discerning in seeking historical heroes without making them idols? First, keep the historical figure in context. You are studying the person in their historical context, not to emulate them in every way, but to see a person’s character on the whole in how they deal with life’s challenges. Second, use historical figures as intellectual and theological anchors. Pick one or two worthy figures and study their thought deeply. This can provide a theological anchor in turbulent times. Third, remember that all people have flaws. You can revere individuals in history without whitewashing their flaws.

#6 David F. Wells “Ignoring history is about gaining control.”⁹

A person steeped in history lives with inherited guardrails. If their culture and their church have the same inheritance, then there are common guardrails and beliefs. History becomes an authority that limits choices. That’s why ignoring history is about gaining control. When there is no inheritance then there are fewer guardrails, which flatters the autonomy of man. Without history, it is easier for people to become self-defined, self-enclosed, self-authenticated, and self-determined.

#7 The Great Qoheleth of Ecclesiastes, “There is nothing new under the sun.”

Ecclesiastes is one big reminder of the limitations of human understanding. Life is a vapor—transient and elusive. Humans have an “under the sun” perspective, which means they have a limited outlook. The fullness of meaning is beyond immediate experience. “There is nothing new under the sun” means that life is repetitive, not just within the span of one life, but from one generation to the next. What has been, will be again. What has been done, will be done again. Every foolish notion now paraded through the Ivy Leagues has been tried before, previously by people in togas. Every egotistical excuse for war has been trumpeted before, often with the same drumbeat and the same vision of glory. Every so-called new rebellion has been staged before, often by rebels who harbored the same grievances.

T.S. Eliot explained it this way, “We do not know very much of the future except that from generation to generation the same things happen again and again. Men learn little from other’s experience.”¹⁰ G.K. Chesterton said, “There is only one thing new that can be done under the sun; and that is to look at the sun.”¹¹ In other words, inventing flashy new ideas is not newness. Neither is chasing constant change. Instead, true newness comes from learning to see the old things — like the sun itself — with fresh wonder. The world has not grown old; our eyes have. So, go and look again. Look anew at the world God made. Look at the most ordinary things with gratitude, awe, and joy. And look at the ancient things, because sanity, faith, and happiness come from recovering wonder at God’s universe.

Jason Cherry is an elder at Trinity Reformed Church in Huntsville, Alabama, as well as a teacher and lecturer of literature, history, and economics at Providence Classical School in Huntsville. He graduated from Reformed Theological Seminary with an MA in Religion and is the author of the books The Culture of Conversionism and the History of the Altar Call and The Making of Evangelical Spirituality.

Footnotes

¹ Carl L. Becker, Everyman His Own Historian: Essays on History and Politics (New York: F. S. Crofts & Co., 1935), 235.

² William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun (New York: Random House, 1951), 73.

³ Blaise Pascal, Christianity for Modern Pagans: Pascal's Pensees, ed. Peter Kreeft (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 226.

⁴ Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Knowing the Times: Addresses Delivered on Various Occasions (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1989). 90-91.

⁵ Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (New York: HarperCollins, 2018), 24, 219.

⁶ Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Penguin Classics, 2004 [orig. 1790]), 247.

⁷ Livy, The History of Rome, trans. Aubrey de Sélincourt (London: Penguin Books, 1960), Book 1, Preface.

⁸ Plutarch, The Rise and Fall of Athens: Nine Greek Lives, trans. Ian Scott-Kilvert (London: Penguin Books, 1960), “Life of Timoleon,” section 1.

⁹ David F. Wells, Above All Earthly Pow’rs: Christ in a Postmodern World (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), 238-240.

¹⁰ T. S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1935), 25.

¹¹ G. K. Chesterton, Alarms and Discursions (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1911), 44.