The beginning of a new year might be thought the appropriate time to begin it by identifying whether we are on the right side of history or not. That phrase, ‘the right side of history’ is not mine of course. Nor is it the best way to think of our relation to the past. But it is common to think in these terms. Lately it has been used as an argument for the UK remaining in Europe. To remain would be to join or continue to be on the right side of history, the Sunny Side of the Street, as we might call it. But Brexit is on the wrong side, though the Spectator, a magazine which is for Brexit, opined in a recent editorial that ‘the world is doing rather well’.
‘Which side of history are you on?’ is also
raised in connection with other contentious issues in current politics and
culture. This idea of history having a ‘side’, which is liberal, enlightened
and so on, harks back to the enlightenment of the 18th century, to
the emergence of what David Hume called ‘these enlightened ages’, in sharp
contrast to the side of the ‘dark ages’ of medievalism. The idea is that such a
surge as the Enlightenment, having begun, is inevitable, tending unstoppably in
one direction. This side of history is on the move to better times, and so if
we wish these times for ourselves and others, we had better get on the right
side. And that direction becomes ‘obvious’ to those with enlightened minds.
The forces of darkness, of barbarism and
superstition, are history’s other side, its faltering side, the side of those intent
on ‘turning the clock back’, impeding or interrupting and so delaying its
progress. Sooner or later history’s other side is to be decisively supplanted
by the enlightened. So that dark side is destined to fail. The light side of
history will succeed. Who wants to be left behind? So do not get left behind,
for the Light and its forces will ultimately triumph over Darkness, reason
against unreason, liberty against slavery, and so on. This is somehow connected
with what Herbert Butterfield and others referred to as the Whig interpretation
of history. Though this seems to have
been, insofar as it existed, a gentler version of the current ‘sides of history’
view, at least insofar as it is view of history that is the outcome of ongoing parliamentary
debate. In fact it may be said that so long as freedom of speech and the
working of government and opposition in Parliament continues, the enlightened
ages continue.
Also linked with the winning side of history
view is the idea of Western leadership and hegemony, which causes the rising sun to
shine on the Sunny Side until the entire world basks in it. These are the
engines of light. Currently these are
the forces of globalism, international corporatism, and the waging of the war
against global warming. Its personal ‘values’
include unlimited tolerance, and the freedom from offendedness of various
kinds, along with the renouncing of the vestiges of nationalism and popularism,
two currently-favoured examples.. Though
it is said that we are living in a post-Enlightenment period, the confidence of
the Enlightenment persists. Whatever ‘post-modernism’ is, it is not
pessimistic. (An oldish sceptic might
wonder what has become of a fad of yesteryear, the ‘Small is Beautiful’ claims
of Schumacher, which at the time seemed attractive to some, but whose norms
seem to go in the opposite direction, or are nothing other than a nostalgic
hiccup in the upward march).
What the inevitability of the triumph of
such enlightened forces is grounded in is not made clear. Besides, it encounters
competition in the ‘sides of history’ stakes. For example Marxism in its pure
form holds to the historical inevitability of the international revolution that
will usher in classlessness, and so Nirvana. These inevitabilities are not strictly
speaking fated. For it seems to be possible to hold to the inevitability of
history and yet get one’s timing for meeting the train that will carry
you to the destination of personal liberal freedom and plenty, or of communist
revolution, wrong. Nevertheless, he train is to continue in its
destination even if presently it is shunted into a siding. But such a view of
history is obviously false. There is change and decay as well as periods of
seeming advancement.
But though history records moods, and
changing habits and priorities, trends and tendencies, it does not have a side,
nor two sides. It has, and has had, many sides, some of which have come to an
abrupt halt and others which still run. Other sides suddenly appear and invite you
to ride, like a scene from Alice in Wonderland – ‘Jump on me’. The rise and
fall of empires bear testimony to these, and empires rise and fall still. It is hard to think that we are at the end of
history in this sense. The sun never set in the British Empire, but time has
set on it.
The belief in the course of history, if it
is worth the name, is an empirical belief, based on the study of the way in
which it is going, and then extrapolating that. It is in this sense of history that in 1992 Francis Fukuyama published The End of History and the Last Man. He
did not assert that history as a sequence of events has
ended, but that with the course of Soviet communism being stopped, history as a
fundamental clash of ideologies was no more. Fukuyama held that this was true
of 1992, when it seemed for a few moments that liberal democracy, helped by
global capitalism, was dominating the globe.
History and pilgrimage
Is historical inevitability of any use in
understanding the gospel or its spread? I am asking this not with a
modernist or liberal form of Christianity in mind, but Christianity in its historic,
orthodox expression. I suppose certain millennialist positions of the end of
time held by such Christians may be said to take such a view. But is the idea
of history having a right or wrong side part of the Christian outlook?
From time to time in Christian history,
there have been groups who have pinned their hopes - not usually their fears - to
some passage of biblical prophecy or other. Not only radical sects, who have
tied their Christian faith to the events
of history, interpreting this and that as giving direction of the progress of
the gospel to far islands and to the courts of kings, and to interpreting the
‘signs of the times.’ We see this temper
also at work in those who have a programme of Christian ‘cultural transformation’,
perhaps as part of some postmillenial aspiration, or perhaps not. One might
think too, that those who stress divine sovereignty, in providence and in
saving grace, might be tempted in this direction.
The inscrutability of history
It is a feature of living ‘between the
times’ that God’s activity in history, his macro activity we might call it -
cannot be correlated with the ebb and flow of history. Why is this? Because there is now no fixity between the
events in history and the saving purposes of God. The only possible exception
is the history of the church. But that is also rather uncertain. During the
eras if special revelation – in the call of Abraham, and the history of Israel,
and of course in the coming into flesh of the eternal Son, there is redemptive
history in something like the usual sense of history. There were times in which the purposes of God with those with eyes to see, could be discerned. Through the ebbing and flowing, a
trajectory of the divine redemptive purpose is discernible. But no longer.
There is no ‘open vision’. Attempts to make a connection between historical states as the centuries roll, and the redemptive
purposes of God are doomed.
All things come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous, and to the wicked; to the good and to the clean, and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not: as is the good, so is the sinner; and he that sweareth, as he that feareth an oath. (Eccles. 9.2.)
There is some other evidence in Scripture
for this, in eschatological contexts. ‘So, if they say to you, Look, he is in the wilderness, do not go
out. If they say, he is in the inner
rooms, do not believe it’. ‘ For as in those days before the flood…so will
be the coming of the Son of Man.’ (Matt 24 36f.)
Such an understanding of history and the place of the Christian church
in it throws into sharp relief the New Testament teaching on Christians as
pilgrims and strangers, whose citizenship lies exclusively in a future city whose maker and builder is God. Any ‘Christian’ activity which seeks to impact
dimensions of this present age and its cities –through social policies,
political agendas, or arts and crafts - as so many expressions of Christian
faith, inevitably compromises the root importance of a pilgrimage of men
and women who otherwise may agree on little else, but whose eyes and hopes are in the New Jerusalsem. Besides these, the questions of history, its various sides and significances, matter not.
Augustine of Hippo had his cap on the right way.
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Augustine of Hippo had his cap on the right way.
When, therefore, death shall
be swallowed up in victory, these things will not be there, and there shall be
peace – peace full and eternal. We shall be in a kind of City. Brethren, when I
speak of that City, and especially when scandals grow great here, I just cannot
bring myself to stop.
