Danto on History: The Importance of Narrative

"Our incapacity, which is granted, to observe the past, is not a defect in history itself, but a deficiency which it is the precise purpose of history to overcome."

"History has been the central category of my philosophy, and the way we define our experience through narrative structures - through stories. The thing about stories is that we don't know how they are going to turn out, and how different the beginning is going to look to us when we see how it all ended. Philosophers mainly get hung up on the connection between consciousness and the brain, but my interest is in the historical structure of consciousness - how the consciousness of someone living in the thirteenth century has to have been different from the consciousness of someone living as we do in the twenty-first century."

Ankersmit on Historians

"I wanted to cut through all ties with literary theory and why, without changing conceptually or theoretically, I preferred to replace the term narrative by  representation.  Representation is a neutral term. I think it also quite adequately describes what an historian does – he gives a representation of the past in the sense of making the past present again. That is why we need historical writing. A representation is not necessarily a narrative; you have the so called cross-sectional studies, the famous example being Jacob Burckhardt's Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien or Huizinga's The waning of the middle ages or Braudel's on the Mediterranean world. They do not tell a story, they do not give us a narrative with a certain beginning, middle and end, but they are historical works representing the past."


"This is why the epistemological situation in which you find yourself when having to do with truth no longer exist when it comes to representation. You cannot say of representations that they are true. What you can say is that one representation is in a certain sense better than another and it is the task of the philosophy of history to clarify how one can be better in one way or another. And that is what I try to do with the notion of metaphor."


"Historians are swamped by historical truths – and this is how it ought to be. The more truths we have about the past, the better the historian's representations of the past may become."

More on the Election and Trinity Discussion

After taking my Comprehensive exams on Barth's theology  I tried to summarize in my mind where we are at after the McCormack's thesis on election (see earlier posts for what I am talking about):

1. Barth was inconsistent with regards to both election and the Trinity.  In short, he is sometimes very close to McCormack's reading and other times he is with Hunsinger and company.  Therefore, the context of what Barth "actually" believed is not a steady foundation.  You can proof text to make him fall into either positions. I think one should strive for authorial intent but at this point this does not rule which theory is more viable.

2. Barth's inconsistency deals with the nature of revelation and his constantly beginning again at the beginning.  The self-critical technique places Barth in a position where he is consistently working through and reworking ideas, which it is dangerous to simply proof text him.  Thus, this leads to points where he emphasizes the historicity of Christ and the humanity of God and other places he zones in on the freedom of God.

3. McCormack has made the point that Barth's view of election was his most important contribution to the realm of 20th century thought (not just theological), yet he also thinks it is underdeveloped; McCormack also acknowledges that Barth did not go further with this idea than he should have so he even sees his own project as somewhat original and creative ( a point his detractors sometimes do not respect).

He could not be more right!  I think Barth was pioneering with this idea and is consistent with his anti-idolatry, anti-metaphysical tendencies.  In what sense?  It frees us to think of God as God-in-relation with humanity (and the cosmos-ie Moltmann), so that one is not constantly trying to develop a theology of history that is different than what is revealed.  In short, it tries to curb the power of speculation between God's being and God's acts.  In other words, McCormack is playing to the somewhat Hegelian tendencies of the later Barth.

One of Hegel's points was how can one even talk about God if there is no interaction with humanity?  I think Hegel's question is even compelling to some of Barth's defense of the detached, transcendent (yet free) God.  If Barth (even unwittingly) teaches us something, it is to stop with the escape into the speculative, foundational metaphysics and to deal with the way the revealed religions contribute to our understanding of what God has revealed and how we live in light of this revelation.

Evangelical Calvinism=FAIL (or why John Piper is a bad man)...

It is an interesting thing to look back on why I decided to get involved in academics.  One of the motivating factors was that I was an avid reader of all types of evangelical Calvinism (Piper, Sproul, the Puritans featured in the Banner of Truth, some Augustine and of course Calvin himself), and I wanted to become a theologian to understand the Reformation better because of course the main problem in the world today is that there is a fight against the Reformation's view of justification by faith (ALONE)!

I tried to be a strong evangelical Calvinist for about a year or so (I remember famously getting in an argument with my mom and her "Wesleyian, Semi-Pelagian tenedencies"-c'mon, who talks like that!-over the issue of predestination and free will; there is a certain condescending attitude that sets in when you are one of the elect).  However, the fact that I studied history and enjoyed studying philosophy on the side "reformed" my theology to be less Calvinist (even though I have learned to appreciate Calvin, but the people who helped in this transition were Barth and Bonhoeffer).

One of the main issues had to do with the way evangelical Calvinists will almost robot-like claim that God was behind everything even events like genocide and murder (I guess tornadoes was the last event).  But they are consistent in the extent that God has to be sovereign over all things especially in the salvation of the elect; adding any foreign elements of goodness apart from God would mess up their formula (because humans are sinful to the core), so that leads them to make God completely in charge of salvation and also of damnation.

When it comes down to the issue of predestination and free will or the elect and non-elect I have gotten to the point of saying that I really don't care about this issue.  It has WASTED a lot of pens and paper and probably many an evangelical will argue some more over the Calvinist versus Arminius views.  However, rumor has it that many evangelical Calvinists are trying to draw the line in the sand that states they are the only "true" evangelicals.  Well, have at it...

If God is not a saving God and the gospel is not a good news for all humanity then I don't want to hear it (God is also holy and just and judges sin but, for me, not before the dawn of human time).  I would honestly rather side with Voltaire than with a Calvinist because at least Voltaire had the good moral sense to see disaster in the world as a bad thing and not try to rationalize how something like the Holocaust or child abuse could be somehow used to God's glory.  I just think it is about time for more evangelicals (or people in general) to call out this type of rationalizing.  It honestly does not help anyone.

The English "Bloody" Revolution and its Christian Basis

One of the Comprehensive exams I am studying for has to do with the Eighteenth Century Enlightenment.  The guiding thread of my studies is that religion (and even somewhat orthodox Christianity) was crucial in moving society into a place of toleration for religious dissent.  England is the paradigm for such changes (even though the genesis of much of these ideas flow from the interaction of exiles in the Dutch Republic (the place Spinoza hung out).

According to David Sorkin in his excellent recent book The Religious Enlightenment, the movement for toleration was lost to the French especially because dissension was stamped out by the union of monarchy-nobility-Catholic clergy.  Therefore, when the Revolution happened in France, the moderate Christian voices were a minority between those clergy loyal to a papal monarchy and the old order and the followers of the philosophes, who distrusted religious beliefs in general.  So when the Jacobins took control in about 1793 and the Terror was unleashed (not to mention de-Christianization) many of the moderate voices were lost.  After Napoleon was defeated, the reaction toward the French Revolution and the Enlightenment was one of distrust especially in moderate to conservative religious circles.

A popular argument is that the English "Bloodless" Revolution is the paradigm because it is somehow framed as God-based whereas the French Revolution with the Terror is secular and thus violent to its core.  This analysis is a little shaky for at least two reasons.  One, nobody can question that the Terror was out of control but one can understand after centuries of feudal abuse, in addition to internal fighting in France and external invasion, why it happened the way it did.

Second, to proclaim that the English Revolution was bloodless is simply ridiculous.  The "true" Revolution actually happened alongside the Civil War in the 1640s and the rise of Cromwell's army.  Nobody would call this fight bloodless (especially when one weighs in on the suppression of the Irish).  The Revolution by William/Mary at 1688 was more of a clean-up operation to remove another Catholic king, James II.

One person that I never thought of seeing in the light of these times is John Bunyan (1628-88) author of the Pilgrim's Progress (historians Christopher Hill and Richard Greaves make this point).  Bunyan was a soldier during the war and was upset when the Puritans brought back the monarchy in 1660 with the Restoration of Charles II.  He was a "people's pastor" who had friends among other dissenting groups.  Bunyan himself as a Baptist was also a dissenter and spent 12 years in prison for his beliefs  that he had a right and freedom to preach the gospel.  One idea from this is to raise the point that here is an orthodox Christian thinker willing to spend time in prison for an Enlightened opinion; his works should then be read for the social-political, and yes, religious implications they had.

All this is to make the point that the Civil War was extremely bloody (but what revolutionary moment isn't) but it was acted out because of political/religious issues.  Those issues continued to be debated and fought for by dissenters like Bunyan and John Locke even after the Glorious Revolution in 1688.  In short, the Enlightenment in England like France has its foundation in blood and tears but that is sometimes the price society pays for the freedom of conscience.

LaCapra: Intellectual History

If I had to define the method that I am most comfortable with, I would probably place myself within the Intellectual History tradition.  This tradition has come under fire for being too philosophical or not contextual enough, but I think it has much to offer multiple disciplines.  The author I will be leaning on for help to describe this method is Dominick LaCapra.  LaCapra is famous for his work on Intellectual History and his work on the Holocaust; some of the questions he raises is on how historians can show empathy for their subjects like in a topic as grave as the Holocaust.  Much of the information below is found in Elizabeth Clark's book History, Theory, Text.

LaCapra describes Intellectual History as "a history of the situated uses of language constitutive of significant texts."  He criticizes a documentary historiographical approach (this includes both social and economic historians) to texts as positivism; he notes that historical documents are never simply just "there" to read.  His point is to ask what do these text really do. Oftentimes the move is to read everything per context or authorial intention and thus the text takes a backseat to the context.  However, context itself is something that also needs interpretation.  Another factor to take into consideration are those traces in a text of what is actually left unsaid.   LaCapra therefore focuses on the place where contexts and texts come into relation with each other.  Clark notes that what is so helpful about LaCapra's method is that his concern for language does not compromise the importance of good research practices.  Therefore, better reading methods with regards to a more nuanced reading of the context/text and the way the historian actually reads them combined with typical research methods of archival work, and attention to primary and secondary works is the method that seems to form here.

Jungel on History, Barth and the Election

"If it is truly the case that the reality and truth of God's revelation is comprehensive and self-contained in all respects, then it must also be the case that this revelation brings its own historical location, its own reality in space and time.  Note that the revelation establishes its location as a historical location, its reality as an earthly reality.  There is nothing ghostly or ethereal about the revelation.  History becomes an authentic predicate of revelation.  But the revelation brings its own history, seeking to be historically real and effective for us.  This is what Karl Barth calls election."  See Karl Barth: A Theological Legacy, pg 129