506 - Legacy of a Christian Historian

Legacy of a Christian Historian
By Winthrop S. Hudson*

SCHOLAR'S most important insights are frequently to be found in his occasional papers, for it is here that he has opportunity to shed the facade of detachment and to point to the more personal implications of his work. This is notably true of E. Harris Harbison's posthumously published essays, Christianity and History (Princeton University Press, 1964).

In the final paragraph of his well-known earlier volume, The Christian Scholar in the Age of the Reformation (1956), Harbison had spoken of the urgency of recovering the ancient vision of "scholarship as a calling worthy of a Christian, and of Christianity as a commitment worthy of a scholar." The elaboration of this point in terms of his own craft as a historian is one of the major themes of his essays. "I could not long remain," he declared, "either a believing Christian or a practicing historian with my convictions about Christianity and history in water-tight compartments."

Harbison reports, first of all, that he found no basic contradiction between his vocation as a Christian and his profession as a historian, because he discovered that Christians and historians cherished many of the same qualities and attitudes of mind. Among these are a universality of outlook that enables one to escape the distortion of a purely parochial vision; a judgment tempered with mercy so that, in pronouncing verdicts upon men and events, the complexity of human affairs and the frailty of human judgment will not be forgotten;

* This brief but perceptive appraisal of the late Professor E. Harris Harbison of Princeton University was prepared at the invitation of the editors of THEOLOGY TODAY by Professor Winthrop S. Hudson, the distinguished teacher of Church History at the Colgate Rochester Divinity School. Together with the essay reprinted as the Editorial in this issue, these two items are presented to our readers not only for their intrinsic qualities but as a living, verbal memorial to one who was associated with THEOLOGY TODAY from its inception, serving on the Editorial Council from the first issue of the journal in April, 1944.-Ed.

507 - Legacy of a Christian Historian

a realism that is not blind to the levels to which human nature can descend; and at the same time, an open-mindedness that is able to discern unforeseen possibilities-"movements which turn out better than their sordid origins would lead one to expect."

"'Good' events in history have a disconcerting way of producing unlovely results. But many of the results which we later call 'good' have been the by-products of selfish conflicts-civil liberties in English history, for instance, were partly the product of self-interested squabbles over privilege by social and religious groups."

Finally, there is a sense in which both historians and Christians must be relativists-the historian insisting that everything must be considered in relationship to its own time and place, and the Christian refusing to deify any historical institution or movement. "if God is really the Lord of history, then no man or group or idea is the lord of it."

But Harbison not only found his dual roles compatible, he found them mutually enriching. He was much too sensible to believe that a man would be a better Christian simply by virtue of the fact that he was a historian. Nevertheless, since "the genius of Christianity" is that it sees "eternal significance in concrete events," secular history is important to the Christian and Christianity "suffers when its historical character is minimized." It was equally obvious to Harbison, on the other hand, that Christian belief would not make anyone a better historian in terms of technical historical investigation. Christian belief is no substitute for scholarly competence, and it makes no contribution "to the careful study of matters like the laws of Solon, medieval land-tenure, or the impact of gunpowder on the history of military tactics." He was convinced, however, that the Christian view of human nature, of time, and of divine judgment can serve to deepen and enrich any historian's understanding of his subject. Moreover, Christianity makes a very specific contribution to historical understanding in that it "offers a profound insight into the general nature of the historical process."

Historians, Harbison observed, are always tempted to move to either of two extremes in exploring the "why" of history, ending up either in too easy an assurance or in too abject a doubt. Some, with boundless confidence, find the design of history self-evident. This has been notably true of the nineteenth century rationalists and of

508 - Legacy of a Christian Historian

the twentieth century "dialectical materialists." Others, disillusioned and disenchanted, have concluded that history is an unintelligible and meaningless process and that any search for a pattern of meaning is futile. To both temptations, Christian faith serves as an antidote. Believing in a God who both reveals and conceals himself in historical events, the Christian is not surprised that the meaning is never as plain as the nose on one's face. But confident that an underlying design does exist, he is not prepared to foreclose the possibility of discovering tentative clues that will illuminate its meaning.

While Harbison believed that what he called "the Christian attitude toward history" had deepened his historical insight and helped him resolve the antinomy between assurance and skepticism, it is clear that his understanding of the Christian faith was highly selective. He spoke often of Augustine, Luther, and Calvin, and of the Niebuhrs and Herbert Butterfield. And he was aware that the simple fact of being a Christian had not kept Christian historians from "the twin dangers of dogmatism and doubt." Christian historians again and again have either unambiguously identified the hand of God with specific historical events and institutions or so separated God from history that the very idea of any meaning to be found therein has been precluded. Thus Harbison's solution to the problem of reconciling his vocation as a Christian to his profession as a historian was a highly personal one, rooted in a certain diffidence for which he was able to find support both in history and in the Christian faith. Its major virtue was that it always kept him from concluding either too much or too little.