223 - On Accepting But Not Glorifying History

On Accepting But Not Glorifying History
By Charles C. West

The question of Christian action in history does not pose itself so differently in East and West as the ideologists on both sides would like to have us think. Professor J. M. Lochman's thoughtful comments in this issue were written out of the daily encounter of the church with a Marxist society, but they arouse in an American mind remarkably similar reflections. We too are in the midst of questioning our most comforting historical ideas. Having lived since World War II with the basic axiom of a world divided into two irreconcilable camps, we find it becoming ever more polycentric. Nourished till now with an invincible hope that the result of this bipolar conflict would eventually be the victory of "democracy" and "freedom" as Americans define those terms, we find ourselves being pressed by our wisest leaders (George Kennan, Senator Fulbright, Dean Rusk, to name only a few) to accept long term negotiation and accommodation with our ideological foes. Convinced for years that economic development--capitalist held with gently socialist reins-would sweep the world after us to prosperity, we find the gap between rich and poor nations widening, and the poor floundering in their freedom toward revolution and dictatorship. In short, our secular American view of history no longer fits the facts of 1964, and to cling to its myths can be fatal to our society.

By what power, then, do we shake ourselves free of these myths to face reality constructively? It is, says Lochman, the essence of the Christian witness to find in the place where one is the calling of God to service and proclamation of the Word. This Word strips history of its comforting illusions, speaks judgment on our efforts to manipulate it, and at the same time gives us hope. History is the scene of man's confusion, but of God's providential leading. Because

223 - On Accepting But Not Glorifying History

the Christian discerns the leading of Christ in the confusion, he can look history in the eye and accept what he sees there. For Lochman this means accepting the new form of society which has been imposed on his country from the hands of God, in order to face the future in the freedom his calling brings. For us it might well mean humble acceptance of the defeats our own illusions have suffered in order to build up such creative new relations as God may suggest with the Cubans, the Chinese, and the other troublesome neighbors with whom God has called us to live in the world together.

There is, however, another side to the coin. One wonders if Lochman has sufficiently examined it, but in any case we must. History is to be accepted; it is not to be glorified. But what are the facts of history, and how are they to be known by Christians? Is history the field of vast suprapersonal forces in the movement of which one may perhaps "catch the hem of the garment of God," to use a figure from Bismarck? This view is the essence of philosophy of history. Its quintessence was Hegelianism and its strongest representative, for all its jargon about science and materialism, is Marxism today. To hold such a philosophy of history is quite consistent with believing in Christ's transcendence over it; such a combination would seem to be that which Josef Hromadka has made. But there is a radically different, a nonphilosophical, possibility as well. "History has no meaning," writes Karl Popper in his book The Open Society and its Enemies. "It is the task of human beings to give it a meaning." History interpreted in terms of inevitable events and abstract forces is a conspiracy on the part of a minority of ideologues to impose their will on an infinitely varied situation the elements of which are human beings interacting with one another. The center and meaning of this interaction is the coming of Jesus Christ on earth. The stuff of it today is what happens to real people-the justice and injustice which befalls them-in our various social and political systems. For the Christian then to accept his place in history from the hands of God is not to take "peace," "socialism," "Christendom," "free world," "democracy," or any other concept as his own slogan, but to look steadfastly at the relation of Christ to his neighbor and to spell out his social action there.