Sinful man has commandeered history. History is really ruled by God and all about his unfolding plan for redemption. But modern man has reformulated his understanding of history in order to support an impersonalist worldview and to rule out the need for God. But the impersonalist view of history is built off of some assumptions that need to be questioned.
From the very start the impersonalist view of history is built off of what neo-evangelical apologists use to say was borrowed capital. They build their view of history off of the recognition of regularities in the world. Vern Poythress writes:
The principles all go back to conceptions with regard to history, human nature, and the correlation of cause and effect. These conceptions include conceptions about the regularities we may expect. The principle of criticism depends on regularities with respect to fallen human nature, including fallibility and deceit. The principle of analogy depends on regularities with respect to patterns of human interaction. These patterns have a unity because all people are made in the image of God. The principle of correlation depends on regularities with respect to cause and effect. All these regularities depend on God. (Inerrancy and Worldview, 51).
The impersonalist view of history is built off of expectations about the regularities of our world and our experiences in it, but such regularities are made possible by God. God has created the world, with is regularities, and God sustains that world, and its regularities. God’s speech has established and maintains the laws of our universe and experience, and such speech is personal. The three principles work, then, because a personal God establish the foundations for them. And yet, it is important to note that a personal God may also deviate from the expected regularities for his own special purposes. In an impersonal universe God cannot do that, but that is not the universe in which the Bible presents this God and his unfolding history.
The principle of criticism, for example, works because the Bible’s conception of the fall is true. Man is fallible. And yet God is not fallible. So Poythress notes:
If God is personal, the principle of criticism must be understood as a principle that reflects his mind. Hence, it includes implicitly the acknowledgement that God himself always speaks truly, that he can speak truly through fallible human beings, and that these human beings can then be trusted in their capacity as his spokesmen. We trust them, not because of who they are, but because of who God is. We are not supposed to weight critically God’s testimony. In fact, by the standard of God’s rationality, it is irrational to do so. (52)
The principle of criticism applied in a perosnalist worldview with a personal view of history understands God can speak truly, and speak truly through fallible men. The same alterations to the other two principles exist as well.
The principle of analogy is real because everything that God does is consistent with who he is and the ways he expresses his character. This is true too of the miraculous events found in Scripture, many of which are rejected by modern historians of the Scriptures. Again Poythress observes:
He created the universe and now acts in and sustains it in a manner consistent with and in harmony with the way in which he created it. Christ’s resurrection is analogous to our future resurrection. and Christ’s resurrection is foreshadowed in the lesser instances of raising the dead, such as with the Shunammite’s son (2 Kings 4:32-37), Jairus’s daughter (Matt. 9:18-26), and Lazarus (John 11:1-44)…There are plenty of analogies like these that make good sense within a world ruled by God, but which will be rejected by people who hold a worldview with impersonal laws. (53)
The principle Analogy in a personalist worldview is possible because of a God who acts consistent with His character, and yet it also acknowledges regularities in the miraculous events.
When we consider too the principle of cause and effect in a personalist worldview we see a personal cause behind all events: God. There are certainly secondary causes in the world, but God is the primary cause of all things. Poythress is right when he notes that this changes the way we view causes and effect within our historical research. He writes:
When we reckon with him, we must loosen our expectations as to what “causes” we look for in the background of events. Supernatural acts of God are possible, which we may not be able to account for merely by appealing to secondary causes. (53)
Cause and effect is a legitimate principle, but it should not be drawn apart from a personal God interacting in our world.
At the final we have to contest that the impersonalist conception of history is built off a number of assumptions that should be questioned. We can see that these principles operate just as legitimately within a personal worldview, and at their foundation they are all built off of a personal God who governs and rules our world and the history of that world. Poythress observes four assumptions that an impersonal conception of history makes. First, he says, “it assumes that historical investigation can be conducted without fundamental religious assumptions about the nature of history and the nature of law.” Second, then, “it assumes that a secular historical method can operate accurately when it conceives of historical regularities as resting on impersonal laws.” Third, “it assumes that the Bible and the special redemptive events described in it cannot be exceptions to God’s regular ways of governing the world. Their nonexceptional character makes it appropriate to apply the same method to them.” Fourth, he writes, “it gains strength from the widespread cultural assumption that academic research and writing can be religiously neutral, and that this neutrality is not only pragmatically fruitful but accurate concerning the nature of reality” (54).
History belongs to God! It is the unfolding of his story. As we study it and seek to understand the difficulties, particularly those in Scripture, we must view it from within a personalist worldview. God governs history and as we study Scripture we need to consider how we study it. We can study and understand it well, I would argue even better, by viewing it from within the Biblical worldview. Our God is the God of history!
Sparrow & Heart Soul Care 