SENSE OF CHURCH HISTORY

SENSE OF HISTORY
FOR THOSE WHO LIVE IN HISTORY

History has two faces, because its subject (humanity) does. Man�s nature is split into the part which exists and part which is looking upon one�s own existence with passion, doubts, hope. Human nature is cracked after the Fall, and we don�t know everything about ourselves. Man exits and at the same he doesn�t know everything about his own existence and he is obliged to reflect upon his own life in order to reach self-understanding. That is true on personal level, that is true on the level on humankind. History is at the same time existence of humanity, always mysterious to humanity, and history is what humanity knows and thinks about its own existence.

There are two different senses of history, applied to different meanings of it. There is one sense in studying the reflective face history, only/at least partly accessible ("for now we see in a mirror dimly" [1 Cor 13:12]) and opened to intellectuals, reflecting upon this sense. The another, basic sense of history is obligatory to all human beings. It is sense of existing not in loneliness, not in an isolated culture, region, generation, but in a chain of generations.

All Christians agree that there is the sense in the history before Christ, that centuries before Christ have been necessary for preparing humanity to meeting with the Savior, however imperfect this preparation could be. History before Christ was the accumulation of spiritual experience, through mistakes and successes, although Jesus was not the result of this accumulation. After the humanity made everything possible and stopped in front of the impossibility "to bring Christ down" [Rom 10:6.] Majority of Christians think that there is no special sense in history after Christ except fulfillment of Lord�s commandment to "preach the Gospel to all creation" [Mk 16:15.]

Our feeling of justice is the main obstacle in understanding the sense of the post-Ascension history. Is it just for one person to gain something which another person lacks? If we today can create or receive something, than our Christian predecessors, greatest saints, are deprived of our achievements? Sense means movement to some goal, to perfection, and after Christ is it possible to speak about further perfection? Everything fiat, has been achieved, perfection is in the past, or in eternity, but not in time, especially not in future time. It is just for history to be mere repetition of the personal way to Christ in new personalities.

Such appeal for justice is just. Everything good is just to be possessed by each good person. It is possible due to the fact that human being is not totally separated from humankind. It is so in the natural order of things, and it is even more so in the supernatural order of things. Human being is not an island even without God, and human being is a part of Theo-humanity in Christ. In Theo-humanity personal and private spiritual experience becomes common experience without seizing to be absolutely personal and private. This is possible due to the fact that Theo-humanity exists together with God in eternity and at the same time, until the Last Day, in history.

The sharing and mutual possessing of spiritual achievements explains not only the post-Ascension history, but also pre-Nativity history. "Men of whom the world was not worthy ... did not receive what was promised, because God had provided something better for us, so that apart from us they should not be made perfect" (Hebr 11:39-40). Those saints who lived before Christ shared the Salvation with those who live after Christ. So it is possible for past generations to share with future generations in achievements.

But what new can "we who are alive" [1 Th 4:15] add to what Christ had done, except some new converts? "The Lord is not slow about His promise ... but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance" [2 Pe 3,9]. This phrase seems to mean that only quantitative growth is possible in history.

Personal coming to repentance constitutes only part of the complex process of creating Theo-humanity through gathering, transfiguration, sanctification of humans. If can know what lacks in the Theo-humanity, we could predict the date of Second Coming. We don�t know this, because such knowledge in itself would be an obstacle for our salvation. We can only determine the orientation (humanity must turn to Christ) and direction. Just as God waited for centuries until humanity have been prepared to meet Christ in humility, so He is waiting now until humanity will be prepared to become Theo-humanity and meet Christ in glory. What do we lack? What do greatest saints lacked? We cannot know precisely, but we can guess.

Christians can pretend that they are ready to meet Christ, we are eager to meet Him in Theo-Humanity. The problem is that we are not ready yet to meet other humans in Eden, to become one not only with God but with very different people in Theo-humanity. We are not enough liberated from hatred, misunderstanding, social, class, cultural prejudices, and even the best of Christians, as we see aback, have been poisoned by these qualities. God is powerful enough to do anything, to restore anything, to compensate and correct everything. Still He waits, as He waited to come for the first time, as He is awaiting for many people, in order not to crush the will of humanity in general, in order not to create Theo-humanity artificially, overcoming human�s resistance. That is why God tolerate the existence of history � it prepares not only separate humans, but humanity for the life in God. History is the incubator of Theo-humanity. All humans go through this incubator.

SENSE OF HISTORY
FOR THOSE WHO READ HISTORY

There are several supplementary senses of history which inspire people to fix and study history, to think about history.

Christian believer cannot deny the existence of sense in history. It is very easy however to deny the intelligibility of this sense. C.S.Lewis in his essay "Historicism" criticized those, who believe that by one�s natural powers it is possible to open the inner sense of historical process. As usual, Lewis was very bright in his attack on the enemy; the problem is that there are no such historicists among Christians. He created an artificial opponent and defeated him. He didn�t deny the existence of sense in history. He only stressed the unintelligibility of the sense.

The unintelligibility of the sense of history is in itself very meaningful. It is not a complete unintelligibility. It is unintelligibility to the positive, scientific knowledge; it includes the impossibility of experiment, of checking hypothesizes, of reproducing results. The positivistic unintelligibility of history is itself a Christian witness, in assures people that what they used to look upon as their own manor has some Landlord. The unintelligibility of the sense of history to rationalism is a way to seek faith in God and ask Him for clarifications.

C.S.Lewis stressed that we cannot reach complete knowledge of history, and concludes that we cannot reach any understanding. He equals understanding with complete understanding. Completeness of understanding is checked by access to manipulating of what we investigated.

But understanding can be reached partly. (There are a lot of kinds of things which can be understood completely without full knowledge of them, but history is not among them.) We can reach at least partial understanding of history, and first of all Christians understand that the meaning of history lies outside history. History belongs to the kind of created things which are only tools. History is a shuttle which took a man after he departed from Eden and which must take man back to Eden. Sense of history is in leading history to higher sense. Understanding of this destination of history is in itself a precious gift, it gives orientation in everyday life, it learns to look upon existence sub specie aeternitatis.

The greatest merit of history is the same quality which makes history unpleasant in the eyes of rationalists and positivists: history cannot be reduced to anything but history. Leo Tolstoy was asked once what did he wanted to express by his novel "Anna Karenina." Tolstoy answered that if he could express this shorter than by the text of the novel itself, he will do this simply to save his own time and time of readers. If Creator could make history shorter, He will. If it will be possible to achieve or to understand something without centuries of people�s sufferings, bloodshed, it would be done. But it is impossible. History is being fixed, studied, read, because there are some things which cannot be put to us in abstract terms, in conclusions and thesises, but in the historical narrative only. History is first of all observation and meditation on what is observed. Certainly, history is need of historical research, just as a physician is need of X-ray photography and its interpretation, but on the last stage sense of studying history is in achieving the look on reality in its full time-scale, with events visible and invisible.

SENSE OF HISTORY
FOR THOSE WHO WRITE HISTORY

Church historian not only have a right to but are obliged to have some basic feeling on the sense of Church history. (This and all following statements certainly are addressed mainly their author.) Church historian must have principle at a place where natural scientists have hypothesis. These must be principle of study, vague enough to leave unresolved the problem of sense of history. If a man formulates his ideas about Church history (or any history) too definitely, he risks to lose any interest to the object of his attention. What for to study what is already so clear? May be, this is explanation why Lord Acton didn�t fulfilled his plans in the field of Church history. He beforehand knew too well what will be the result of work. He was too sure that he knows present state of the Church and the world, so his interest to the background of modernity was purely antiquarian. Church historian must first of all be humble to the extent of feeling his ignorance on the present state of affairs; he turns to the past in order to win this ignorance.

Church historian must be enough assured in his calling to remember that he does what neither prophets, nor theologians, not Church hierarchy, nor mystics can do. He is fixing others deeds and sayings, and he is fixing them so as by the process of writing history give some explanation. "Let one who speaks in a tongue pray that he may interpret." (1 Cor 14:13). Let one who write history pray that he may interpret.

Church historian must have some definite views on the nature and borders of the Church. Church acts in history, it influences history. That means, above all, that Church influences all history, not only morals, or government, or private life. What is less banal, is the understanding that the main influence of the Church on history is always carry out indirectly. Christians are "salt of the earth" (Mt 5:13), the Kingdom of heaven is "like leaven" (Mt 13:33). But nobody eats pure salt or leaven. nor does anyone think that final product of cooking will be salt or leaven. History of Church institutions is only the part on the Church history. Church history is not lesser than world history, but broader than it. Church historian must not write world history, but he must write history of the Church as the force driving the universe to salvation, suggesting the salvation to the whole creation, not only to the members of the Church.

Indirectness of the Church influence on the world means that Church influence the world not only through sacraments, saintity of its members, sermons, but also through their sins, through perversions of Christ�s commandments, negatively, through disseminating ideas, which are only partly rooted in the Gospel. The sins of Christians and achievements of non-Christians, based on the invisible background of the Gospel, are also part of the Church history.

Salt or leaven both have visual borders. Church differs from material salt and leaven, because visible borders of the Church are problematic. This deals with the paradox of existence of eternal Church in temporal world. Words are perverted and not counterfeited. "Not everyone who says to" Jesus, �Lord, Lord�, will enter His kingdom (Mt 7:21). Many will be expelled, and to be expelled from Kingdom means to be expelled from the Church, and history of the Church. This not the main problem, and Church herself always knew this sad paradox, and Dante depicted it by placing many Popes and cardinals in the hell.

More prominent is that Christ will say "Come, you who are blessed of My Father" (Mt 25:34) to many people, who haven�t been called Christians at all, to many, who have been qualified by Christians as false-Christians, heretics, sectarians, schismatic, to many, who rejected Christ only because they had no other way to reject sinful Christians (not all such people!). Church history will finish outside history, and at that moment "whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved" (Ro 10:13). Church historian risks just as a prophet, because they are obliged to "give account" (Ro 14:12) not only for themselves, but for all brothers.

There are two ways of dealing with this paradox. First, Church historian can choose to follow the judgments of his own denominations, and include in Church history only history of those who are believed to be Christians by his co-believers. Heretics he will include in his narration only to show by contrast the orthodoxy of his Church as opposed to corruptness. Second, he can rely on the principle of presumption of innocence and include all people who have used the name of Christ into the Church history. Second way is the way of tolerance. Intolerance in itself is such a great danger, that the second way is preferable, according to the words of St. Paul: "Rather determine this � not to put an obstacle or a stumbling block in a brother�s way" (Ro 14:13).

If Church historian is intolerant, he puts an obstacle in the way of Christians who do not belong to his denomination. If Church historian is tolerant, he puts an obstacle in the way of intolerant members of his own denomination (and more than often these members stand higher than he in the Church hierarchy.) This paradox can be solved only be the honest witnessing. Church historian must honestly show his own personal believe in what denomination is actually the One Apostolic Holy Catholic Church, and the limits to which he thinks other people who use the name of Christ are linked with the Church.