Reading History
W. Carl Ketcherside
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I must confess that one of my greatest pleasures in life is the reading of history. I am intrigued by it and I wade through it with gusto, gathering ideas, plucking thoughts, and stuffing my mind with them, like a boy eating candy when given five minutes of freedom in a confectionery. I can take an oversized volume of Greek and Roman annals and settle down to it with as much delight as I used to tackle blackberry cobbler with homemade ice cream over it.
I am fully aware that not everyone shares my taste. When reference to history was cited to establish a precedent in a libel case against the Chicago Tribune, in 1919, Henry Ford said, "History is more or less bunk." Napoleon offered the view that, "History is fraud, agreed upon." Matthew Arnold referred to it as "that huge Mississippi of falsehood." I think all of these pessimists were somewhat biased and I do not share their views.
Edward Gibbon, in the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, suggested that, "History is little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind." But he may have been a little perturbed because David Hume, who denied the possibility of anything miraculous, warned him that he would be severely criticized because of his chapter on Christianity. He did not regard history as I do, for I think of it as an account of the footprints of God in the passing centuries of human behavior.
A few nights ago, while Nell was working late on the subscription list, and I was seeking respite from the fifty letters I had written during the day, I took from the shelf my worn copy of The Early Church, by David Duff, one
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I am indebted to the author for many things, but chiefly for the insights into Gnosticism, which a German historian, Graul, called "the gigantic serpent which lurked by the cradle of the infant church." Once I came to understand the great schismatic evil against which the saints struggled and fought, some of the letters in the new covenant scriptures came alive. Phrases were pregnant with meaning I had not previously seen, and John's statement about "many antichrists" in the world was understood in its true light.
It was Irenaeus, whose name means "peace", who seemed to have seen the real danger in the false thinking which paraded under the banner of "Knowledge," and which Paul long before had designated as "science falsely so-called." And it was Irenaeus who saw in Gnosticism the stolen trappery of pagan philosophy. Professor Duff writes, "He was alarmed that the Gnostics had borrowed all that their systems contained, partly from the theogonies of the old Greek poets, and partly from the systems of the philosophers, only changing names while adhering substantially to their heathen views."
In our day, the faith once delivered, is called upon to face up to the attack of varied systems which are mistakenly called "modernistic philosophies." The fact is there is nothing new or modern about them. Each one has its counterpart in the Greek schools of thought which existed long before the Logos became flesh. Although called by new names and operating under new brands and labels, they are as old as "the wisdom of this passing age" which Paul confronted in Corinth.
Humanism, for example, did not originate with Dante, Petrarch, or Boccaccio. It was not given birth by the Byzantine scholars who fled to Italy when Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453. It is not at all strange that its advocates revived an interest in the Greek and Latin Classics, and it is one of the strange quirks of history that the invention of the printing press, which made possible the circulation of the revelation of God, also made possible the circulation of the written works of the patrons of the gods. Thus the stage was once again set for the struggle between the wisdom of God and the wisdom of this world.
All of this results in an overwhelming optimism in my breast. The faith faces no new foe in this generation! Certainly the enemy is more sophisticated in approach and more persistent in attack. But the faith has triumphed in every direct encounter in the past. The fact that The Way still exists is a tribute to the life with which it is energized and which makes it possible for God to use things that are not, in the eyes of the world, to bring to nought the things that are!
Our only fear stems from the weakness of the saints, and not from the power of the enemy. In the minds of many the germs of compromise lurk, and the faith is regarded as a way of life rather than as the life of the Way. Under the guise of tolerance for the world we sign a pact of peaceful coexistence with Satan. We erode away our resources in internecine strife and civil wars, laboriously toiling up molehills as if they were mountains. We get along better with the world which we are told not to love, than we do with brethren whom we are admonished to love. We sharpen our sword, not to do battle against the principalities and powers, but to hack one another into bits!
It was not by accident that John, who survived to fight the inroads of Gnostic philosophy, offered the two-pronged commandment of faith and love. "This is his command: to give our allegiance to his Son Jesus Christ and love one another as he commanded." To relinquish our allegiance to the Son is to come apart at the center of the faith;
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It is impossible to gain the victory over what Paul calls "hollow and delusive speculations" with a secondhand faith or a borrowed set of beliefs. Actually such a faith is not "faith" at all, but prejudice. It is simply inherited and adopted without personal examination. In a crisis it cannot stand because the one who holds it cannot defend it. Many a person who is said to lose his faith on the university campus had none to lose. He was operating on what his father believed, or on what a favorite Sunday School teacher had said. One might as well try to masticate food in the college cafeteria with his father's borrowed dentures as to try and chew on metaphysics in the classroom with his father's borrowed convictions.
It will help us when we are assailed by clever advocates of philosophy to remember that we are battling against a foe which is not invincible, but which has been put to flight upon numerous occasions. We need not shed tears of frustration nor wring our hands in futility. No weapon formed against the truth shall prosper. History attests to the power of the faith to overcome the world. "This is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith!" We are fighting upon familiar ground under the leadership of one who never lost a battle and will never know defeat.
"Let no one deceive you with shallow arguments; it is for all these things that God's dreadful judgment is coming upon his rebel subjects. Have no part or lot with them. For though you were once all darkness, now as Christians you are light. Live like men who are at home in daylight, for where light is, there all goodness springs up, all justice and truth" (Ephesians 5:6-8).
Where light is! I am resolved to stay in the Son-light! No one need be reluctant to enter the fray while clad in the armor which God has provided. Nothing can stand against the sword of the Spirit when swung by the hand of one whose trust is strong and who will die for the faith he holds in Jesus.