Does History Have a Purpose?

"Clark began considering problems of the nature of history as early as the 1940s (see his articles: 'The Christian and History' The Witness (Feb., 1949), 14-15 and (Apr. 1949), 5-6). There, he wrote that 'Christianity views past history as a source of instruction for present generations.' The history in the Bible teaches lessons, and we can learn from them. History is instructive in its function. But 'history is significant because in history God acts.'

Michael Douma

I normally do not bother engaging with bad reviews of Dr. Gordon H. Clark's work.  However, in this case I think there has been an egregious misreprsentation of Clark's position on history.  Michael Douma's article, Gordon H. Clark on History, which I critiqued in my last post, Common Misconceptions, deliberately ignores Clark's purpose in writing his book on historiography.  The purpose of the book is a rational defense of the Christian worldview.  The book is an apologetic defense of Calvinism.  Douma should have known this since he even cites Clark's article, The Christian and History.

I will keep this brief and to the point.  First off, Clark did not reject all normal interaction with the physical world as the gnostics would have advocated.  He knew that in everyday life we depend on the five senses to survive.  In fact, Clark once approved of the experience of carpenters and automobile mechanics but he was quick to point out that the experience referred to was learned over time and by intellectual understanding of both of those trades.  Clark's critique of empiricism and historiography was meant to show the limitations of both.  Science, according to Clark, never arrives at the truth because all science is tentative.  Anyone who reads Karl Popper or Thomas Kuhn can see that science is not absolutely objective.  Even the principles of verification and falsification, first introduced into the philosophy of science by Popper, is not guaranteed to produce absolute conclusions.  The laws of physics are not actually laws at all but are instead intellectual constructions imposed on the observations as a way to understand what is being observed.  There can be no universal laws derived from science because science is always changing.

In regards to history, Douma asks how can Clark use history at all?  It seems to me that Douma is unwilling to admit the limitations of his own epistemological system.  He wants to say that historiography is not a reconstruction of the past.  But if there is no God what meaning does history have in the first place?  Without ultimate truth there is no truth since truth would always be changing.  Clark's article, The Christian and History,  points out that Calvinists put a great deal of emphasis on history because in fact the Bible teaches that God is sovereign over history and has a teleological purpose which has a consummation in the eschaton.  God providentially directs and governs everything in history to an end that God has eternally planned for.  (Isaiah 14:24; Isaiah 46:9-11; Ephesians 1:11).  Douma ignores all this because I suspect that he rejects the authority of the Bible.

Even if we disregard biblical history in the historical narratives in the Scriptures, family history plays an important part of who we are as persons.  Since for Clark all knowledge is propositional, it follows that the propositions that a person thinks determines who he or she is.  I understand that my family genealogical lineage helped determine who I am.  I know this from the anecdotal information that I learned from the stories passed down orally from my parents, aunts and uncles, and my grandparents.  But none of this information is absolute.  It does not rise to the level of universally applicable truth.  It is in this sense that Clark rejects historiography as not rising to the level of knowledge.  Douma completely misunderstands Clark on this point and he should know better since he of all people, being trained in historiography, knows that contemporary journalism and even antebellum journalism is subject to the point of view of the person or persons writing the articles.  The same applies to those who write contemporary articles on history as historiographers.

Douma would do well to study the philosophy of epistemology more carefully before making sweeping generalizations about Clark's point of view.  As I stated above, Clark's purpose in writing the book on historiography was to demolish the overconfidence of the critics of Christianity and to show their hypocrisy when applying a double standard against the Bible while at the same acting as though they have certain and absolute knowledge in regards to other ancient documents and persons in history.