The great American economic historian Charles A. Beard, in his presidential address to the American Historical Society, offered this grim outlook for his discipline:

“History is chaos and every attempt to interpret it otherwise is an illusion.  History moves around in a kind of cycle.  History moves in a line, straight or spiral, and in some direction.  The historian may seek to escape these issues by silence or . . . he may face them boldly, aware of the intellectual and moral perils inherent in any decision – in his act of faith.”[1]

As we can see, history had no intelligible or moral meaning for Beard; it was simply irrational to him – and yet, he continued to write and publish as if history had value.  For the Christian, of course, history does have purpose and meaning – but only within the intellectual framework of a biblical world and life view.  Unfortunately, the academic rules of this discipline undermine the very possibility of doing meaningful history, for the secular approach to knowledge, by definition, disregards the Christian worldview and with it, any certainty of knowledge.  This is the awful price of fallen man’s independence from God: the loss of objective truth and meaning to his experiences.

But why is historical knowledge – let alone any knowledge – uncertain apart from God’s Word?   The answer is that we are not sufficient unto ourselves but were made to be dependent on our Maker.  It is impossible for us to be self-sufficient in knowledge for only God – by definition – can be self-sufficient; this is why we are commanded to live by every word that proceeds from the Father’s mouth (Deut. 8:3).  Man as a creature is rationally limited and thus needs to be programmed with basic information about the nature of the universe in order to increase in knowledge and establish dominion over all things; only his Creator – God – who exists outside the created order can furnish this necessary intellectual framework by which man can then make sense of the world around him.  It was the Creator who equipped humankind with a set of assumptions about how the world is organized; this is the creature’s starting point for acquiring knowledge.  Without this basic worldview, we could not arrive at any knowledge whatsoever.

To demonstrate, let us assume – for the sake of argument – that mankind evolved from unintelligible matter into a state of intelligible consciousness.  “Evolutionary Adam” would have no basic framework for acquiring knowledge because no God designed one for him.  As such, the world around him would have been rationally inaccessible to his understanding because he would have no built-in presuppositions to guide and structure any of his encounters.  Thus, evolutionary Adam could not know from personal experience alone whether he truly exists as a separate, thinking “thing” apart from everything else; or whether those objects in the Garden are distinct from, or are mere extensions of, himself.  And, assuming that these objects of nature do exist separately apart from Adam, do they – and Adam – have continuous existence over time? – are these objects the same that he experienced 5 minutes ago or even 5 days ago?  If the first human was mentally a blank slate as posited by evolutionists – Adam would have no intuitive understanding of causality, natural order and regularity.  And without these presuppositions, he could not organize or classify the data of his observations because he would not be able to identify any intelligent, uniform pattern to his experiences.   These fundamental assumptions would have to be present in Adam’s mind before he could arrange the facts of creation and establish a foundation of knowledge for further development.  These axioms of knowledge, then, were not first discovered by his investigation because no investigation would have made sense without them.

Now, in contrast to “evolutionary Adam,” let us consider “biblical Adam” whom God commanded to subdue and cultivate the earth.  This ordinance would have been impossible to fulfill unless God first supplied Adam with those necessary intellectual tools enabling him to analyze and understand his environment.  For starters, in order for God to communicate to Adam, the latter would already need to know language and speech patterns prior to receiving this special revelation.  Indeed, the Bible clearly indicates that Adam was fully functional as a rational being from the moment of his creation in adult form.  Thus, he did not have to discover from experience that one must eat, drink, and breathe in order to survive – nor accidently experience submersion to “learn” that humans cannot breathe under water!  Rather, what we find from the first recorded act of dominion is a high degree of rational sophistication in Adam: his taxonomic naming (or categorizing) the animals according to their unique and fixed attributes that he used to separate them according to their “kinds.”  This intelligent act clearly presupposed Adam’s fundamental awareness of the rational and uniform order of creation.  He intuitively understood he was a creature distinct from all the rest and that none of the others were suitable companions for him – save for Eve: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gen. 2:23).  Marriage and the social hierarchy that it entails were not acquired habits of human evolution; rather, God created man and woman to complement and serve each other.  This truth was not accidently discovered by the first human couple; it was innate to them.

So, as we can see from Scripture, mankind did not start off intellectually brutish nor did the Fall reduce them to primitive cavemen; quite the contrary, Adam’s progeny very quickly established urban civilization, being skillful in farming (Cain), animal husbandry (Abel and Seth), music and metal-forming (Lamech; Tubal-cain).  None of these rational activities would have been attempted apart from the crucial assumption that nature exhibits reliably consistent patterns, for why else would Cain have undertaken farming unless he knew prior to this experience that planted seeds of a certain kind will always yield produce of the same kind in due season?  How could Abel have surmised from experience alone that animals always beget their kind and that selective breeding will produce a more desirable flock?  How would Tubal-cain have known that metal ores from the earth would be useful, and that they could be forged into bronze and iron instruments?  None of these men were forced to endure a long process of trial and error in order to learn that nature is orderly and therefore amenable to planned cultivation of her resources.  Rather, the intellectual foundation for all these talents could only have come from God who first made the universe in wisdom (Prov. 3:19-20) – and then equipped man with the cognitive ability and desire to understand this rational creation so as to labor and manage it intelligently according to the Creator’s original command.

Based on this biblical evidence, then, the Fall did not deprive man of his ability to reason, but it did pervert his right use of it.  Man has replaced God’s authority by substituting his own, thereby making himself the ultimate judge of truth.  The unbeliever will not subordinate his intellect to the authority of God’s revelation; this then forces man to be what he is not: autonomous and independent of God.  Because of this, there is a logical impasse within the natural man’s worldview.  On the one hand, he believes that physical nature is all there is – just matter moving in void space; yet, how can unintelligent matter on its own acquire consciousness?  On the other hand, the natural man assumes the existence of immaterial principles of reason and justice that permanently stand above all his variable experiences.  But if evolution be true, then reason itself is a product of the physical world it purports to understand; mind and reason, too, are evolving (changing).  Therefore, if nature is all there is, and it is ever developing into new forms, then there is nothing permanent or unchanging that transcends this universe; there can be no certainty, no truth, no lasting purpose to life in a world undergoing random evolution.  In short, there is no fixed reference point for finite man to hold onto – not even onto man himself who “appears for a little time and then vanishes” (James 4:14).

Thus, what the unbeliever claims as true is contradicted by how he actually lives.  For instance, notice that Charles Beard continued to write history even though his rational system of thought could not make sense of it.  That he still considered it worthwhile to order the facts of history even though his worldview deprived history of any intrinsic meaning demonstrates that the natural man cannot escape the knowledge of God.  All men know God because they are confronted with the truth of God who is “clearly perceived” (Rom. 1:20) in the natural order.  All mankind have “inalienable knowledge” of God and his creation.  Because created in God’s image and bearing His “likeness” (Gen. 1:26), the natural man cannot help but use his mind to know things.    As such, human knowledge is possible only because the natural man has his Creator’s knowledge of the natural order – a knowledge that goes unacknowledged by the sinner.  Yet, in order to preserve his illusion of intellectual freedom, the natural man willfully suppresses this truth in his unrighteousness (Rom. 1:17-18), denying any knowledge of God or rational dependence on Him.  Biblically speaking, the unbeliever is self-deceived due to a self-inflicted hardening of his heart (Eph. 4:18).

Thus, humankind – including historians – in their very core refuse to think God’s thoughts after Him even though they cannot avoid living and thinking within His rational system imprinted on us all.  For it is “in Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).  There can be no objective foundation for knowledge or a true basis for human learning apart from the eternal Rock of Ages – the Alpha and Omega – who first established the universe and our manner of knowing it.  It is for this reason, then, that the unbeliever is genuinely a “fool” (Psalms 14:1) – a fool because he does not understand that his rational and moral arguments denying the existence of God can only have intelligible meaning so long as God exists; thus, he must rationally rely on God in order to reason against God, thereby proving the existence of God even in his rebellion!  In short, the unbeliever “lives and moves” within an intellectual framework – stolen from Christianity – yet employed against the very One who makes logic, reason, and morality possible.

Apart from Scripture, history is rationally uncertain and incomprehensible to the non-Christian.  Uninformed by God’s Word, historical interpretation is hopelessly personal and slanted – a hostage to the beliefs and values of the moment (historicism) as each generation of historians provide their own meaning to the events of the past – determining on their own authority and limited understanding what has “permanent value” in the flux of nature and human experience.  History, then, is not objectively “discovered” so much as it is subjectively “constructed.”  For in the unbeliever’s worldview, man can be nothing more than a higher order of matter in motion, which means even his thoughts, sentiments, and cherished beliefs are likewise physical/chemical side effects.  Thus, his experiences have no inherent value or purpose nor are any of his actions truly free because they are rooted in the unalterable, random interactions of natural forces, which explains Charles Beard’s predicament.  The unbeliever is forced to choose between two mutually exclusive perspectives: natural determinism (material causation/no human freedom from natural forces) or cultural relativism (subjective experiences/situational ethics).

Yet, in spite of his worldview, the unbeliever lives his life as if there really are universal norms: objective truth, right and wrong, inherent human worth, etc.  His commitment to evolution notwithstanding, the unbeliever behaves as if life has value – as if he was specially created in the image of God and not the unintended byproduct of primordial pond scum; like the Psalmist, he intuitively understands that he was fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14).  This is why he seeks peace and justice – not “survival of the fittest.”   This is why he still does history: because he cannot avoid knowing God (Rom. 1:21) and the purpose for which God made him due to the image of God in him.

Thus, Charles Beard was correct in acknowledging the role of faith in his interpretation of history – faith for him being a blind, irrational leap in the dark, hoping that somehow, there is truth and certainty behind all his encounters in a universe that is indifferent to him.  Faith, indeed, is paramount to the discipline of history – that is, a Christian faith grounded in and informed by the eternal, unchanging, and inerrant Sacred Historian who made the world and everything in it.  It is He who established universal rules of reason and moral boundaries – who regulates all things yet ensures human freedom because both matter and consciousness have their origin in Him.  Because His Word is Truth (John 17:17), the Bible is necessarily the Christian’s historical compass.

        [1]Charles A. Beard, “Written History as an Act of Faith,” American Historical Review 39, no. 2 (January 1934): 219-29, at 228-29.