68 Meaning in history, then, comes from the fact that God created man in His image and in the process endowed him with meaning. For secular philosophers of history, the question is much more difficult to answer. Some suggest that history has no meaning. In general, for those that are willing to suggest that there is any meaning at all, the answer given is that in studying the past, we find we have comradery with those who came before us in our suffering. In essence, we learn that life is painful and it always has been. At least we know we are not alone in our pain.1 From my perspective, that is not enough. I would become something other than a historian if that was the only explanation of meaning in history. Thankfully, as Christians, we recognize that there is meaning and that God is working out His plan for humanity through history. Notice the distinction between the two evaluations of meaning in history. Why do Christians and secularists arrive at such different answers to the question of meaning in the past? The answer lies in our respective starting places. As my friend and colleague Dr. Richard Tison has ably communicated in his essay titled “History and the Biblical Worldview,” our presuppositions direct our thinking in these matters. If we believe that God does not exist, then man is purely material, a complex set of chemical interactions, and the product of chance. A chance development has no intrinsic meaning. If this were in fact true, then human beings would live and die and in the long-term perspective would have little meaning other than on a temporal level. If we believe that God does exist, then human beings have meaning as a part of His divine creation. Like the artist who can explain what motivated and provides the meaning behind her most abstract piece, God imbued man with meaning when He crafted him out of the dust and breathed life into him. God had a plan for man before He created him, and human history records the unfolding of that plan. As a result, history, the study of the record of man’s events through time, has meaning because of the creative involvement of the God of the universe. At Cedarville University’s Department of History and Government, we have chosen Romans 12:2 as our department verse. It reads, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is 1 Karl Popper, “Has History Any Meaning?” in The Philosophy of History in Our Time, edited by Hans Meyerhoff. Doubleday Anchor Books, 1937, 305–21; Paul K. Conkin and Roland N. Stromberg, The Heritage and Challenge of History. Dodd and Mead, 1971, 240–44; Page Smith, The Historian and History. Alfred A. Knopf, 1964, 229, 236.
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