73 George Marsden, a historian of the latter 20th century who taught at Calvin, Duke, and Notre Dame, has written extensively on the concept of the integration of Christianity and history. Like Augustine, Marsden embraced the notion of a linear approach to history and the concept that history has meaning because of the existence of the Creator God. Like Clark, Marsden believes that history is knowable, at least to some helpful extent, and it is worth studying. Finally, like Butterfield, he found deterministic approaches to history inconsistent with a biblical understanding of man’s volition. Also like Butterfield, Marsden found little difference in how Christian and secular historians operated, except in the areas of topics chosen for examination and, in some cases, sources that might be used in research. Marsden posed an important question — can a reader recognize a Christian historian from a secular historian just by reading what he or she has written? Marsden seems to long for it in his writings on integrating Christianity and history, but he is unsure. He argued that the Christian historian has a unique set of “control beliefs” — a term borrowed from Christian philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff.4 Control beliefs influence a Christian’s perspective of the past. For example, the recognition that while man may be influenced by various forces, his path is not determined by any of them because he was created as a volitional being, is a control belief that causes Christian historians to reject deterministic interpretations of the past. In this case, as in others, Marsden argues, when historical conclusions conflict with biblical principle, the historical conclusions should — in most cases — be changed. Control beliefs, then, guide interpretation of the past. These various elements of how biblical principle impacts the view of history by a Christian are helpful, but the question remains whether or not there is a clear, distinctively Christian interpretation of history. Marsden, in a work titledA Christian View of History?, shied away from asserting such a thing.5 In fact, as was noted earlier, he was not even sure that a history written by a Christian would be identifiable from that written by a non-Christian. Wolterstorff, too, suggested that such identifiable distinctiveness was not necessarily required for Christian fidelity.6 So, perhaps then, it appears that Marsden, and Wolterstorff too 4 George M. Marsden, “The Spiritual Vision of History,” Fides et Historia 14 (Fall-Winter 1981), 59; Paul A. Marshall, Sander Griffioen, and Richard J. Mouw, eds. Stained Glass: Worldviews and Social Science. University Press of America, 1989. 5 George M. Marsden and Frank Roberts, A Christian View of History?Eerdmans Publishing. Co., 1975. 6 Nicholas Wolterstorff, “On Christian Learning,” in Stained Glass: Worldviews and Social Science, edited by Paul A. Marshall, Sander Griffioen, and Richard J. Mouw. University Press of America, 1989, 70.
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