Two Philosophers of History

Extract

It seems that all roads of thought, all mind-routes, lead into history; because, of any subject of study, even the most abstract, one is bound to ask, sooner or later, what has this to do with human life? And human life is necessarily historical. Every concept we use includes some reference to time, and as soon as we relate it to human life the reference at once becomes more or less explicit. In God himself our faith finds such a reference: he is not temporal, but his ways with man are; and in Christ he has seized hold of time in such a way as to compel us to acknowledge a divine mystery in it and to strive to penetrate this mystery so far as we can. This is a new compulsion, a peculiarly Christian one; it does not spring from the need to make sense of human life as such, but from the need, if one may so put it, to make sense of Christ. We certainly cannot separate human history, down to the present moment and on into the future, from Christ. But if this seems to commit us, as believers, to a ‘theology of history’, can we say that we are also committed, merely as reasoning animals, to a ‘philosophy of history’? Is such a discipline in fact conceivable? As philosophy it must be conceivable, if at all, and approachable, if at all, from the side of reason, not of faith.