The Word of God: Answering The Historiographic Challenge

While (briefly) attending graduate school for historical studies at the California State University, I learned there that historians as a group, when faced with "the historiographic challenge," for the many difficulties faced in answering the question, "What IS history," retreated into the muted reply, "History is what historians do." That's it. For all their considerable academic clout and critical mojo, the best they could come up with to describe their own specialized domain is an unimpressive tautology of sorts. This inability to cash checks their pens keep writing -- and writing extremely well in some cases -- stems from a more basic, ethical and philosophical problem encountered by everyone who does what they do in ignoring their Bibles.

History is, most decidedly, NOT what historians presently do, since presently historians continue ignoring their Bibles. History has a NORMATIVE definition, not merely one that describes how historians tend to behave when plying their trade.

The Bible has the answer, and is not slow in meeting the otherwise daunting task of managing the historiographic problem. Below, I have constructed an answer composed of details taken from the Word of God, and from what is warranted by it only, in formulating a biblical answer to the historiographic challenge.

Now I have given a good deal of thought to this topic before, but I synthesized this response in the ordinary time frame it takes to eat an ordinary sandwich and drink an extraordinary root beer (it was A & W), on account of the Bible's incredibly comprehensive and wise revelation, and because of its great efficacy in resolving the most difficult of questions. The Bible -- really, truly and historically, is the Word of God. Nothing is too hard for the Lord.

So, here is the biblical answer in short form (which could be, of course, be construed more precisely and comprehensively -- and, God willing, it shall be), for homeschoolers and others who want to teach their children something other than vacuous tautologies left over from the "Enlightenment." Bon Apetit.

History is the art of reconstructing the past from earlier written records, with the reconstructed account itself penned in the form of clear and accurate stories aimed at contemporary readers. It’s authors convey a past consisting of former nations, societies, and of the lives of historical actors, in the light of God’s providential and covenantal governing of nations, and of their changing events and phenomena, together with the causes and outcomes of their behaviors.

Historians do this by cross-examining earlier writings and artifacts to piece together the larger picture of God’s dealings with men, and they one with another, to learn which actions God prospers or rebuffs (blesses or curses), and how we, the present generation, relate to our forebearers so studied, for the benefit of their contemporary audience, that they may behave according to the blessings and not the curses, of the implied (or else stated) national covenant with Christ, Lord of every nation, by the will and sovereign decree of God.

This historical record will then show forth the details of the historical plan of God acting to redeem and establish His people on the earth, removing the wicked progressively from it, in the unfolding of his eternal plan in time, which He has foreordained before the world began.