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Confronting The Da Vinci Code
Part 2: History Is Always Interpreted by
Sinners
“[H]istory is always written by winners. …
As Napoleon once said, ‘What is history, but a fable agreed upon?’”
(Prof. Teabing in The Da Vinci Code, p. 256)
Can there be such a thing as an objective history? To answer that question
you must wrestle to define two words: “objective” and “history”. On one
hand, objectivity is defined as a conscious self-denial of bias, a commitment to
impartiality. But objectivity does not exclude an agreed upon set of
ground rules. A judge cannot be objective if he does not know or comply
with the laws of the land in matters of any given trial. Even objectivity
requires a world-view, a value system, an impetus that compels the historian to
write down or report what he sees because he recognizes it is important.
History is the other word in need of definition. It is not enough to talk
about dates and dead people. It requires organization, structure, motive
and purpose to compose a history. Why study history, or for that matter,
why deny it, if it has no meaning anyway, if it has no order, if it is forever
mysterious, unknowable and, therefore, meaningless? History also requires
a world-view, an approach, even a focal point upon which to attach all else.
For many of the most ancient of civilizations, early history was based on
events. When the worldwide flood occurred it lodged itself in the memories
and folktales and artwork of most of the civilizations which emanated from it
around the world in one form or another. To many, recalling the event
itself was clear enough. But none of those cultural histories could resist
attempting to attach to the event some kind of meaning. It must have
meaning. Whenever man assigns merely his own meaning to events, myth is
born.
Later, history was recorded according to the reigns of kings. Like the
deities of any given nation, the annals of her kings was for her own sense of
glory and protection. That was seen as the purpose for history. As
sons succeeded fathers on the throne, the strength of the nation began to be
seen in the heritage that was recorded. For thousands of years in China,
this was what history meant – dynasty meant strength, permanence, identity.
In Egypt, even though the technological “know-how” to build the Great Pyramids
was already lost by the time Moses was born, the line of her ancient kings was
kept in tact.
But with the coming of Moses, our understanding of history changed forever.
He wrote history linearly, candidly, objectively, and, most importantly, he
wrote from Jahweh’s perspective, not man’s. History was not about man, it
was about God. It doesn’t boast myth, it makes assertions about true
meaning as coming from the Creator, and it calls us to believe what it says.
And as the Israelites were so central to what God was doing in history, we see
them as they really were. They didn’t always win, didn’t always look good.
But the history of this insignificant, little band of homeless people endured in
a world of passing empires – “winners” by man’s standard - because the Winner
who wrote this history was not man at all. It was God.
God’s history tells us man is not endlessly evolving or cycling repeatedly
through existential space. He has been made in the image of God. It
tells us there is a beginning of all things and there will be an end of all
things. And there is also a purpose for all things. A purpose which
even includes man sinning against God, being fallen by nature and being cursed
for it by God. But it also includes a Messiah and redemption of God’s
people and of the world he created, and a day when all history will come to an
end.
Literally, all of Western Civilization has been constructed and has prospered on
this foundation. It effects our view of ourselves, our culture, our burden
to educate and instruct our children, our appreciation for the arts, the cause,
endeavor and opportunity of the sciences. It effects our social order and
government, our sense of right and wrong, our duty of compassion and our
eagerness to see that same foundation spread throughout the world.
There really is a “darkness” in the history of nations, cultures and
civilizations that have been constructed without the Creator’s foundation
meaning. Those thousands of years of Chinese dynasties were marked by
inhumanity, lack of progress and worship of ancestors as idols. Egypt,
even with its development and early construction of the Great Pyramids, was not
advancing but deteriorating as a culture by the time of Moses. And the
only reason we know about these other nations and cultures today is not because
they have provided us with their own carefully recorded histories – there were
no such things - but because Western Civilization has felt compelled to explore
the world, study what it finds through the sciences of sociology and archeology
and write their history for them.
One recent example of this contrast took place in March of 2001. The
Islamic Taliban was in the process of destroying 1500 year old Buddhist
monuments carved into the mountains of Afghanistan. The worldview of Islam
has always been so: do not heighten awareness of the world or of history or of
other cultures but destroy them. Bury the past, erase it from memory.
Today, as represented in the portrayals in Mr. Brown’s book, riding the present
“anti-Western Civilization” ground swell that we witness on college and
university campuses today, there is an attack on objective history.
“History,” we’re told, “can’t truly be known. It is written and re-written
to suit whoever is in power and whoever is on top at the time. We simply
cannot know the past.” But history has always been a science and not
merely a tool for propaganda. In a recent address, George Grant made these
observations against the premise that history has always been written by the
"winners":
The progenitors of modern history,
people like Thucydides and Plutarch were almost always the losers.
Herodotus was a slave. Thucydides was an exiled, Athenian general of
the Peloponnesian War. He was exiled because he disastrously lost every
single one of his commands and ultimately the Athenians lost the war.
He writes the history of the Peloponnesian War and it becomes the
definitive form of military history to this day. Plutarch is a
conquered Greek who is imprisoned and ultimately enslaved and he writes
the definitive version of how to do biography. Even Augustine’s City
of God is written at a time when the Vandals are pounding down the
gates of the city and are about to consume the city and they ultimately
do while he is on his deathbed. So the model for history and much of
history is, in fact, written by the losers.*
And it cannot be so simply and flippantly
denied and dismissed unless, that is, it is intentionally suppressed.
Dan Brown demonstrates this clearly in his book. On one hand, the history
of the Christian Church is not to be believed. It is all a sham, written
by winners who have long suppressed the truth. But in its place, he
proposes conspiracy. He says there is credible evidence which reveals an
“alternative” history, and that, at long last, we can know the truth.
First, he hides behind the lie that history cannot be trusted or known and then
he gives us what he wants us to trust and to know in its place as history.
This fallacy will crumble of its own weight. History can be known for the
study of it, which goes back often to original documents and evidence, and which
purges itself continually of corruption rather than depending upon it. And
because that is true, that which is put forth as history when it really is not,
cannot stand the test of such scrutiny.
But the real question is: what “objective” shall we hold to in our study of
history? To embrace the foundation of Western Civilization is to continue
to progress toward learning and light. To reject it as mere Christian
religiosity and abandon all meaning to life for the sake of “real objectivity”
is to turn our faces to the darkness.
(You may find the
complete MP3 address by George Grant at www.gileskirk.com.)
David G.
Barker, 2005
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