It’s increasingly obvious that the modern West has become antihistorical. The past is no longer seen as a useful guide to the present or future, but a misleading, unreliable one. Those who lived in the past are more likely to be dishonored than honored. The study of history itself is often seen as wasteful or even dangerous. When reading Carl Trueman’s Histories and Fallacies, I was interested to see his explanation of how we have arrived at such a point. He offers four reasons.
The first reason is the dominance of science. Many people today understand science to be the only way to achieve objective knowledge. When we reject the notion that truth is available through Scripture or anything else, we are left only with the narrative of science, which assumes that the present is superior to the past and the future will be superior to the present. After all, new scientific discoveries almost invariably supplant those from the past and lead us to greater knowledge, greater wealth, greater health, greater safety. Surely, then, our focus should be on the future far more than the past. Surely one is more important and reliable than the other.
The
To continue...read the full-length post originally published on this site.
