History

I am a historian, but wearing that hat I often jokingly say of myself, ‘I’m not just history,’ meaning of course that I too have a life in the present. Along with my friend Onesimus, I have to ask, ‘Is there really a past?’ not in an absolute sense, for of course there is, but in any frame of reference that can be both meaningful to us and true at the same time. What he writes here says it better than I could say, or rather, ask…

Is there a 'past' that can be accessed and made intelligible on its own terms, rather than just in the service of the need of the day? Or have we so wound the figures and ideas and deeds of long ago women and men in the layers of polemic that they no longer resemble who they were or what they said or how they lived? History, especially religious history, thus becomes a minefield, littered with the improvised explosive devices of later generations. Layered with conflicts that the originals knew nothing about nor had they any intention in which to engage. But now the whole edifice of official history cracks with tension, bearing weights of dogma the architect never conceived, whole systems of belief that threaten to collapse should one brick of historical 'fact' be questioned. Christian blood was shed defending these bulging walls, wars were fought between self-proclaimed Christian armies either to conserve or annihilate the status quo. All in the name of Christ, of course.

So is it possible to pull back the conflicting dogmas and engage with what long ago people actually did and said?

In Sergei Fudel's humble but startlingly clear work, Light in the Darkness, he describes the Russian Christian intelligentsia of the 1920's, an eccentric as well as eclectic group. One of its members—I can't remember his name—was a historian who was writing a book on the History of the Church, but not a history as we're used to seeing, but a spiritual history, that is, a history of the movements of the human spirit that underlay the visible acts and events of the Church. I wish he had finished that book, and I'd want to get a copy of it if he had, but I don't have a clue where to look for it. The idea, though, intrigues me every time I reread Light in the Darkness and come upon mention of it.

I think that my participation in and understanding of the Church is very much rooted in this way of looking at history, not the visibles but the invisibles. That vision seems even clearer and more compelling than what we normally see and experience. What Onesimus is asking in his final question seems at least a tangent to this vision.

Is it possible to engage with what long ago people actually did and said? In an unexpected and surprising way, I think it is. We just have to know where to look.