Editorial
The Winds of History
Using History to Get Where We Ought to Go
by Wilfred M. McClay
Christians cannot ignore history. On the contrary, we are uniquely bound to it. We are not like Buddhists or gnostics. The specific things that happen in time and space matter enormously for us, precisely because the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And yet the meanings of history are always partial and subordinate and provisional, precisely because God’s ways are not our own. We cannot ever know for sure what matters most in God’s sight. Indeed, we know that the fall of one sparrow, or the crucifixion of one man, can trump the fall of a great and gaudy empire.
And so we need some way of sorting out what history means and does not mean. In doing this, there is the real danger that we will make history mean either too much or too little. Our era’s problem, as Patrick Reardon observes in his editorial, is almost entirely with the former. We tend to understand history in our age as History, an inexorably “progressive” force, and hence an authority of last resort.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
Wilfred M. McClay holds the SunTrust Chair of Humanities at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and is the author of The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America (North Carolina) and A Student's Guide to U.S. History (ISI Books). He is a member of the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A.
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more from the online archives
35.6—Nov/Dec 2022
on the Divine Promise Fulfilled by the Child of Bethlehem by James M. Kushiner
15.6—July/August 2002
Things Hidden Since the Beginning of the World
The Shape of Divine Providence & Human History by James Hitchcock
18.10—December 2005
on an Apostle’s Encounter with the Son’s Children by Anthony Esolen
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
