JesusCreed

1. They make history inevitable progress in their direction. This is simple hermeneutics, or put more simple, it’s hermeneutical colonialism. In fact, those who know the “right side of history” and the “wrong side of history” are judgmentalists through and through. They not only know history is moving where they are or want to be but they sit in judgment on all those who disagree. They are censorious — and both Parramore and Pirro illustrate the point.

2. They make history presentist. That is, what is happening now is not only progressive improvement but what is now is always better than what was before. Which means, far more often the advocates are wind sniffers who, now having counted up the tilt of numbers, have thrown in their lot and are ready to sanctify it with this specious argument that is is where “history is going.” We should pause only for a moment to know that presentist arguments would have justified — in other days — slavery, Stalinism and Hitlerism, and the inequality of African Americans, women and undocumented workers.

3. They destroy biblical eschatology. Instead of taking their cues from the biblical vision of the kingdom of God in the future (where Jesus will be Lord over all in consummation) they ask Jesus to join their presentist historical progressivisms and so sanctify their discernments as God’s divine plan. Tom Wright in some of his newest books — both Surprised by Scripture and Simply Good News — has taken shots at this theory of progress and countered with a kingdom vision of where history is actually headed.

4. They claim omniscience. Not overtly but the subtler form is all the more noticeable. When you can tell us where history has been and where it is headed, and you can say you are on that side, you have just made a claim bigger than Hegelian theories of the Spirit. You claim, like Deuteronomy, that you know the divine mechanisms at work in history and you pronounce some awful boom-booms on those who will not join. That is, these folks stand in with prophetic words from God.

5. They claim omniscience by assuming a futurist stance where all things will be as they think. It won’t be, and all history proves this. Whether one is a utopian or a postmillennialists, history doesn’t cooperate. Nor will it. Why? There are too many dissenters. That’s a very good thing.

6. They destroy both diversity and freedom. I give two examples: Back in the early decades of the 20th Century some American thinkers and literati knew where history was headed — toward socialism and communism. When it turned up vicious, brutal and murderous, they didn’t always back down but many sulked off to a quiet corners. Others switched sides. Back in the 70s and 80s some conservatives thought the church would be destroyed if women were allowed to be priests or pastors and some liberals thought it would save the gospel and the church and religion in America, and where are we now? Some are against and some are for women pastors. (The same will be the case with same-sex relations in the church and America — diversity.) But there’s a sinister side in all this: to announce that history is headed in any direction is to tell those who don’t agree with that side that their freedom to disbelieve is in jeopardy. It takes all kinds to compose a world and the “wrong/right side of history” people need to defend freedoms. We need freedom and freedom will mean diversity, and that’s what the world is about.

7. They seek to centralize their vision in order to impose conformity rather than to solicit the majority view based on the freedom of choice. These specious historians are top-down thinkers, whether from the Left or the Right. Common response to failure are to press even harder for the centralized vision and to blame the failure on the dissenters. The way to win is to get more votes, make more laws, and impose the laws on the blinkered dissenters. What this produces is resentment, and resentment will find a way for expression.