That said, memory is a useful tool of historical analysis. It allows the historian to gather different perspectives, observe cultural change, and strengthen his or her historical analysis with insights from psychology, sociology, and other fields. The “Lost Cause” may be a myth, but it can offer the historian important cultural insights.

What is the purpose of history?
History is a narrative about the past. I also (like Kellen) enjoy the observation that history serves as “an ax at the root of all false philosophy.” History teaches–and I believe this even though I’ve seen the debate above–by providing the stories of human triumphs and failures.

Is there a “grand narrative” of history? If you believe there is, what is it? How does your theology, especially your eschatology, influence your philosophy of history?
Yes, the narrative arc of creation, fall, redemption (with the apogee of history being the work of Christ on the cross), restoration is the trajectory of history. God’s restoration will be complete with the New Heaven and Earth. I am an amillennialist.

Can we know God’s hand in history? Can we comprehend divine intervention in history? Should history be used to reward virtue and punish vice?
We know what God says He is doing among humans, but I do not presume to know exactly why God does what He does. For example, God withholds judgment to show patience (2 Peter 3), but I cannot state for certain why a wicked ruler falls when he does. Scripture clearly tells us about God’s intervention in history in a limited time frame (during the time of Abraham, or the Israelites, etc.), but we don’t have that same kind of information about why events unfolded the way they did in World War II, for example.

Do our choices influence history or is the course of history predetermined? What is the cause of historical events? How does free will (or its absence) impact your philosophy of history?
Yes, humans can choose. They have free will, but no human will be able to thwart God’s purpose. I don’t understand how God’s sovereignty and free will work together, but I know from scripture that the two concepts are true.
History (that narrative of events) is an unfolding of events that people make happen. Their responses, their attitudes, their actions are the stuff that historians write about.

Ought we to make moral judgments about the past? Can we escape making moral judgments about the past?
We cannot escape making moral judgments about the past because the stories we construct about the past tell us triumphs and failures–and assigning those labels means making moral judgments. Historians can be sympathetic with their subjects (the actors in the past), but they also ultimately make moral judgments by choosing what to include or exclude from their narratives.

The study of memory puts little (or no) emphasis on accuracy. What matters is not what happened but what I think happened. The study of history emphasizes accuracy. What matters is not what I think happened but what actually happened. Sure, the distinction is predicated upon an old-school epistemology, but when push comes to shove most historians will oppose the idea that all perspectives/memories are equally valid; otherwise, there is little difference between history and historical fiction. (Though one of my professors argued on behalf of a historian who used Toni Morrison’s fictional novel as evidence for her dissertation.)

Here’s my problem with didacticism. It is essentially student focused. The given lesson is meant to instruct the student how to live/think/do. I believe that the ultimate end of history is to reflect God’s glory, not to instruct humankind. I am thankful that God graciously allows us to learn from history, but instruction is at best the penultimate purpose of history.

I don’t think what I’ve said about memory is at all incompatible with your ideas of doing history to the glory of God. God himself has written us a fair bit of history, and his historical accounts were always accompanied with moral instruction, especially the instruction to “remember the Lord thy God.” As you yourself said, “God recorded the Biblical narrative of history for a didactic purpose.” If didacticism is not the chief purpose of history, and if memory is only a tool of history, then what is this history you extol that is over both but contained by neither of these?

I have mixed feelings about emphasizing memory. I believe in the depravity of humankind, one effect of which was the clouding of human reason at the Fall. Our sense impressions and memories are error-prone. We do what we can to limit our false impressions (ie scientists using double-blind studies, a luxury the historian does not have), but memory is notoriously fickle and inaccurate. Remember the chestnut about the lover thinking of his/her first date? Ask them the day after their date and you’ll hear quite a story. Ask them the day after they break up and you’ll hear something quite different.

In a broader sense we do the same thing. As a society we are prone to either whitewashing or gilding our collective memory of the past. Civil War scholars have picked up on this tendency. At first, during Reconstruction, hard feelings between both the North and the South persisted; many Southerners refused to celebrate the 4th of July since that marked the day Vicksburg surrendered to Grant. But by the late nineteenth century our collective memory shifted. Soldiers groups from both South and North began meeting for shared reenactments and remembrances. We began to emphasize the valor of men on both sides. At its most extreme the Civil War became our grand adventure rather than a national nightmare. David Blight in “Race and Reunion” argued that this nostalgic reunion hastened the forgetting of hard won racial lessons. I believe this example shows how unreliable our memory, how quick we are to exalt the good and forget the bad.

We all desire to learn from our pasts, certainly. But the fundamental problem with memory is that it is all too often not an accurate representation of our pasts. Thus we run the risk of learning the wrong lesson.

I’m also wary of claims that history is meant to instruct humankind, that history is primarily directed for our moral instruction. I cede that that is one purpose, certainly, but I do not believe that it is the highest purpose of history. I believe that “things happen” to reflect God’s glory. God does not need us to “see” what happens to receive that glory. He delighted in the history of his creation prior to the sixth day. He delights in hidden caves, the ocean depths, and planets which humankind may never see. In this respect the Christian historian resembles the Christian scientist. While scientific research may yield benefits to humankind through new drugs and more efficient processes, the study of science for the Christian is primarily a way to glory in what God has done.

God often uses history, science, or any other field to instruct man. But He always uses every facet of the universe to reflect Himself. He is the ultimate end, not us. Thus what we remember of the past is infinitely less important than what He remembers about the past. So memory is a useful tool of historical analysis, but I think the Christian historian should seek to make memory the servant of history.

What memory is to the individual, history is to a society, whether that society be a church, a nation, a race. Thus the purpose of history and the purpose of memory are somewhat intertwined. There are memories we value largely for sentimental reasons, and in the same way, I think there is a place for history that borders on hagiography–getting warm fuzzies about the 4th of July is all good and well in its place.

But I think most would agree that the primary importance of memory is, or even is solely, didactic. We don’t run around touching stoves because we remember what happened the last time we did that, even if those memories are more than twenty years old. History often serves to teach these sorts of negative lessons to society, and history’s lessons are, alas, mostly negative–”an ax at the root of all false philosophy,” as my own history teacher put it. But like our personal memories, we can find things to value both for their own sake and for their instructive value to the future, and so history delivers both negative and positive lessons.

I won’t attempt to answer the other questions listed at this time, but I think this starting point implies where I would go with them. The didactic nature of history necessarily involves moral judgments. History as I have described here does not exclude relating events in the world of nature, but it will place much more emphasis on the activities of /people/ and on the choices they make, which of course, will also involve moral judgment.

In conclusion, history as memory raises one further comparison I think is interesting. One of the most feared diseases of our time is Alzheimer’s–the loss of personal memory. And yet unfortunately our own society does not so greatly fear the loss of societal memory; so thank you, gentlemen, for seeking to counter that trend with your insightful blog.