In each of these novels—by Huxley, Orwell, and Bradbury—books become an enemy because they represent a written record of the past to a dystopian future where the past is something to forget. Books threaten the status quo, undermine the dominant culture, overturn the ascendant social order—and so the powers that be attempt to wean or coerce their subjects away from the written word, with media they control.
—K.E. Columgini, “Books Versus Screens”
The Killing of History needs to be read by every Christian who cares about defending our faith in a hostile secular culture. This from the Amazon introduction tells us why:
For 2,500 years, since the time of Herodotus and Thucydides, historians have sought to record the truth about the past. Today, however, the discipline is suffering a potentially lethal attack from the rise to prominence of an array of French-inspired literary and social theories, each of which denies that truth and knowledge about the past are possible. These theories claim the central point on which history was founded no longer holds: there is no fundamental distinction between history and myth or between history and fiction.
If truth and knowledge about the past are not possible, then Christianity is not possible. Christianity is rooted in historical claims, but just as important as these claims are is the assumption that underlies them, that we can have real, objective historical knowledge. As Christians we claim we can know what happened in the past, even thousands of years in the past, with a reasonable degree of certainty. While our knowledge of the past is never exhaustive, it is real, and on it we can depend. Not so, claim these theorists.
Peter Berger, a hugely influential Austrian-born American sociologist, died last week at the age of 88:
On June 27, Berger passed away at his home in suburban Boston, concluding a lifetime of scholarly influence and a career that made him one of the most notable scholars of his generation.
The influence of Berger certainly extended to me. In one of the chapters of Keeping Your Kids Christian, on the concept of plausibility in the life of faith, I quote extensively from two early books by Berger, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (with Thomas Luckmann), and The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. I first learned the concept of Plausibility Structure from reading The Sacred Canopy back in the mid-1980s, a term most Christians have never heard, let alone are familiar with. They should be, as I argue extensively in the book.
The title of this post is almost an axiom among modern Americans. We may hear it put in other ways as well, like “as long it makes you happy,” or “you must do what’s in your heart.” I’ve heard it said that we live in the age of “the sovereign self.” In our age, the subjective rules; the only perspective that counts is my perspective, and my perspective is declared valid simply because it is mine. Whether what I think corresponds to reality in any objective sense is beside the point.
We tend to think of it as a relatively recent phenomena, but this idea of being “true to ourselves” is a form of relativism, and it’s been around a lot longer than most of us would think. The phrase actually goes back to a Johann Gottfried Herder, who wrote to his fiancee, Caroline Flachsland in 1772:
All our actions should be self-determined, in accordance with our innermost character—we must be true to ourselves.
Who Jesus is, is the central question of human existence. If he was who he said he was, and if he is who the Council of Nicea in 325 said he was and declared by orthodox Christians ever since:
God from God,
Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made;
of the same essence as the Father.
Then all of existence is determined by this fact. Jesus commands our allegiance, and our worship, because he is God, not just a great moral teacher or religious leader.
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