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Easter and history

Where is hope to be found? It’s to be found in reading history differently, as Christians ought to do.

An 11th-century icon of the Harrowing of Hell, in the Greek monastery of Hosios Loukas. (Wikipedia)

Once upon a time, before the Cuisinart of advanced educational thinking reduced history, geography, and civics to the tasteless gruel of “social studies,” humanity’s story was taught in a linear fashion, and under chapter headings that went something like this: Ancient Civilizations, Greece and Rome, the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation, the Age of Reason, the Age of Revolution, the Age of Democracy, the Space Age, and so forth. These headings were not without their defects: the so-called “Dark Ages” were anything but “dark”; there were multiple “Reformations,” not just one; the “Age of Reason” was often unreasonable about the breadth of the human capacity to know things; the “Age of Democracy” had to contend with totalitarianisms of one sort or another, one of which grew out of a misbegotten democracy, Weimar Germany.

Still, teaching world history that way did give one a sense of the vast panorama of human achievement (and human depravity) and did so in a way that made considerable sense of why-things-happened-when-they-did.

History is always clearer, and even more conducive to a measure of optimism, when seen through the rear-view mirror; the most difficult history to read is the history of Right Now. Still, I think few would dispute the claim that, read in terms of what we see around us today, there’s not a lot to be jolly about.

The United States seems on the verge of another presidential race between two old men, neither of whom has the capacities necessary for competent, much less visionary, leadership. The French are going nuts over the prospect of working until 64. Mexico is becoming a failed state if it’s not there already. Petty tyrants rule the roost in Venezuela and Nicaragua, and Cuba remains an island prison. Israel is tearing itself apart at just the moment when the threat posed by the apocalyptic mullahs in Tehran is most menacing. The moral monster in the Kremlin seems hell-bent on further destruction in Ukraine, and his bromance buddy in Beijing, Xi Jinping, doubles-down on draconian social controls and genocide. No one has a serious plan for dealing with global issues such as enormous migrant flows, climate change, and narco-terrorism.

So where is hope to be found?

It’s to be found in reading history differently, as Christians ought to do.

The Christian understanding of “world history” unfolds under a different set of chapter headings than those noted a moment ago. In the Christian view of things, the human story unfolds under these headings: Creation, Fall, Promise, Prophecy, Incarnation, Redemption, Sanctification, the Kingdom of God (or, if you prefer, the Wedding Feast of the Lamb). Moreover, Christians understand — or ought to — that this history, salvation history, does not run on a parallel track to “world history” as that subject was once taught. No, salvation history is what is happening inside“world history” from the Big Bang through now — and on into the future, for as long as there is “time” as we perceive it. Salvation history is the inner dynamic of “world history,” read at its true depth and against its appropriately ample horizon.

That salvation history pivots on what Catholics know as the Paschal Triduum of Holy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil: one continuous liturgical action culminating in the proclamation of the Lord’s Resurrection, which is the definitive revelation of history’s meaning and end. At Easter, Christians proclaim to the world that what we see on the surface of history is not all-there-is.

Inside that history, driving it toward the consummation that God intended for his creation from the beginning, is the Word through whom all things that came to be; the Word who took on flesh of the Virgin Mary; the incarnate Word who preached, healed and suffered; the Word become the Risen Lord who, by displaying to his friends a new and superabundant form of life that was available to all who espoused his cause, inspired those friends to go out and convert the world.

Looking on Christ crucified and raised from the dead, seeing in him the Light of the world, Christians know how history — our personal stories and the world’s story — is going to come out. It will not end in cosmic entropy or a vast black hole (no matter how the “universe” as we know it ends). It will end in the Wedding Feast of the Lamb, where a redeemed creation enjoys eternal life with the Thrice-Holy God. That’s where history is going.

Knowing that, we can get about our tasks here and now with hope, no matter how dark the storms gathering on the immediate horizon.


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About George Weigel 483 Articles
George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington's Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies. He is the author of over twenty books, including Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II (1999), The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II—The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy (2010), and The Irony of Modern Catholic History: How the Church Rediscovered Itself and Challenged the Modern World to Reform. His most recent books are The Next Pope: The Office of Peter and a Church in Mission (2020), Not Forgotten: Elegies for, and Reminiscences of, a Diverse Cast of Characters, Most of Them Admirable (Ignatius, 2021), and To Sanctify the World: The Vital Legacy of Vatican II (Basic Books, 2022).

12 Comments

  1. Perhaps to summarize…The periodization of successive history (top paragraph) is propaganda for progressivism (C.S. Lewis’ “chronological snobbery”); the Judeo-Christian narrative is the only linear history; and Christ is not an episode in progressive history, but rather Christ is the permanent center (!) of all fully human history.

    With G.K. Chesterton: “[T]he Catholic Church is the only thing that frees a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.”

  2. Mr. Weigel, I just finished reading Witness to Hope The Biography of Pope John Paul II (I have also watch the video of this book many times.) I’ve also read many of your columns on this and other websites. I and my late husband (R.I.P. 12/26/20 of COVID) converted from Evangelical Protestantism to Catholicism in 2004. My older daughter converted 2 years later, and my younger daughter and her husband will be coming into the Church this Easter (2023) and will be baptizing their infant son in the next few months. I WISH, sir, that you would consider writing a history of Protestantism. I would appreciate your “spin” on the events and personalities that led up to the Protestant Reformation. One of the reasons why we became interested in Catholicism was a book by a Protestant, Dr. Bruce L. Shelley,who wrote Church History in Plain Language, 2nd Edition, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Copyright 1982 by Word Publishing. As I read this book back in the early 2000s, I realized that for 1500 years, the Catholic Church WAS THE Christian Church–and only a few men were responsible for Protestantism! This galvanized me and my husband to study Catholicism with the result that we decided to return to THE Christian Church, the Catholic Church. Thank you for considering this project. God bless you.

      • There are many excellent works available, some older and some more recent.

        First, mid-20th-century books by Henri Daniel-Rops (two volumes on The Protestant Reformation), published by Image, as well as similar works by Philip Hughes, who wrote popular histories the pre-Reformation, Reformation, and Counter Reformation eras (available from different publishers).

        Secondly, two books by Catholic historian Brad S. Gregory: Rebel in the Ranks: Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the Conflicts That Continue to Shape Our World (Harper, 2017) and The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society (Harvard University Press, 2015). The first is for a popular audience; the second is far more detailed and academic. Both are well written and very informative.

        Third, Reformations: The Early Modern World, 1450-1650 (Yale, 2016), by Carlos M. N. Eire, is very detailed (nearly 1000 pages) and is widely acknowledged as an exceptional study of the era.

    • Neither an historian nor a theologian, yours truly actually owns the original 15-volume Image history series by Daniel-Rops (1964-7, then only a dollar or two per volume!), and some of Philip Hughes (mentioned by Carl Olson).

      Regarding the Reformation a crucial point that stands out is how big-picture history is often composed of thousands of cumulative and reversible details. And how corrections too-much delayed become a minefield fraught with escalated risks—even for rare diplomats of skill.

      The detailed context for the Reformation includes Islamic incursions from the East (a distraction for both the Pope and the Emperor), cultural and economic differences separated by the Alps, the rise of nation-state and the papal politics of navigating between France and Spain, the German restriction on forwarding Peter’s Pence funds (some diverted to oppose Islam), combined with the call from Rome for funds to build the new St. Peter’s Basilica…Enter the Dominican fundraiser Johan Tetzel and the aggressive and precipitating sale of indulgences—the first of a thousand cuts.

      Read here about an obscure Wittenberg confessor, an Augustinian monk named Martin Luther, in early 1517 still “a most furious papist [his words]”…

      “…Many of the townspeople came successively, and confessed themselves guilty of great excesses. Adultery, licentiousness, usury, ill-gotten gains—such are the crimes acknowledged to the minister of the Word by those souls of which he will one day have to give an account. He reprimands, corrects, instructs. But what is his astonishment when these individuals reply that they will not abandon their sins?….Greatly shocked, the pious monk declares that since they will not promise to change their lives, he cannot absolve them. The unhappy creatures then appeal to their letters of indulgence; they show them, and maintain their virtue. But Luther replies that he has nothing to do with these papers; and adds: EXCEPT YE REPENT, YE SHALL ALL LIKEWISE PERISH [italics]. They cry out and protest; but the doctor is immovable. They must cease to do evil, and learn to do will, or else there is no absolution. ‘Have a care,’ added he, ‘how you listen to the clamours of these indulgence-merchants: you have better things to do than buy these licenses which they sell at so vile a price [“For polygamy it was six ducats; for sacrilege and perjury, nine ducats; for murder, eight ducats; for witchcraft, two ducats….For infanticide…four livres tourquois; and for paricide or fratricide, one ducat”].” (Source: Protestant scholar; J.H. Merle D’Aubigne, Geneva, “History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century,” Vols. I-IV, 1850 with later reprints; 700 fine-print double-column pages).

      One thing follows another. But, Oh what might have been, even in our fallen world….Today, think der Synodale Weg.

  3. There are a number of worthwhile thoughts in this article, but I must comment on Mr. Weigel’s equivalence of Trump and Biden, i.e.
    “The United States seems on the verge of another presidential race between two old men, neither of whom has the capacities necessary for competent, much less visionary, leadership.” A very false equivalence I believe, somehow inserted in an article on Easter and History.

    It really does seem to be true that Trump lives in the heads of the Never Trumpers.

    • Crusader,
      I agree with you that there are a number of worthwhile thoughts in this article, which is characteristically insightful.
      I must respectfully disagree with you, however, about Trump. I voted for him twice because there was no alternative. But I believe that both he and Biden are manifestly unfit for the office of President of the U.S. And if Trump is te Republican candidate in 2024, that will only guarantee that quisling Biden or some othe pro abortion Dem will be the next president.
      Just my humble opinion and respectful of yours..

      • I hope DeSantis emerges as a viable America First candidate. The polling data suggests that he could run strongly in the general election. He is the only potentially decent and realistic alternative to Trump. He carries none of the baggage of Trump that (irrationally) causes TDS in so many people, has a better grasp of the issues and can articulate them much better. As a professional politician, though, he needs a donor class whose interests diverge from ours in critical respects to fund his campaign. Can he convince and stay true to people like us while simultaneously remaining acceptable to the moneymen whose funds he needs to run the race? His recent fundraising trip to New York and his planned visit to Israel later this month point to the challenge he faces amid what appears to be a real struggle with Disney.

  4. I have to say George Weigel and his writings, books, articles and opinions smack with transcendent message the world of politics, economics, sociology, psychology, theology require such food today, and just plain old common sense demands for us to live as God intended, in the image and likeness of God and a neighbor to each other.
    Way to go George. Keep on keeping on..

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