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REDEEMING OUR THINKING ABOUT HISTORY: A God-Centered Approach
VERN S. POYTHRESS
Why Is It Critical for Christians to Study the Past?
How does knowledge of the past shape Christians’ views of God, Christ’s redemption, and humanity as a whole? In his new book, Vern S. Poythress teaches Christians how to study and write about the past by emphasizing God’s own command to remember his works and share them with the next generation. Readers will explore concepts such as providentialism, Christian historiography, divine purpose, and the 4 basic phases of biblical history: creation, fall, redemption, and consummation. By learning how to appropriately study history, believers will begin to recognize God’s lordship over all events and how even minor incidents fit into his overarching plan.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1: The Importance of History
Part 1: What We Need in Order to Analyze History: Essential Resources That God Supplies
Chapter 2: Experiencing History
Chapter 3: Foundations for Historical Analysis
Chapter 4: Spiritual Antithesis: Darkness and Light
Chapter 5: Reductionistic Historical Analysis
Chapter 6: Understanding People
Chapter 7: Understanding Historical Causes
Chapter 8: Miracles
Part 2: History in the Bible: How the Bible Goes about Writing History
Chapter 9: Unity in Biblical History
Chapter 10: Diversity in Biblical History
Chapter 11: The Uniqueness of the Bible
Part 3: Understanding God's Purposes in History: Divine Purposes—and Our Limitations—in the Study of History
Chapter 12: God in Biblical History
Chapter 13: Cautions in Understanding Divine Purposes
Chapter 14: The Value of Recognizing Divine Purposes
Chapter 15: Biblical Principles Guiding Historical Understanding
Chapter 16: Academic Historical Analysis
Chapter 17: Pressure toward Religious “Neutrality”
Chapter 18: Applying Principles from Revelation
Part 4: What Does History Writing Look Like? Examples of Challenges in Writing about Particular Periods
Chapter 19: Christianity in the Roman Empire
Chapter 20: Interpreting the Reformation and Beyond
Chapter 21: Histories of Other Civilizations
Part 5: Alternative Versions of How to Think about History: Competing Ways of Doing History among Christians
Chapter 22: Five Versions of Historiography
Chapter 23: Evaluating Providentialism
Chapter 24: Other Versions of Christian Historiography
Chapter 25: Perspectives on Historiography
Chapter 26: Further Reflection on Providentialism
Appendix: Providence according to Mark Noll
Bibliography
General Index
Scripture Index
ENDORSEMENTS
“Vern Poythress has written carefully about how a proper Christian doctrine of providence should (and should not) shape a believer’s understanding of human history. His book is particularly welcome in showing that ‘history’ includes a wide range of possibilities and that most of them can contribute (though in different ways) to Christian study of the past.” -Mark A. Noll, author, Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind
“Can we think Christianly about history in its two senses of the events of the past and the written account of those events? Vern Poythress affirms that we can. He seeks guidance from the Bible about how the past should be understood by believers and about how Christian historians should undertake their vocation. He places God at the center of both.” -David Bebbington, Emeritus Professor of History, University of Stirling
“Redeeming Our Thinking about History continues Vern Poythress’s penetrating analysis of various fields of human intellectual endeavor. In continuity with his previous volumes, Poythress writes on why history is important and how best to read history—whether biblical or secular—in a God-honoring fashion. While capable of stratospheric thinking and communication, the author in this delightful volume simply takes the reader by the hand and leads him or her to the innumerable problems and issues of historical analysis, then resolves those vast and complicated topics. This approach taps into Poythress’s decades of examining and interpreting the Bible and presents very clear paths for readers to follow. Those insights are combined with practical principles to help us understand events in our own lives. Highly recommended.” -Richard C. Gamble, Professor of Systematic Theology, Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary
“With a lucid brevity that Calvin might envy, Poythress covers a broad array of relevant topics in his treatment of redeeming our thinking about history. He strikes just the right balance between common grace and the antithesis as it applies to meanings, events, and people, arguing against all reductionistic approaches (such as Marxism or logical positivism) and covering matters as widespread as the unity, diversity, and uniqueness of the Bible; providence; and the limits of our understanding. He demonstrates the inescapability of a religious stance in writing history and urges that it be done from a truly biblical perspective, arguing for a multi-perspectival approach that will yield the richest and most textured historical account—one that acknowledges God’s providence while remembering our creaturely limits in discerning the meaning of his superintendence of history.” -Alan D. Strange, Professor of Church History, Mid-America Reformed Seminary; author, The Doctrine of the Spirituality of the Church in the Ecclesiology of Charles Hodge
Vern S. Poythress (PhD, Harvard University; ThD, University of Stellenbosch) is Distinguished Professor of New Testament, Biblical Interpretation, and Systematic Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he has taught for four decades. In addition to earning six academic degrees, he is the author of numerous books and articles on biblical interpretation, language, and science.
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