Providential View of History

In contrast to the Greek view of history, which asserted that history has no beginning or end, or goal, but only repeats itself in a cyclical manner, Christianity presents a fundamentally different view of history, which asserts that history does have a beginning and advances in a direct manner toward a definite goal. In other words, it asserts that history started with the Creation and the human Fall, that it is a salvation history leading to the Last Judgment, and that what drives history is God’s Providence. Such a view of history is called the “providential view of history,” or the “Christian view of history.”

It was St. Augustine (354-430) who, in his classic The City of God, systematized the Christian view of history. Augustine depicted history as a history of struggle between the City of God (Civitas Dei), where God-loving people live, and the City of the World (Civitas terrena), where those people who have yielded to the temptation of Satan reside. He asserted that the City of God would finally win victory in the end and would establish eternal peace. The course of history occurred according to the plan predestined by God, according to this view.

Augustive divided human history, from the Fall to its consummation, into six periods: (1) from Adam to Noah’s flood, (2) from Noah to Abraham, (3) from Abraham to David, (4) from David to the Babylonian captivity, (5) from the Babylonian captivity to the birth of Christ, and (6) from the first coming to the Second Coming of Christ. How long the sixth period would last was left unstated.

Through this Christian view, history became meaningful in the sense that it aims at a certain goal; still, the human being was no more than an instrument moved by God. This view possesses many ambiguities and is lacking both in logic and in any sense of historical lawfulness. As such, today it is generally regarded as unacceptable as a social science.