In The Meaning of History, Nikolai Berdyaev argues that the ancient Greeks had no concept of history and no philosophy of history because their concept of God and the world did not allow for it. “They conceived the world aesthetically, as a finite and harmonious cosmos. The most representative Hellenic thinkers conceived creation as something static, as a sort of classical contemplation of the well-ordered cosmos. This is true of all the great Greek philosophers, who could grasp neither the historical process nor that of historical fulfillment. To them the history had no issue, no goal, no beginning even; in it everything was recurrent, eternally rotating and governed by a cyclical motion.”
The ancient Greeks argued, that there may be no real change within God. God is perfect and any change within God would mean that He is not a true God. Any improvement in God would mean that He has not been perfect. Any demotion would mean that He is no longer perfect. There may be no genuine or immediate interaction between God and the world since any interaction involves mutual influence. This is why the Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover is completely separated from time, space, and any outer reality. He is completely inwardly oriented: he is incurvatus in se.
Such a concept of God leaves us with no concept of history because history is what happens between persons in time and space. And if we may find any concept of history among the ancient Greeks, it is a concept of constant degradation from the golden age to the iron age. Should we develop a consistent picture of the world according to Aristotle’s guidelines, there would be no persons in this world, no interaction between persons, and also no love that could perpetuate the history of this world. There would even be no time in such a world. Just a sheer space.
The Bible, however, from the very beginning speaks about God creating space and time plus human persons with whom God interacts. There is a progression of events, a transformation of the created order from good to very good. This creation is the handiwork of the triune God: the Father sends (breaths) the Word (Son) who initiates and shapes the created reality. The Word is not a single word but a divine language which becomes a divine speech as it is breathed out by the Father. As Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy noticed, the structure of the created order resembles the structure of the divine language because it takes shape as described by the Word.
It seems that we should not use the ancient Greek concept of the divine as an axiom in Christian theology. It does not fit the story told by the Bible where from the very beginning God is presented as Emmanuel, God with us. True, the Bible says that God does not change, but maybe this is a different kind of immutability: of character and will but not of abstract qualities.
The doctrine of the Trinity provides categories that make history possible. Here especially important is perichoresis: the covenantal bond between the three divine Persons. It provides a basis for the created spacetime and the telos of history: the final destiny of the created order.
Alistair McGrath writes that perichoresis “allows the individuality of the persons to be maintained, while insisting that each person shares in the life of the other two. An image often used to express this idea is that of a ‘community of being,’ in which each person, while maintaining its distinctive identity, penetrates the others and is penetrated by them” (Christian Theology). But perichoresis does not only describe how the three divine Persons can be one God without losing individual identity. It also provides some categories that enable us to suggest a Trinitarian archetype of the created order.
As Peter J. Leithart noticed, “perichoresis has also been used historically to describe God’s relationship to the world, as a way of expressing the immanence and transcendence of God. It is true, on the one hand, that God is contained by nothing, and is instead the One in whom we live and move and have our being, i.e., everything is contained by Him. Yet at the same time God is within all things, ‘omnipresent.’ As Hilary of Poitiers put it, the Father is both ‘without’ and ‘within’ all things. This mutual indwelling and containment is a created extension of the mutual indwelling and containment of the Triune Persons” (http://www.leithart.com/archives/000132.php).
Timothy J. Gorringe goes one step further and suggests that in the concept of perichoresis we can find an archetype not only of human personhood, but also of space. “The origin of all space (…) is to be found in the Trinitarian relations. It is the fact that God is present to Godself, that there is a divine proximity and remoteness, which is the basis and presupposition of created proximity and remoteness (…) As triune, God possesses space. God in turn gifts space and time to us. Space is the form of creation in virtue of which, as a reality distinct from God, it can be the object of God’s love” (A Theology of the Built Environment).
The same can be said about time. Because there is a movement within the Trinity, we can speak about some kind of before and after: a sequence of events. We could say that God has a “history” within His own being.
So the created spacetime seems to have its source in the relations between the thee divine Persons. But because, as St. Augustine noticed, the spacetime is on a different ontological level, and so it can be the object of God’s love, it can have its own separate (although not independent) identity. The creation is not God even though in the creation we can see God. The love of God sets the telos of the human journey through the created spacetime, which is the fullness of covenantal life of the triune God into which God is drawing us.
The connection between the Trinity and history makes room for a Trinitarian understanding of history, since the connection is not accidental but intentional, i.e. the inner life of the Trinity is an archetype of the history of the world.
Probably the best known attempt at presenting history in Trinitarian terms is Hegel’s philosophy of history. Hegel said that the patterns of history are somehow related with the Trinity and that the Trinity develops together with the history. But we can point at much more conservative theologians who try to describe and understand history in Trinitarian terms. For example, Eugen Rosenstock-Huess in The Christian Future writes about three epochs after Christ which correspond with the three articles of the Nicene Creed:
- “Epoch 1 in which God triumphs over the many false gods. This process is the first millennium of our era, and its outcome is the Christian Church.” It corresponds with the 2nd article of the Creed, which deals with the redemption, and so with the person of the Son.
- Epoch 2 “in which one earth is won from the plural of unconnected countries and undiscovered lands (…) This is the point at which we stand today: geographically, technically, statistically, the earth is finally one, and so indeed is the whole world of nature, thanks to modern science which Christendom created.” It corresponds with the 1st article of the Creed, which deals with the creation, and so with the person of the Father.
- Epoch 3 will “establish Man, the great singular of humanity, in one household, over the plurality of races, classes and age groups. This will be center of struggle in the future.” It corresponds with the 3rd article of the Creed, which deals with the Revelation, and so with the person of the Spirit.
James B. Jordan suggests a different (but not contradictory) approach, as he speaks about a following sequence: creation, history, and eschatology which correspond to: Father, Spirit, and Son.
“The Father sends the Spirit to bring us to the Son. At the end is the marriage of the Lamb, the fullness of love. At the beginning is bare creation and the first assurances of trust: Fear not! I am with you! Fear not! This is the command Jesus repeated over and over to His newborn children. At the beginning we cry: Abba! Father! Then, building on this confidence in God, we are able to move through the middle of life with hope in His promises of eventual glory, moving through test, trial, division, suffering, fear, and ultimately physical death. It is the Spirit who moves us through this life” (From Bread to Wine).
Ralph A. Smith in James Jordan’s Trinitarianism says that the flow of history is a repetition of covenantal progression. “Each individual covenant calls man into the Trinitarian fellowship, as the meaning of the covenant in God is progressively revealed through the history.” God created man to be His image, which means that God created man in covenant, so that man can “become a participant in the covenantal fellowship of the Trinity.” And it is basically the Spirit who moves history to its eschatological conclusion, which will be the marriage of Christ and His Bride.
The three divine Persons live in a covenant and the goal of history is to bring men into this fellowship. This is why God created the world and this is the goal of the history of the world. The way to the goal leads through a succession of covenants, which again reflect the inner life of the Trinity which is a covenantal life.
In conclusion: the Biblical doctrine of the Trinity provides concepts which can be used to create a Christian philosophy of history. It also helps us to understand the flow of history and to realize that life in history is an interaction between us and the Trinity. The goal of this interaction is to bring us into the full life of the Father, the Son and the Spirit. As images of God we are to mature into the likeness of our triune Creator through the process of history.
Bogumil Jarmulak is pastor of Evangelical Reformed Church (CREC) in Poznan, Poland. His PhD is from Christian Theological Academy in Warsaw, Poland.