Thursday, June 19, 2008

Is History Really About God or Man?

I have been thinking about the "themes" of history. What I mean by a "theme" is the most important structure that maintained the "norms" in man's understanding.

The beginning of my thinking begins in the medival period. The Church held "power' over man's understanding of himself and 'world". The themes of that time were "theological/spiritual".

Because of man's increasing knowledge of the "real world", his physical environment, a paradigm shift occurred. The modern world was born in the conflict between the scientific and the spiritual. Reason and faith were in the crosshairs of progress. The theme of the modern world became "reason".

A crisis and revolution, of sorts, was born out of the complexity of issues that were born out of reason. This crisis was a critique of modernity's certainty of "knowledge". Knowledge only brought forth the absolute complexity of the world. The theme for the post-modern became the "social/political".

How are we to resolve these "themes" and do they need resolving? I believe they do. And I also believe that we need to affirm all the themes as valid and bring a syntheis to them.

In our Global society, cultures do not stand alone. Cultures are renditions of the political. And the political which are the power structures that maintain society are to be held accountable to a moral base. The moral basis of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" are America's ideals, but are the special blessing and priviledge of the American people to "give' to others. The moral challenge in a "free society" is maintaining the balance of "law and order" and "freedom", which is a"complexity" issue in today's Global "world".

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Both God and man are actors in history.