Meaning in History

Something I have always found interesting is the way in which history is structured. Too often today, we treat history as a series of random events. However, our forebears understood history as something rich in meaning. Consider for example St. Thomas’s argument for the use of typology:

The author of Holy Writ is God, in whose power it is to signify His meaning, not by words only (as man also can do), but also by things themselves. So, whereas in every other science things are signified by words, this science has the property, that the things signified by the words have themselves also a signification. (ST I q. 1 a. 10)

We signify meaning with words. Since God is the author of history, history itself is imbued with meaning.

Individual nations usually have a self-understanding. It is part of man’s rational nature to try to figure out his place in the world. These self-understandings are often today dismissed as mere myths. However, they play a very important role in the world. God, as Supreme Intellect, is the author of all of history. So only in the divine mind do all of the pieces of the world fit together. Nonetheless, he does not make us passive beings, but rather makes us participants in His providence (c.f. ST I-II q. 91 a. 2). No human mind can possibly comprehend the entire world. Thus, each individual person has a role to play in the understanding His own purpose, and each nation of their own purpose. This is not to say that each person gets to create his own purpose. We are participants in something larger. Nonetheless, we must use our reason to come to understand our place in the world, both in the sense of coming to understand our own human nature, and our particular place in providence as an individual. Since God providentially guides all of history, I think he guides nations to come to a certain self-understanding as a whole. Nations tend to have a sense of their own destiny. This is not to say national identities cannot be misguided in certain ways as well, but I do think there is something real to them. This may also explain the well documented psychological phenomenon that we tend to misremember past events through present realities. This is not a defect in our psychology. Rather, the past is genuinely given its true meaning through what later comes to be.

If our only access to providence was through reason, we would be limited to know very few things about our purpose. However, God has also revealed to us the central threads of history in sacred scripture. Historically, when nations were evangelized, they would try to tie themselves to Biblical history. (Jonathan Pageau’s series Universal History contains many good examples of this.) This did not mean they would get rid of their myths and self-understanding though. Rather, this would be woven in to the larger picture given by scripture. Thus, they would come to contextualize the smaller piece of providence they were given (their own natural participation in providence) into the larger picture given in revelation. This perfection of nature through grace thus better approximated the true account of the world known only to the divine mind.

I think recapturing a meaningful view of history is very important. In a certain sense, every culture right now is facing a crisis in meaning. I can see this myself as a Catholic, an American, and a Jew secundum carnem (in that order). All three of these communities are facing massive crises in meaning. We must ask some fundamental questions. Why did God establish the Catholic Church? What is the nature and purpose of America as a country? Why does the Jewish nation (as in a people group, not the modern state of Israel) still exist and what constitutes it? This exists for pretty much every group though. Every few centuries, God shakes up the world. Ultimately, only the Catholic faith gives us the larger picture to contextualize our identities and avoid falling in such a shakeup.

In future posts, I hope to further explore these questions. I apologize for anything that was unclear here. I plan to write these Substack articles more or less stream of conciseness. It is the only way I will have any time to write them. So you will have to forgive the large amount of typos that I am sure will exist in them.