When I was in High School, I didn't enjoy studying history. I felt like I was just expected to regurgitate a list of dates, names, events and other information that simply reflected my caring enough about the class to pay attention and memorize the material. This was my mistake. In my mid twenties, a friend who happens to also be a high school history teacher encouraged me to read Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. This book changed my perspective from thinking that history is a bland retelling of what everyone knows already happened, to appreciating it as a study of how the perspectives of the people living at that time resulted in things turning out the way that they did. Rather than seeing the past as a drab happenstance of obsolete events, I see both history and our current lives as an ongoing study of human nature, with the past informing the present.
What does this have to do with Orthodoxy? Well there is a simple first layer of "Church history is like secular history in that the interest lies not only in the events and decisions that were made, but also in the role of the people involved, and specifically the work of the Person of the Holy Spirit as one of the participants in the life of the Church." If we leave it at that, however, then we miss that the "history of the Church" is not really just the past because Spiritual Time is not past, present and future but rather an Eternal Present. If instead of treating history like a series of events, but rather as a window into a reality of how things happen in our world, then Church "history" in some way should also take into consideration future events that we know will happen based on Faith.
Allow me to illustrate with an example, as I fear that neither of us thinks that I am making any sense. Let's take a historical event that informs our understanding of human nature. Any event will do, but let's take something a bit controversial like the moon landing of Apollo 13. Most people take this event as a historical fact, but there are some who paint it as a government conspiracy intended to fabricate an air of superiority over our Soviet rivals. If this event did happen, then it opens up a whole world of possibilities and astronauts are inspired to further our understanding of space by sending a rover to Mars, launching probes that travel into outer space and even land a space probe on a comet. Furthermore, there are myriad lessons to be learned in studying how we got an astronaut on the moon less than ten years after President Kennedy vowed that we would. Alternatively, if the whole thing is a giant government conspiracy then there is an alternate reality with different downstream events that some purport to be true.
Another historical example that falls in the linear past (and Eternal Present) is the Resurrection of Christ. If this event did happen, then He has conquered death by death, and has given life to those who are dead in sin. Furthermore, there is an infinite amount of knowledge that we can glean from studying the person of Christ, the Incarnate Word. However, "if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished" (1 Corinthians 15:17-18). The message here is that the Wisdom of the Church relies on the Truth of the Resurrection, which must have happened in order for anything we believe to hold water. The interesting thing, is that we are not just looking at this as a historical event in the past, but by saying that we believe that the Resurrection of Christ is a historical fact then the resurrection of the human race must also be an event in time ... it just happens to be in the future.
Looking at history in this way is a shift from the "memorize and regurgitate" approach that I was guilty of taking in high school. Instead of studying events as facts, we can see them as a way of understanding ourselves and each other, thus allowing the study of history to fit in with the study of other disciplines that help us to appreciate the incomprehensibly beautiful world that He has created for us. May God help us to see history as a way of learning about ourselves, each other, and His Love for us. May He help us to see everything past, present and future as part of His Economy of Grace. May He give us the spiritual eyes to see His hand in everything that happens in the world.
