No "Windy and Barren" History

About half the history now taught in schools and colleges is made windy and barren by the narrow notion of leaving out the theological theories... Historians seem to have completely forgotten two facts -- first, that men act from ideas; and second, that it might, therefore, be as well to discover which ideas. - G.K. Chesterton

Chesterton is right. So much of historiography today seeks to explain why human beings have acted as they have by appealing to materialistic causes: economics, the natural environment, greed for power, even genetics.

  

Do these factors influence history? Of course they do. But do they explain the whole of history? No.

  

For instance, the princes of Germany who propelled the Lutheran Reformation to success were indeed motivated by economic considerations (to possess Church lands) and political ambition (to wrest more power from the Holy Roman emperor) -- but the Reformation cannot be explained merely by greed and power mongering. It was an idea, a theological idea, that goaded Martin Luther and inspired his followers to defy Church and state in the name of the Gospel.

  

Nor does the fact that greed and ambition played a part in the Catholic response to "reform" explain the zeal of its chief protagonists -- men such as Pope Pius V, Charles Borromeo, and Peter Canisius. Such men contended for an idea - that of the Catholic Church, which, as they knew, St. Paul had called the "pillar and foundation of the truth."

  

The Catholic faith says that man is more than a mere animal, that he acts for the sake of ideas and ideals, not simply desire. History is driven by what human beings think is the highest good -- and this ultimately has to do with what they think about God. In this way, history is bound up with theological ideas.

  

This is the fuller history our Catholic Textbook Project history series tells. We do not leave out religion, for that would be to distort what man is and how and why he acts and has acted on the world's stage. We are convinced that students need to learn the whole of history - and religion is a central aspect of that history.