"A narrative strategy that is rationally defensible in the modern understanding of what constitutes public life - and the historians speak in the public sphere - cannot be based on a relationship that allows the divine or the supernatural a direct hand in the affairs of the world." - Dipesh Chakrabarty in "Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historial Difference."
To be fair, that statement must be qualified - science cannot prove God - and if history is a science then it necessarily must leave its reader to decide whether or not God was indeed working. However, it's still a slightly depressing thought - no room for the miraculous in history, no room for God in history.
It does have interesting implications for a Christian's philosophy of history, though. What is my role as a Christian historian? If not to write a history that gives God agency, what is left? And, is it even philosophically sound to claim that the supernatural cannot have agency in historical writing? These are questions I do not feel qualified to answer. And yet, I must try. Hopefully more on this later.
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