The God of History

+ Georges Cardinal Cottier, OP

Fundamentally, Christianity presents a historical dimension, meaning the history of redemption. This history is marked by the Alliances God has established with His People. This is also stated in the fourth Eucharistic prayer: Many times You have offered humankind your alliance. The Election therefore is at the origin, as the expression of God’s freely given love for us all. He is called the forever-faithful God of the Alliance. However, God’s faithfulness is often answered by the human sinner’s unfaithfulness. Humankind is faithful by obeying the divine laws.

History reveals the pedagogy of the fair and merciful God’s Providence who desires the conversion of the sinning People, its return to primary faithfulness. Purified from the mark of sin, the People will become reinstated in prosperity and peace, the mark of the friendship with God.

This is the message found in the Historical Books of the Old Testament and in the prophets. God’s mysterious mandate as the new David, the Messiah, will lead us to an era of peace.

This is greatly in contrast with the pagan idea of time, a cyclical time periodically returning to its beginning, while the Bible has a historical concept, hence a linear one. The course of time has a meaning, a direction leading us to an ending that marks an end. This course is guided by the Providence of God, which addresses humankind’s responsibility. The Biblical idea of history has profoundly marked Christian culture, to the extent that one finds it in philosophies and ideologies distant from the Christian faith.

In fact, the Biblical-Christian meaning of history today is contrasted in two different ways.

The most recent arises from an acute awareness and also in a certain sense one fascinated by the forces of evil: history is meaningless, absurd and chaotic.

The other concept, visible in different forms, relies exclusively on humankind’s capabilities and strength. History is progress. In the course of history, man creates himself with no reference to God. The end of history, an era of freedom and happiness, will simply be the result of humankind’s work and will be achieved within time. History is immanent unto itself. Such an idea of history should be considered as a radical form of secularisation of the Biblical-Christian idea.

The Second Vatican Council allows us to specify the contents of the Christian view for which the Old Testament is a preparation with its promise of the Kingdom of God. With the Coming of Christ, this Kingdom is present among us. Saint Mark summarises as follows Jesus’ first sermon: "This is the time of fulfilment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel" (Mark 1,15). This kingdom is similar to the seed that germinates until harvest time comes (see Mark 4, 26-29).

In a concise text, Lumen gentium (no. 5) states that: "From this source the Church, equipped with the gifts of its Founder and faithfully guarding His precepts of charity, humility and self-sacrifice, receives the mission to proclaim and to spread among all peoples the Kingdom of Christ and of God and to be, on earth, the initial budding forth of that kingdom (I emphasise). While it slowly grows, the Church strains toward the completed Kingdom and, with all its strength, hopes and desires to be united in glory with its King ".

In these few lines, we have the main points regards to the Christian meaning of history, such as only the faith can perceive it. The idea of the Kingdom of Christ and of God is of fundamental importance. Christ is the centre of the history that is the history of a saved and redeemed humankind, now participating in divine life. Hence, the end of history is not within history but goes beyond time, its fulfilment is within the participation n God’s glory. We are waiting for a new land and a new heaven (see GS, n. 39).

Let us listen to the words in the Gaudium et spes (n. 45): "(…)The Lord is the goal of human history, the focal point of the longings of history and of civilization (…).He it is Whom the Father raised from the dead, lifted on high and stationed at His right hand, making Him judge of the living and the dead. Enlivened and united in His Spirit, we journey toward the consummation of human history, one that fully accords with the counsel of God's love: "To re-establish all things in Christ, both those in the heavens and those on the earth" (Eph. 11:10).

It is in Christ, the alpha and the omega, that history finds its meaning.

This does not mean that history considered as the creation of civilisation through humankind’s science and work is without meaning or value. On the contrary, with the creation God entrusted humankind with the intendancy of the world. So, although hindered by sin, humankind’s cultural work increases, supported by the evangelical energies. At the end, all that beautiful and good and will have been created by humankind will be recapitulated. Therefore, we must not oppose secular and holy history. The gifts and values of civilisation have their own autonomy and a distinct substance, but at the end of time, they are destined to become part of the glory of the Kingdom.

Messianisms disregard the Kingdom’s transcendence and search for a Kingdom immersed within the immanence of historical time.

The Kingdom is present within the time of history, but takes us beyond time. We must always contemplate the substance of earthly realities and the very transcendence of our eternal vocation.

We must stop and reflect on this point. Consideration of history, in its two aspects, invites us to reflect of the structure of human actions.

There is in fact a degree of urgency here, since we recently have been observing a reawakening of a secularist or ideology. This ideology, in its various forms, assumes a mistaken idea of the autonomy of human activities, thereby precluding all reference to God. Therefore social and political activities would be per se amoral or based on a relative ethics, created by humankind, the result of the majority opinion reigning within society at a given time.

The Christian concept of humankind’s historical responsibility is completely different.

The human being is a citizen of the human environment and of the Church as the seed of the Kingdom that will not end.

In this person, a human being is a moral subject, capable that is of understanding moral laws, the mark of God in his conscience, and capable of making free choices in conformity with these aforementioned laws according to his own nature. Hence, the light of God’s laws guides all activities, including cultural and political ones. This is valid for each human being as such.

Evangelical law, received from Christ, does not go against the requirements of natural laws. On the contrary, it gathers them, perfects them and takes us beyond them, leading man to his eternal vocation, experienced here on earth through the encounter with Christ, especially in a life of faith, hope and charity.

Christians are not divided beings. Belonging to the city of humankind and to that of the Kingdom forms an organic and structured unity, while the distinction made in Gaudium et spes remains clear on this subject: "(…)Hence, while earthly progress must be carefully distinguished from the growth of Christ's kingdom, to the extent that the former can contribute to the better ordering of human society, it is of vital concern to the Kingdom of God (no. 39).

In fact, the energies and values that are strictly human, are supported by, strengthened by and close to the energies and lights of the Kingdom. The Council also states: "(…) men are not deterred by the Christian message from building up the world, or impelled to neglect the welfare of their fellows, but that they are rather more stringently bound to do these very things" (no. 34).

Hence, one understands why the Church’s most important duty is to announce Jesus Christ Our Saviour, who opens the Gates of the Kingdom for us. However, one also understands why the Church is concerned about humankind’s temporal destiny. This is the reason for the Church’s social doctrine, for her defence of human rights, of peace and justice, of her preferential love for the poor, and using the beautiful words of the Populorum progressio: the whole of man and all men.

It is man in his integrality that Christ came to redeem, also establishing an authentic humanism.