There is something almost inevitably artificial or unsatisfying about concluding an exercise in historical exploration.
If we think of history in a broader sense—not simply our study of or attempts to make sense of our past, but the living dynamic of creaturely and other animate and inanimate interaction across time and space—how do we conclude, wrap up, make a neat package of that genuinely unruly and multifaceted phenomenon? The desire for closure sits uncomfortably on top of the gnawing sense that nothing is ever quite closed. Or fully represented—much less understood. If your travels through the documents of this documentary history leave you with some fundamental sense of incompleteness and dissatisfaction, that may be a good sign: that your historical skills and critical-interpretive instincts are developing and maturing in (I would say) healthy directions.
Historians and historical theologians, at whatever level of their development, are on firmer ground whenever they can sense and say: I have clearly not seen the whole, complicated reality. There is simply too much to take in. Every view is a view from a particular, partial, limited place. And what I or others have chosen to include and exclude is its own, additional limitation. There is always more. And there are always multiple possibilities for other and different ways of seeing.
The dream of completeness is just that. And alongside that dream is the aspiration to see from multiple points of view. I think this latter is a very worthy aspiration. But with our aspiration, the critical thinker and critical historical theologian (especially one at least vaguely Calvinistically inspired) always tends to ask: Where have I failed? What am I not attending to? What questions—necessary questions—didn’t force themselves into my reflection? Who was not in the picture? What else is needed?
Failure does not have to be tragic if we can make time and space for continuing learning and growing in judgement, discernment, and wisdom through the explorations—the ones that carry us along in our callings.
Of course we need to have a conclusion of some sort: because a pause (at least) and a reset often do us good.
But—can we conclude without the neatness of a wrapping up? So that we allow ourselves the inspiration of the eros to attend better and with greater openness to the Spirit that serves the good, true, just, and right? Can we conclude with humility and the energy of expectation?
What do you think?
History of Christian Experience II 