PROVO, Utah — Many Christian historians have done great things in keeping providential history alive in the modern decades, but too many put huge obstacles in the way because they don't believe in continuing revelation, a Brigham Young University professor of history said Friday. "We don't get there through the study of scholars. Knowledge of providence only comes through inspiration to prophets," BYU's Brian Q. Cannon said, quoting C. John Summerville of the University of Florida. And Arthur Link said: "It is not given to me to say, 'Thus saith the Lord.' This is the prophet's word." "Revelation could substantially change this equation, but these writers are writing from the perspective that revelation has ceased," Cannon said. Cannon added that LDS scripture and the words of the prophets provide Mormons with "an array of inspired sources that other Christian historians have only dreamed of," but they also complicate LDS historians' work because those outside the faith rarely view them as valid sources.The discourse was part of the BYU Studies 50th anniversary Symposium on Friday. Providential history, Cannon said, is history that is written where the writer sees God as a governor of human events such as wars, politics, academic discoveries and disasters."What does it mean to be a faithful Mormon historian?" the professor asked his audience. "The writing of history has certainly changed through the centuries." Cannon gave a sketch on how this kind of history has evolved over time, with ebbs and flows in its popularity. From the fifth century to the 17th century, most of the credible histories of the West were providential, and mostly modeled from Biblical accounts. But the Enlightenment changed all that, with writers castigating providential history because it depended too much on the supernatural rather than science and reason. Providential history made somewhat of a comeback in the 1800s, but was dead by the turn of the century. "Industrialization, materialism, class conflict, higher criticism of the Bible, and the Darwinian theory of evolution combined to reduce faith, fuel skepticism about miracles and the supernatural, and discredit assertions about God's role in history," Cannon said. From the 1930s through the 1950s, providential history was restored because a few historians and philosophers were responding to the calamities and tragedies that were all around them: The Great Depression, World War II and the Cold War. Some, like British historian Herbert Butterfield rejected the view that God was "an absentee God leaving man at the mercy of chance in a universe, blind, stark and bleak", and felt that looking at providential history was a means of "unfolding the conflict between Good and Evil." Others, like Princeton professor Harris Harbison, expressed views that are more moderate, saying that historians need to be careful in seeing literal intervention of God in history because history has a "strange paradox that God both reveals and conceals himself in history." Cannon ended the discussion by saying that writing about the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is probably the best field for people who want to write a providential history. "Even with the benefit of the rich sources available to them, Latter-day Saint historians will still see through a glass darkly and partially," Cannon said. "But they will see far more than would otherwise be possible."
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