History Through the Eyes of Faith

Integrating faith with introductory Western history, this text provides a Christian perspective on the major epochs, issues, and events of Western Civilization. It details the role of the Greeks and Hebrews, Jesus in history, the Renaissance, and more.

Ronald Wells, a professor at Calvin College, surveys the history of Western civilization from a distinctively Christian perspective, demonstrating that such an approach to the past yields significant interpretive benefits. This results in a serviceable supplementary text that many instructors have adopted for classroom use at several Christian institutions. The book also well exemplifies what has been dubbed the “Calvin school” of historiography, one that clearly employs Christian lenses to view the past but, at the same time, eschews aggressive attempts to discern patterns of “providential action” (p. 5) in history.

The main body of History through the Eyes of Faith utilizes traditional periodization and focuses on major historical issues from the ancient world through the postmodern age. Wells’s most helpful contributions include a handy contrast of Hebrew and Greek civilizations, a superb discussion of the dynamic relationship between the church and Western culture, a critical explanation of how the worldview of the Enlightenment clashed with orthodox Christianity, and a concluding section that centers on the value of Christian hope in light of the contemporary crisis of the West. Especially moving is Wells’s epilogue, in which he sets forth Dirk Willems, Mother Teresa, William Wilberforce, Francis Asbury, and Abraham Kuyper as historical models of believers who have influenced the world by serving the kingdom of God.

Wells comes to his tasks as a seasoned historian who has wrestled for some time with the relationship of Christianity and history. In fact, he currently encourages scholarship on these questions in his role as editor of Fides et Historia, the journal of the Conference on Faith and History. In addition, he has edited or coedited two useful collections of essays, History and the Christian Historian (1998) and History and Historical Understanding (1984).