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Stephen Scheidell
Dr. Yamamoto
HIST 105
20 January 2009
Faith & History
When we begin to approach historical studies in context of the Creation-FallRedemption narrative, we find available a theological perspective that allows for the
understanding and appreciation of historical societies. This specific perspective permits
us to shy away from earlier Christian models that focused (too strongly) on an "us/them"
view of history, which differentiated between ecclesiastical or God's history and (the rest
of) human history. Our model becomes different from such models in that we see God's
hand in history and human activity as essentially one narrative.
From the GenesisI account, we find God, not just allowing, but even calling Adam
follow God in the creation process Adam's work being the creation of culture. This idea
is first demonstrated by the pattern of the six days of Creation. God creates three
domainsII in the first three days then beingsIII to have dominion over their respective
domains, and then he created one being to have dominion over all domains. Adam's role
in this process becomes to subdue, guard and work within his domain. The work of
naming the animals constitutes part of this work of subduing nature. By naming the
animals, Adam "creates" an artificial environment around him one substantiated, not by
anything natural, but by this human-created system of meanings.

Here I am treating Genesis as a theological work, so that the historicity or scientific accuracy of its
account are only secondary questions. One can adopt the theological ideas therein without holding to a
literal understanding of the text.
II Day 1, day and night; Day 2, sky and sea; Day 3, earth.
III Day 4, sun and moon; Day 5, birds and fish, Day 6, land animals.

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Viewing Adam's role in creation as God-ordained leads us to an important
understanding: God called us to engage positively with culture-creating.
The widespread consequences of the fall posed a formidable problem in the work
of culture creating; the resulting break in relationship with God also affected his
relationship with himself, others and nature. By losing proper standing with God,
humankind lost its proper understanding of the God-given mandate of engaging culture.
In other words, culture (as God intended) retains its original structural integrity, but it has
lost right orientation.
The break of relationship between humans and other humans may have had the
most direct and observable impact on history; with the varied (human) kings and (human)
kingdoms comes the inevitable wars. The present writer has heard it said that the study of
history is the study of the causes, events and results of wars. Though a crude
interpretation of history, taken within our theological framework it provides the insight
that such conflicts are a direct result of the Fall and can be understood as a pivotal part of
our narrative.
Since the Fall, humans have riddled societies with problem after problem
attempting to create a social utopia in which each individual treats the other as equal,
resulting in a culture that thrives on the personal thriving of each individual member.
Even the openly secular systems of Marx and other SocialistsIV begin with the assumption
that political thought aims at this social peace. However, having lost proper order and
orientation under God, each human endeavor of this sort fails this project.
But the Redemption of Christ offers hope not only for the redeeming of souls,
but also in the orientation of human identity, interpersonal relations and all of the
IV I use this as examples, while recognizing that not every political thinker had social equality as his or
her primary goal. Machiavelli, for example, focused on maintaining the status quo.

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physical world back to God. If the Fall affected all of these realms, as we said earlier, and
Christ only redeemed the human soul, what can we conclude about Christ's power and
Satan's? If Christ can only rescue one of four arenas where Satan has wreaked havoc,
how can we continue viewing his sacrifice as a thorough Redemption? Simply put, we
cannot; the view that Christ only came to save souls conflicts with the assertion that the
Fall held effective in all of Creation. Therefore, to authentically live under Christ's
Redemptive narrative, our orientation becomes one aimed toward joining in the
Redemption of every affected arena. Work is to be done in understanding and achieving
human relation to the divine; we are to redefine the eschatological human identity;
political thought gains new impetus towards social peace; lastly, we are to re-assume our
position as faithful stewards of the creation with which we are entrusted.
When the human-divine relation, human identity, interpersonal relations and
treatment of nature become understood under the Creation-Fall-Redemption narrative, we
can see that even idolatrous worldviews can operate under, at least, a disjointed fragment
of God's vision of ShalomV for Creation. Such an insight affects our treatment and
evaluation of cultures in the following way. Before jumping into the deformation of
idolatrous cultures, we first appeal to the positive value of their belief systems. We
attempt to find first what we can learn from them.

V Per earlier example, Marx aimed at social peace while rejecting a transcendent point of authority.