Wrestling with History

Wrestling with History

Sermon preached by Kenneth Padley

Sunday 13 July 2025

Readings: Genesis 32:9-32, Mark 7:1-23

In the south nave aisle of the cathedral, behind some of this summer’s art exhibition, is a memorial to one of the most consequential bishops of Salisbury, Gilbert Burnet.

Burnet made his reputation in the 1670s as a historian. He travelled from his native Scotland to London to publish a biography. In London, he won favour at court and undertook to write a much bigger book, a monumental History of the Reformation. The three volumes of Burnet’s History of the Reformation and a companion work, a History of His Own Times, broke new ground in writing about the past by raising the bar of academic rigour. This is because Burnet generally refrained from expressing views about his characters – whether he thought they were heroes or villains, heretics or saints. Burnet also introduced into English historiography the practice of printing primary sources alongside his narrative. This added authority to his writing, allowing readers to check his assertions for themselves.

Burnet judged his approach superior to other historians because he considered himself neutral. In the History of the Reformation he insisted that he was of ‘neither party’[1]. And in the History of My Own Times he stated, ‘that I tell the truth on all occasions, as fully and freely as upon my best inquiry I have been able to find it out’.[2] In a third document Burnet attacked bad historians because ‘history is a sort of Trade in which false Coyn and false Weights are more criminal than in other Matters; because the Error may go further and run longer’.[3]

But was Burnet really a disinterested, detached observer of past events? After all, he was not only a historian. He was a theologian, a Churchman, and a politician. He had views that had been shaped by his own upbringing. As a young man Burnet had been traumatised by the British Civil Wars and had come to know at first hand the cost of narrow factionalism. His uncle, Lord Warriston, had been executed in 1663 for staunch opposition to bishops.

Reacting against this past, Burnet rejected excessive precision in theology, in order to incorporate his more innovative ideas within the bounds of acceptability. And he bolstered this through how he presented the past, suggesting that the Church of England at the time of the Reformation was rather more tolerant than in fact it was. Thus Burnet weaponised historiography in service of contemporary controversy – in which he was little different from those other writers whom he criticised as inferior.[4]

Like Gilbert Burnet, we too are creatures of our own time, and products of our own culture. Indeed, Jesus was no different: tonight we heard him struggling with inherited traditions about ritual cleansing. Jesus had strong views about the priority which should be given to such purification when compared to duties of the ten commandments such as honouring parents and telling the truth. Quoting Isaiah, he said,

This people honours me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
⁷ in vain do they worship me,
teaching human precepts as doctrines. (Mark 7.6-7)

Here we see Jesus engaged in midrash, a form of rabbinic debate which considered contemporary disputes through a prism of scriptural interpretation. Jesus’ case that love of God and neighbour should trump injunctions not in the Bible set him against some of his fellow Jews. We do not know their reply; presumably they would have had different arguments based on an alternative reading of history.

Jacob too was wrestling with the past in tonight’s first reading. His fight with the figure mysteriously representative of God was symbolic of his own past – a broken relationship with his brother Esau. Jacob had tricked Esau in their youth, but was now attempting to effect a reconciliation and peace. How he must have been conflicted inside!

The honest truth is that no man is an island from his past. While many historians like Burnet attempt to claim objective detachment,[5] there is a growing awareness that complete neutrality is just not possible. The objects of historical research, the sources that we use, and the way in which we read them are all subconsciously influenced by the values and identity of our own age. Historians may stick their head down the long well of history, but their feet remain firmly on the ground above it.

Flowing from this realisation, twentieth century German philosopher Hans Georg Gadamer proposed the need for Wirkungsgeschichte – which means ‘impact history’ or ‘effective history’. Gadamer said that ‘historical consciousness is itself situated in the web of historical effects’.[6] This means that reading historical evidence is not a one-way process: the author and reader of a text interact with one another: both are products and producers of interpretation.[7]  Historiography is thus never fixed but constantly evolving as historians look back on the past from their own diverse perspectives.

Gadamer’s breakthrough is not just of relevance to historians – because none of us can disconnect from our personal baggage and characters. All of us have been forged by nature and nurture. However, in an age of post-truth, megaphone diplomacy, and internet disinformation we need to be more alert than ever to the unconscious bias which each of us carries, and which intuitively shapes our thoughts and behaviours. In this, I suggest, we are called to be like Jacob, who was renamed ‘Israel’ a name which means ‘the one who strives with God’ (Gen 32.28).

Furthermore, because none of us can disconnect from our personal baggage and characters, I suggest that there is an analogy between Gadamer’s philosophy of history and the Christian understanding of sin. Humans cannot escape the effects of our past mistakes. In turn, we cannot live up to the perfection we encounter in God, and so – in and of ourselves – cannot merit the life of heaven.

In the case of our sin, we find forgiveness through faith in Christ. In the case of our historical contingency, maybe there is wisdom within God’s grace to deepen self-understanding, fresh if imperfect perspective on our unconscious bias, until that day when we will know fully, even as we are fully known. Amen.

[1] Burnet, G., The History of the Reformation of the Church of England (Oxford: Clarendon, 1865), ii, 5.

[2] Burnet, G., The History of My Own Times (Oxford: Clarendon, 1823), i, 5.

[3] Burnet, G., Reflections on a book entituled The Rights, Powers and Privileges of an English Convocation Stated and Vindicated (London: 1700), 5.

[4] Burnet’s writings about the past need to be read alongside the Arminian theology of his Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England.

[5] Hexter, J. H., ‘The historian and his day’, Reappraisals in History (London: Longmans, 1961), 1-13.

[6] Gadamer, Hans-Georg, Truth and Method, trans. Weinsheimer, Joel and Marshall, Donald G. (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 311.

[7] Gadamer, Truth and Method, 312.