C. S. Lewis was Right on History

While Lewis was skeptical of all philosophy of history, that is because such theories inevitably begin from rigid ideological precepts. Butterfield invites us to move from thinking about technical history or, in science, evolution (“life”) to thinking about God. If everything is ultimately attributed to God, then science and history must be read in a certain way. However, this doesn’t necessarily lead to Lewis’s much-hated Historicism, which is the temptation to draw from the past non-historical conclusions. Lewis defines Historicism as the belief that men can, by the use of their natural powers, discover an inner meaning in the historical process. Yet, Lewis’s view of Historicism does not preclude technical interpretation of events from the outside looking in. Nor does it preclude reliance on the super-natural to try to get inside the past; to do so is the mark of the “real historian.”