> [[jh-hist-14|← Chapter 14]] | [[history-of-the-catholic-church-toc|TOC]] | [[jh-hist-17|Next →]] # Conclusion Faith allows believers to approach the past with a certain serenity, as shocked and appalled as any nonbeliever at "man's inhumanity to man" but nonetheless ultimately hopeful. History is indeed the war of good against evil, but the progress of that war is hidden from human eyes. The fundamental barrier to any full understanding of history is the simple fact of human fallibility. Genuine understanding would require omniscience ---the pattern of history could be fully seen only by someone above history But the search for such a supra-historical vantage point is obviously futile. The end of history is beyond history, and history cannot reveal its own inner meaning. A related fallacy stems from man's limited temporal horizons. If, as some early Christians believed, the Roman Empire came into being in order to prepare the way for the birth of the Savior, this was not at all evident to pious Jews longing for the Messiah. They experienced the Roman incursion as merely another of those periodic mysterious catastrophes that fell upon them. But hindsight also does not suffice. An argument can be made for the providential role of the Empire in preparing the way for Christ, but in other respects the Empire was a formidable obstacle to the spread of the Gospel. Providence was indeed at work, but it is presumptuous to think that men know exactly how. If Christianity is by far the most historical of all religions, from another point of view it is problematic why Christians should respect history at all, since the Gospel foretells its termination. "All this will pass away" (see Mt 24:35). All will be gathered into eternity. Thus, for Christians, there can be no final understanding of history in this life. No one knows when history will reach its end, and the believer is enjoined by Christ to refrain from all such speculation. If mankind survives another million years, its view of history will change profoundly, as all the carefully delineated eras that are now part of the historical record will recede into a very remote past, to be disposed of by future historians in the twinkling of an eye. --- ![[bibliography#^biblio-hch]] > [[jh-hist-14|← Chapter 14]] | [[history-of-the-catholic-church-toc|TOC]] | [[jh-hist-17|Next →]]