Posted in The Principle Approach: Self-Directed Study

Week 7—Assignment

• Lesson 6
  • Gaining a Providential View of History—In SDS, read from the beginning of Lesson 6 up to Principles— We’ll study each of the Principles individually in the weeks to come.
• Supplemental Resources:  
  • T&L pgs. 61-63—Read introduction to guidelines to study 7 principles (Try to take note of the last paragraph on pg. 62)
  • C&P pgs. 46-54—The Hand of God in American History—This was my favorite!  I hope you get the chance to read it.
  • CHOC, I, pgs. Ia-9
  • T&L pgs. 280-301 (NoahWebster Bio)
  • 1828 Dictionary (green pages)—Biography of Noah Webster—A comprehensive biography that would be nice to read when you get the chance.
• Assignments:  Define “understanding”, “temper”,  & “habits” (or others); Work on 3^rd Row of Chart on “Objectives of Education”

This lesson is primarily about the Chain of Christianity.  Over the next 7 weeks, we’ll be taking one principle at a time to cover the 7 fundamental principles of America’s Christian History.  Some of the above reading has also been spread across the next few weeks on our syllabus but the above assigned pages really relate to this week. 

My favorite, if you have the C&P book, is The Hand of God in America; which was an Annual Election Sermon in Boston, Massachusetts by Rev. S.W. Foljambe of Malden.  If you do not yet have C&P, make sure if you get it some day, to read pages 46-54.  He describes,

“…The events of history are not accidents.  There are no accidents in the lives of men or of nations.  We may go back to the underlying cause of every event, and discover in each God’s overruling and intervening wisdom.  It has been said that history is the biography of communities; in another, and profounder, sense, it is the autobiography of him ‘who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will’ (Ephesians 1:11), and who is graciously timing all events in the interests of his Christ, and of the kingdom of God on earth.  Tracing the history of men, we find the most trivial and seemingly fortuitous things issuing beyond all human expectations on intention in the sublimest events; we see men planning and working with only their own more immediate and material interests in view, and yet a power behind them is noiselessly and effectually, ruling their action to the furtherance of higher, more widely extended, and more permanent purposes...Neither social order, moral progress, nor a Christian civilization, can spring out of chance…There are influences which man can wield, and should control, aright; there are others which God alone originates and shapes…God’s hand is seen in the starting, speeding, retarding, and matching such coincident and colliding influences as mark the progress and constitute the varied crises of history.” [Emphasis added]

The Christian History of the American Revolution

Consider and Ponder, pgs. 46-47 

Lesson 6—Gaining A Providential View of History

            The Principle Approach relates a providential view of history revealing the Hand of God in history. 

“In theology”, providential view of history is “the care and superintendence which God exercises over his creatures.  He that acknowledges a creation and denies a providence, involves himself in a palpable contradiction; for the same power which caused a thing to exist is necessary to continue its existence…A belief in divine providence is a source of great consolation to good men.  By divine providence is often understood God himself.”—Noah Webster, 1828 Dictionary

            There is not much to add to a Providential View of History and the Chain of Christianity beyond this lesson and our “Week 3 Summary—What is the Providential View of History?  What is the Chain of Christianity.”  However, I did want to point out an observation by Verna Hall profiling modern Christians.  She sees them as often falling into either of two categories.

1. One group is known for “attempting to make Christianity more human and more like secular institutions in attempting to solve our national problems.”  She notes that “[i]ndeed it is difficult to tell where this type of Christianity leaves off and where good humanism begins.”
2. The other group has become so concerned with endeavoring to defend the faith itself, that they have withdrawn almost completely from the affairs of man in his daily walk…forgetting or forsaking the Hand of God in history, forgetting or forsaking the Word of God as our American political textbook, our economic textbook, our social, cultural, educational textbook; this alone has produced the results we have in our nation today.”

Through providential teaching, hopefully, we can avoid either of these categories and not fall into Christianity dressed up in humanism or humanism dressed up in Christianity nor so isolate ourselves from the world and give up our country to darkness without so much as a fight.  If the end is nigh and such darkness will come into existence at God’s allowance, so be it.  But if the end is not near, should we not fight for the light of Christ to remain in this country.  Otherwise, we are destined to go the way of Europe; which has converted their beautiful cathedrals to office space because the churches are empty. 

T&L pages 280-301 (Biography of Noah Webster)

            I enjoyed reading about Noah Webster; who is described as an example of American Christian Character in the Field of Education.  The Noah Plan was named after Noah Webster.  The following are some important points that you may like to know about Noah Webster.

Ø      Noah Webster was the first American to produce the American Dictionary of the English Language (before this time American colonists had only had England’s dictionaries that did not contain some of the terms becoming associated with America).

Ø      This 1828 dictionary could be called the only Christian dictionary in the world.

Ø      He placed the responsibility for education on the family and began to write textbooks that were self-teaching through his “blue-backed speller”, “grammars”, “readers”, and “histories”. 

Ø      Noah Webster was one of the first to propose a national constitution.

Ø      He spent 60 years writing books to help his country grow up in her independence.

Ø      The Bible and Webster’s self-teaching educational books are what went across the plains during the pioneers move westward.

Ø      Noah Webster was a truly intellectual and spiritual man.  To truly get a feel for the great man he was, you simply need to read his biography when you have time.

Over the next 7 weeks, we’ll be taking one principle at a time.  We will not be adding to our chart, so feel free to work on rows 1, 2, & 3 during this time and you will be caught up on the Chart.

Karen