This is the balance I try to find in my work as a Christian historian. For me, history is more than a series of tricks that we play on the dead, or that the dead play on us. History is more than simply an accidental chronology of first one thing happening, and then another. For me, history is also a source of revelation, a collection of wisdom. The archive is a treasure trove.
Old books are windows on truth.
The challenge of the Christian historian is to search within the wisdom of the ages for some indication of the eternal wisdom of God. It is to try to seek God's revelation and judgment over time without presuming the power of divine judgement. It is to try to discern God's justice within God's joust. These basic convictions about history inform my work on the interaction of law and religion in Western history, and they have been informed by the same. I start with the assumption that somehow God is both hidden and revealed in human laws, and that somehow human laws in turn both reflect and deflect divine values.