Each semester, across thousands of history classrooms across the country, a chasm between two cultures quietly widens. To see how it forms, let’s look at two history teachers as they prepare their lessons on Constantine the Great.

Both these teachers love their students and want the best for them. But their approaches towards history are contradictory, and both tend to collapse under the weight of reality.

In the first classroom—a classical Christian school—Constantine becomes an idolized superhero.

This teacher wants history to inspire students with stories of providence and virtue. So her students will learn of Saint Constantine. They’ll hear of his miraculous vision before the Battle of Milvian Bridge: in hoc signo vinces— “in this sign, conquer”. They learn how the Chi Rho shielded his army to victory. They hear about the Edict of Milan, and receive a whole unit on the Council of Nicaea which Constantine convened.

The lesson is clear: divine providence worked through this heroic, godly emperor. Students leave inspired, eager to imitate him, convinced Constantine was the perfect ruler and role model. The football team even starts putting Chi Rho decals on their helmets in the hopes of being just a bit as perfect as his Roman legions.

Let’s call this the sanitized approach to history.

In the second classroom—an AP history course at a prestigious public school—Constantine becomes a cautionary tale.

This teacher is trained in the genealogical method, perfected by postmodern philosopher and historian Friedrich Nietzsche.

The genealogical method is a historical lens which approaches everyone suspiciously, because it presumes that the motive behind every action and idea is power, despite any appearance to the contrary. Thus, she teaches history as a warning against ambition and corruption.

And Constantine is an excellent cautionary tale.

To encourage her students to view Constantine suspiciously, she assigns Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the Enlightenment gold-standard for historical skepticism.

Gibbon is clear: Constantine’s conversion wasn’t sincere; it was ambition disguised as religion: "Personal interest is often the standard of our belief," Gibbon writes, suggesting Constantine embraced the faith because it was "propitious to his fame and fortunes". (Gibbon, Decline and Fall, Chapter XX, Conversion of Constantine Part 1)

These students learn that Constantine still dabbled in worship of Sol Invictus, the pagan sun god. They discover he ordered the executions of his own wife, Fausta, and son, Crispus. When it’s time for the AP essay, they write on themes of power, manipulation, and the corruption of religion. They leave class convinced that "faith" is just a mask for power, having seen through the “opiate of the masses”.

We call this the cynical approach to history.

Both methods omit reality. The sanitized history ignores Constantine the sinner to protect faith; the cynical history ignores Constantine the saint to create skeptics.

The sanitized classroom creates fragile faith that depends on unblemished role models. This faith shatters the moment students encounter hard truths.

The cynical classroom creates nihilism masquerading as wisdom. These students become like Holden Caulfield, seeing "phonies" everywhere, unable to recognize genuine goodness.

But Constantine needs to be seen as the person he really was: a genuine saint and a genuine sinner. Like everyone else in human history, the battle-line between good and evil ran through his heart.

We need a method that threads the needle: teaching the full historical reality—divine providence alongside human failure—without destroying hope. This requires moral humility: we need to see history as it truly is, no better, no worse.

I’m using the classical definition of “moral humility” here, which is the virtue of seeing things as they are, no better, no worse. (For example, see what Aquinas says about humility here.)

We’re applying that virtue to our study of history.

Real history involves distinguishing good from evil, virtue from vice, even though they are always mixed together haphazardly. We want students who can parse out good from evil, deconstruct the evil, then build on the good to make tomorrow better.

But good history requires good metaphysics.

We need to teach the metaphysical principles that empower students to read history well; temper them against false hope and hopelessness. 

Fortunately, we don’t need to invent the principles we need to read history well: they’re already well-established by Scripture, in Church Orthodoxy, and even by one of the Church’s arch-rivals, Friedrich Nietzsche. All three sources have something to contribute here.

Today, Nietzsche gets credit for using history to unmask the schemes of the powerful—the “genealogical method”. But the prophets of Israel were already doing that… over two millennia before Nietzsche. 

The biblical writers, like Nietzsche, refuse to sanitize their own heroes. 

Consider King David, “a man after God’s own heart” (1 Sam 13:14). Jesus Christ came through his bloodline. Christians and Jews still recite his prayers in worship.

Yet the prophets openly convict him of grievous sins: the rape of Bathsheba, his conspiracy to murder her husband Uriah, his catastrophic failures as a father that led to civil war amongst his sons.

Both David’s virtues and sins are preserved in Scripture. The writers acknowledge God’s activity, but also ruthlessly interrogate their heroes. If God Himself refuses to sanitize His Scripture, then Christian educators have no precedent to sanitize the rest of history. 

But how were the biblical writers brutally honest about heroes without collapsing into hopelessness—into nihilism—as Nietzsche did?

Because Scripture’s honesty is grounded in good metaphysics.

The prophets accepted principles about good, evil, Providence, and human agency that Nietzsche rejected.

Thomas Aquinas articulates these biblical principles with precision. 

So, to set our history classrooms on the right foundation, we’ll survey three of these biblical principles, with Aquinas as our guide. Once we understand:

1: The nature of good and evil, and the imbalance between them,

2: The difference between God causing something to happen versus God allowing it to happen,

3: How Providence works within human history,

We’ll have the foundation to teach history with moral humility; accepting the good with the evil, without falling into false hope or hopelessness.

Good and evil exist in fundamentally different ways. There’s an asymmetry between them.

Goodness can exist by itself; evil cannot.

Aquinas argues that "the being and perfection of any nature is good... Therefore it must be that by the name ‘evil’, we signify the absence of good". (ST I, Q48)

Evil isn't a thing—it's the absence of something that should’ve been, or a corruption of something good. Because all being is the work of God, and God is always good, then all being is good. It is good to exist. Evil does not have its own substance; only God-given natures do, and those are always good.

Gregory of Nyssa expresses the same truth: "wickedness has its form and character in the deprivation of the good... it is the non-existence of the good that is so denominated by the word". (The Great Catechism Pt 2, Ch 7)

The imbalance between good and evil affects how we read history. Students who understand this asymmetry will trust that good came before evil and will outlast it. 

So when we encounter Constantine executing his wife and son, we aren’t seeing “pure, irredeemable evil”. We’re encountering a human (God’s creation) using his intellect and will (both good things) to act.

The evil is in his intentions. And it becomes much easier to excise evil once we’ve pinpointed it.

Aquinas insists on a distinction between what God causes and what God permits.

"Whatever there is of being and action in a bad action, is reduced to God as the cause; whereas whatever defect is in it is not caused by God, but by the deficient secondary cause". (ST I, Q49, A2, R2)

In any given moment in history, God causes the capability to act. Constantine and David had political power—a good thing provided by God to support justice. But when they corrupted that power, the defect came from their own will, not God.

This distinction prevents both triumphalism and despair. It allows us to recognize historical failures without them eclipsing all hope or blaming God, the Source of all Good.

We aren’t forced to choose between seeing everything as "God’s specific decree" or reducing everything to human chaos. Both divine and human action are real causes of history.

Finally, history unfolds through genuine human choices—often bad choices.

Providence doesn’t mean "if it happened, God wanted it." Rather, Providence means God is so powerful He can achieve restoration of Creation through—and often despite—our genuinely free choices.

Aquinas argues that God has immediate providence over everything, yet this "does not exclude the action of secondary causes; which are the executors of His order". (ST I, Q22, A3)

We can accept real human agency without denying God’s sovereignty.

With these principles in place, we can safely operate the genealogical method like a scalpel. In simpler terms, we can read history with a suspicious eye… once we have principles to guide our suspicions. 

We should take the time to understand why genealogy is dangerous when it’s the only tool we use, unmoored by metaphysical principles.

We can see the danger in Nietzsche’s own thought, and his own personal unraveling because of it. 

Nietzsche suspected that Western civilization—his society, and ours—is rotten to the core. He explored history to diagnose the root of the rot, and believed this root was our Judeo-Christian heritage, the Old and New Testament scriptures.

Nietzsche believed the Judeo-Christian scriptures and the values they imparted were engineered by the losers of history to guilt the strong into obedience. 

In Nietzsche’s telling of history, the Jews were conquered by Rome and couldn't win by force. So, they invented a new game—morality.

They created new definitions of "good" and "evil" where the weak and poor were “morally” superior to the strong aristocrats.

According to Nietzsche, Judeo-Christian scripture is not truth; it is a revenge plot engineered by the enslaved masses. (Genealogy of Morality, First Essay, especially Sections 8-16)

I’d like to point out a paradox of Nietzsche’s genius here. He’s engaging with the particulars of history: Jews, Christians, pagan Greeks and Romans. All his analysis is aimed at specifics.

Yet, these cultures are at the beginning of human history. And these ancient cultures serve as the foundation of both 19th century Germany (Nietzsche’s world), and the 21st century English-speaking countries (our current world). Nietzsche goes so far back into history; the criticisms he has about these specific people carry near universal implications across our world.

Nietzsche’s approach to history was so clever that his particular criticisms about people from thousands of years ago carry universal impact across today's world. 

Nietzsche’s genealogical approach naturally raises one question constantly:

"Whose power does this really serve?"

Later "postmodern" thinkers asked this question about everything throughout their cultures—prisons, schools, art, mass media, social movements. Everything.

For example, my PhD mentor, Jeffrey P. Bishop, is currently asking that question about:

1: modern hospitals,

2: the worldwide campaign to legalize euthanasia,

3: our contradictory definitions of “death”, and

4: the cultural attitude toward organ donation. 

Yes, they’re all related. Yes, there are schemes afoot, and yes, together they’re all corrupting our care for the dying and the chronically ill.

Jeff has written the book on all this, if you’re interested: The Anticipatory Corpse: Medicine, Power, and the Care of the Dying. Think of it as a genealogy of the hospital and hospice.

Genealogy is simply using brutal honesty and suspicion as a method for history. It shines a harsh light on hypocrisy—like the fact that the Council of Nicaea suspiciously aligned with Constantine’s political need to unify his empire.

Suspicion is a necessary tool for interpreting history, but it cannot be the only tool.

Suspicion alone eats everything—including all history and metaphysics—then eats itself.

If every claim in history was made simply to manipulate, then we can trust no claim—including our own suspicions.

It’s possible to lie to yourself, you know… perhaps you’ve been lying to yourself the entire time. Or perhaps the masters of genealogy suspected the wrong things and led us down the wrong path.

For example, consider the standoff between Nietzsche and René Girard, a new conflict in the history of philosophy that started only 35 years ago.

Nietzsche tells us to suspect Jesus, claiming Christianity is a scheme of the weak. But Girard casts suspicion on Nietzsche, accusing Nietzsche of rationalizing humanity’s urge to idolize violence and power.

The specific accusations between Girard and Nietzsche illustrate a general problem with the genealogical method. If we hear mutually exclusive suspicions, and have no way to go beyond those suspicions to discover the truth, we hit a dead end. We literally cannot know.

Both Girard and Nietzsche give us sophisticated histories; both are brutally honest and suspicious. 

Yet if suspicion is only our only tool for seeking historical truths, then we have no way to decide which is true. Both accusations cancel out, and we can go no further. We can never determine what truly happened.

If we want historical truth, we’re eventually forced to ask metaphysical questions, like: "What actually happened?", “Who is a trustworthy source, and why?” and "What is genuinely good?".

Suspicion has its proper place, though, once it is led by the right principles. The prophets were suspicious of evil masquerading as justice. In a similar way, we can be suspicious in the history classroom without forsaking all hope of finding the truth.

We ought to shine a harsh light on abuses of authority, convenient historical omissions, forgotten institutional flaws, and the hypocrisies in the stories we tell ourselves.

When suspicion is founded on the proper metaphysics and aimed at real evils, it can save a civilization from the lies it tells itself. After all, the prophets tried to save Israel from its own comfortable myths. Live not by lies, as they say.

Genealogy serves our history students best when used like a scalpel: precise cuts guided by careful training to excise something bad.

Genealogy causes havoc for our history students when it’s used like a wrecking ball: swinging around wildly, pulverizing whatever’s in its path.

We can let Nietzsche use the scalpel, but not the wrecking ball.

And the scalpel will only make the right cuts when it’s guided by the metaphysical principles revealed through the Cross, those same principles Aquinas explained for us earlier. 

The scalpel of genealogy can dissect real evil and save the patient, like the Prophets did, but only if guided by the right principles.

Without the biblical principles, our only tool in history is a wrecking ball, and it will deconstruct everything it touches, leaving the ruins of nihilism.

Once equipped with the right principles and a license to use genealogy, our students can begin building up the good and deconstructing the bad.

We’ll know we’re teaching history well when we see our classroom accomplish the four purposes below.

Let’s look at how this should play out with our earlier example: Constantine. We’ll imagine a “third classroom”, one that teaches morally humble history, grounded in the Cross, proficient with the Scalpel.

Sanitized history implies God only works through perfect people and perfect circumstances.

Cynical history implies God isn't there at all.

Morally humble history reveals Providence working through the mess. Students need to see that when evil seems victorious, God is not absent.

Let’s apply this to our lesson on Constantine. In the third classroom, students see God at work through the initiatives of a flawed man. They understand that the Council of Nicaea was a genuine blessing for the Church, even if the man who authorized it was driven by mixed motives. They learn that God’s goodness survives contact with human flaws.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote that “the line between good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties, but through every human heart.”

Scripture proves this with David; history proves it with Constantine. Students in the morally humble classroom read Constantine’s letters defending the Creed and learn about his banishment of Saint Athanasius over a political feud.

They see that Constantine was a genuine Saint and a genuine Caesar.

They don’t have to ignore his virtues to acknowledge his sins, nor hide his sins to preserve his virtues.

History is mimetic; we naturally look for people to imitate. But a sanitized superhero cannot be imitated because they aren't real.

By presenting the complexities of Constantine, students encounter an actual human. They must discern what to imitate (his defense of the faith) and what to reject (his ruthless political violence).

They learn prudence through the practice of history: "Be like this, not like that," rather than uncritically worshipping an idol.

History is a laboratory of consequences.

Students need to see the fruits of both piety and ambition. They see the fruits of Constantine’s piety: the Nicene Creed, which set the foundations of Orthodoxy.

They also see the fruits of his ambition: the dysfunction of his royal court and the tragedy within his family. The fault-lines of Imperial Roman politics that were imported into the institutional Church.

In seeing the full equation—action to consequence—students are trained to make better choices in the future.

The history classroom is an opportunity to train souls by showing them reality.

If we present sanitized heroes, we prime students for nihilism the moment they read their first skeptical scholar. If we present endless cynicism, we drive them straight to nihilism. And nihilism can neither preserve nor advance a civilization. 

We must instead prepare them for reality: a fallen creation that God nevertheless sustains. By teaching history with moral humility—using the Cross to ground our hope and the Scalpel to preserve our honesty—we train leaders who can face the darkness without losing the light.

Our world is not a fairy tale, nor is it a grand conspiracy. It is a fallen realm God is redeeming through humanity. History is the observatory where students learn to see the world as it is, so they can one day help make it what it ought to be.

☦️❤️🐍