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As an undergraduate at Christendom College, I remember being grateful for a particular feature in Dr. Warren Carroll's history exams.  On those exams, there were short answer essays which would require us to identify individuals or events, explain their importance and place them in history by providing a date when the individual lived or when the event took place.  As an alternative to this requirement, Dr. Carroll, my history professor and thesis director, would allow us to provide a notable contemporary--another person not directly involved, but in some way relevant to the individual or event in question--as a way of testing our overall grasp of the historical "picture".  I was grateful for this option, because it always seemed easier to provide a relevant person than to remember a specific date.

Looking back after time and further studies, I have come to realize that this option fit perfectly into Dr. Carroll's approach to history.   Indeed, one might say that his acceptance of a historical contemporary as a means of testing a student's grasp of how an individual or event fit into history reveals his great respect for the centrality of the person in history.

Warren Carroll has an impressive and still growing body of work to his name, which includes several books and a projected six-volumed work entitled A History of Christendom.  The purpose of this essay is to examine how Warren Carroll describes his own approach and purpose to historical scholarship in the introduction to the first volume in his ongoing multi-volumed work, The Founding of Christendom, and to point out various correlations with some of the more notable personalist philosophers and theologians of our time.   With help of John Paul II and others, it should be rather obvious that a personalist understanding constitutes a great part of Warren Carroll's philosophy of history.

Personal dignity and transcendence rooted in the person of Christ
Carroll begins the introduction by answering the question, "What is Christendom?"
 

Christendom is the reign of Christ--that is to say, for the Christian, the reign of God recognized by men.  Much of that reign is invisible, since His kingdom is not of this world.  Much of it is personal, since the primary concern of this divine Person is with us as human and eternal persons.  But some of it is public and historical.  Where men of courage and missionary spirit recognize Christ as their Lord and proclaim Him, Christendom appears as a social, cultural and political presence in the world.  It grows with that courage and profession, and above all by the silent impetus of prayer and example.  It fades with timidity, indifference, apostasy, and the lack of holiness.1

In this passage, there are two items worthy of examination.  First, Carroll places the writing of history in a Christological context.  Carroll presupposes that Christ came into history and continues to act in history.  Things get "personal", as Carroll puts it, when he connects Christ as a Person to man as "human and eternal persons."  Another way of characterizing this connection between Christ as Person and man as person would be to say that history is intrinsically bound up in the relation between Christ and man.  Carroll implies relation with Christ's "concern" for man and man's acknowledgment of Christ's Lordship.  With the notion of "relation" now present a more traditional understanding of relation as constitutive of person emerges.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger echos this sentiment saying that
 

As a consequence, dynamic definition of the human person flows from Christ, the new Adam.  Christ is the directional arrow, as it were, that indicates what being human tends toward, although, as long as history is still on the way, this goal is never fully reached.  At the same time it is clear that such a definition of being human manifests the historicity of the human person.  If person is the relativity toward the eternal, then this relativity implies 'being on the way' in the manner of human history.2

For Ratzinger too, the human person receives definition and direction from his relation to Christ.  Consequently, it is this relation that also gives definition to human history, which Ratzinger cutely characterizes as the "being on the way" to the One to who we are in relation--Christ.

Second, Carroll's inclusion of the "silent impetus of prayer and example" as an influencing factor in history is very telling of a special nuance in his personalist approach to history.  Carroll gives primacy to prayer and example among the human actions.  This acknowledgment of human action that is not external or visible is surely unique among contemporary historians.  Carroll would contend that the action which takes place within the interior of the person and the daily life of virtue also has an effect in history.

Karol Wojtyla, in The Acting Person, makes a distinction between transitive and intransitive acts which helps to explain this point.  "When we speak of 'performing an action' we see the person as the subject and the agent while the action itself appears as the consequence of the efficacy of the agent.  This consequence is external with regard to the person, but it is also internal to, or immanent in, the person ... it is both transitive and intransitive with respect to the person."3  One can readily see that the interior disposition which is cultivated by "prayer and example" which Carroll considers so important in history corresponds to the intransitive acts of the person which Karol Wojtyla carefully defines and emphasizes.

James Hanink provides a helpful assertion which further draws to the two points together.  He says, "But what of that which we create intransitively?  The truth we live, the goodness we achieve, the beauty we reverence--these goods are never used up.  The more they are realized, the more abundant they are."4  Hanink makes the assertion that seems to echo Carroll in the acknowledgment of the production of interior goods. 

The primacy of human agency in history
Midway through the introduction, Carroll addresses the common view that history is determined by forces, dialectics or trends whether they be economic, political or evolutionary.  Carroll writes:
 

Regarding social, political, and non-ecclesiastical institutional history, the writer would emphasize that as a Christian his interest is in persons.  Persons in their earthly lives are indubitably very much affected by the social and institutional structures and by economic conditions.  But the person is ultimately, metaphysically independent of them.  He is not their creature, but God's creature.  (emphasis added by the author)5

Here Carroll makes an important point , for it is with this point that he makes a valuable contribution to contemporary historical scholarship.  Carroll acknowledges the influential dimension of the cultural, economic and political orders, but he insists on the primacy of the person as the determining agent in all temporal affairs.  This assertion stands in opposition to the prevailing philosophy of history today which is dominated by the Hegelian dialectic.  Carroll further reinforces his response to contemporary historiography by stating the following:
 

Christians do not see men as primarily shaped or dominated by extrinsic and nameless forces, structures, and trends.  They see the drama of human life as primarily composed of personal thought and action, above all by the working of the will.  (emphasis added by the author)6

Carroll's concept of man as person standing at the center of history now deserves more attention.  In the passage just quoted, Carroll introduces the notion of man being "metaphysically independent" of temporal institutional influence.  Undoubtedly, Carroll is basing this independence on the dignity of the person which is derived from his eternal origin and destiny to which he already referred.  Karol Wojtyla refers to this same concept as self-determination.  "The self, then, I not just self-consciousness, but it is also the self possession and self-governance proper to a concrete human suppositum."7

Here Carroll's basic presupposition is aided by one of the Pope John Paul II's most foundational principles which is set forth in Laborem Exercens.  With man's biblical mandate to subdue the earth, God gives the gift of work to man.  Hence we have the famous axiom of Laborem exercens "work is for man, man is not for work."8   Here the Pope is emphasizing that it is man that gives dignity to work and not work that gives dignity to man.  More importantly to our discussion, the Holy Father is also teaching that man has been given the gift of work and therefore it is man that produces.  Work does not produce man.  Therefore man is responsible for the economic and political orders.  The economic and political trends may affect man, but it is man that lies at their very origin and hence is it man that can change the direction of these trends.  In this way Carroll justifies writing history from the perspective of the person rather than nameless forces.

The drama of history
Towards the end of the his Introduction, Carroll explains his writing style.  Carroll's special talent, which has become his signature, for producing history books that are just as entertaining as they are factual and informative is no coincidence to his personalist outlook.
 

The writer firmly holds the perhaps unfashionable belief that any good history should be a good story.  Man's past is full of events more dramatic than any ever put on stage.  The most dramatic of these events pertain directly to the supreme drama which is the action of Christ in the world, in preparing for His coming, in coming, and in living in His Church.  There is no law of nature or of scholarship which says that a scholarly and reliable history must be dull, and no at all why it should be.  (emphasis added by the author)9

Once again there are two items within the above passage worth exploring.  First, Carroll connects the notion of drama to the nature of history.  This is a direct consequence of Carroll's fundamental assumption that man is an actor.  "Through our activity we are the authors of many effects outside of ourselves; through it we shape our surrounding reality."10  The drama of human action is then derived from the "concrete human person who, in acting, takes up the task of integration and transcendence and thereby becomes the human agent who engages with others in the community of being."11

Second, implicit it this passage is Carroll's desire for the drama of history to be a thematic presentation.   Human action, and consequently human history, will naturally bring forth themes which imply the "supreme drama which is the action of Christ in world" whether they are in harmony or disaccord with Christ.  Hence we come to Carroll's ultimate purpose for historical scholarship.  It is the drama of Christ that inspires the saga of man, how it unfolds and its eventual outcome.

In regards to this point it is worth mentioning Pope John Paul II's interest in drama both as an actor and a playwright. Poland suffered much during World War II.  As a young man during this time, Karol Wojtyla was a member of a theatrical group and wrote several plays.  It is understandable that the severity of the surrounding events, the war and Nazi occupation, also occupied the attention and imagination of young Wojtyla.  Kenneth Schmitz says that "Wojtyla's interest leaned toward the record of that history as it was given expression by poets and national heroes... But his religious interest was caught also by an older history--biblical history.  His first works for the theater gave dramatic expression to the blending of themes played out in those different histories."12  Wojtyla used the drama of history to enhance the thematic presentation of his theater.  For Wojtyla, like Carroll, the thematic expression of the Person and event of Christ can be eaily found and developed within the drama of human history.

Even though this consideration of Warren Carroll's approach to history with the help of other personalist thinkers has been relatively brief, one can readily see the personalist ideals in Carroll's philosophy of history.  Carroll roots the person in his relation to Christ thus establishing the source and definition to man's dignity and the transcendence of human action.  Following from the primacy of man within temporal reality, Carroll is steadfast in maintaining the person's independence with respect to cultural, political and economic forces.  Lastly, Carroll's insistence that history be good story speaks of his natural assumption that the dignity of man and the transcendence of human acts is a drama in itself.  This drama, in turn, speaks of the supreme drama which is the action of Christ.  Indeed there is a great deal of coherence between Carroll, the personalist historian and Karol, the most brilliant personalist of the century 

At the close of the introduction, Carroll makes a call for more interest in history saying that "there is a crying need for rising young historical scholars possessing the gift of faith in Christ to answer the call for the reconstruction of Christian historiography."13  In the same vein, this writer hopes that by drawing some correlation between personalist thought of Pope John Paul II, and other philosophers and theologians, to the historian Warren Carroll, that more interest in personalist history, as well as interdisciplinary personalism, is further stimulated.

Endnotes
1. Warren H. Carroll, The Founding of Christendom, (Front Royal, VA: Christendom College Press, 1985), 9.
2. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, "Concerning the Notion of Person in Theology," Communio 17 (Fall 1990), 452.
3. Karol Wojtyla, The Acting Person, trans. Andrzej Potocki (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1979), 149.  (from Hanink article)
4. James G. Hanink, "Karol Wojtyla: Personalism, intransitivity, and Character," Communio 23 (summer 1996), 251.
5. Carroll, 10.
6. Carroll, 10.
7. Wojtyla, 46.
8. Pope John Paul II, Laborem exercens, 6.
9. Carroll, 11.
10. Karol Wojtyla, "The Person: Subject and Community", reprinted in Crisis Magazine (April 1994), 44.
11. Kenneth Schmitz, At the Center of the Human Drama, (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1993), 145.
12. Schmitz, 2.
13. Carroll, 11.

To find out more about books by Warren Carroll, check out:
 Christendom Press