One of the points that I took from this week was the idea of historicity, and both Grant and Dostoevsky touched on this issue. Historicity is the idea that history is shaped by one’s culture that is the way people live and think. It follows, then, that there exists not one history, but many little histories depending on the cultural awareness of the people. One specific example Grant uses to illustrate historicity is the Christian understanding of the relationship between God and Jesus. Grant writes that “Christianity would have developed very differently had it matured in some culture other than the Hellenism of the Roman Empire.” Dostoevsky never specifically addresses the idea of historicity in the section of “Notes from Underground” that we read. But if you look as Dostoevsky’s sections as a whole, it in fact could be taken as perfect example of historicity in and of itself. The underground man’s own view of history is drastically colored by his awareness of the culture that existed in St. Petersburg in the 19th century. He writes that only a portion of the available consciousness to man is necessary for everyday life, “especially to one who has the particular misfortune of living in St. Petersburg, the most abstract and premeditated city in the whole world.”
One of the largest commonalities between Grant and Dostoevsky that I observed was their thoughts and ideas that free thinking is human nature. This speaks to the core of the relationship between absolutism and relativism. From a theological perspective, there is the rational side which has been critically examined and often times proven scientifically versus the emotional side, which is where faith and value lie. Theologically, it appears that free thinking can be seen on either side. Through historical criticism, humans have exercised free thinking by questioning history and ultimately coming up with proven fact, while at the same time free thinking clearly is at the heart of the faith side...