By and large, humans, especially those of the ancient world, have tended to view history cyclically. In other words, history has often been conceived, not as a progression or linearly, but as a series of cycles. This view pervaded the ancient world for a couple of reasons. First, life follows a cycle. We come into this world utterly dependent, grow to relative independence, and finally shrink and wither to dependence again. A bumper sticker I have seen captures this reality nicely: "Take care of your children because they choose your nursing home". We go from dust to dust. A second reason many ancients viewed history as a repeating cycle is the agricultural life that profoundly shaped the ancient world's consciousness. The days, seasons, crops, and years all follow a cycle. It was assumed that history followed the same cyclical pattern. (
for more on this see David Bebbington's Patterns in History)
Interestingly, the Bible does not present us with a cyclical view of history (although certain books, like Judges, follow the cyclical pattern). Instead, it presents a progression, a linear view of history: Creation. Fall. Redemption. It presents the move from a garden to a city. In this way, the Bible is an aberration. An oddity. Just as the Hebrews were bizarre for their monotheism, they were also odd in their view of history as being linear.
Of course, to see history linearly only makes sense in light of the cross. Touching upon this profound truth, G.K. Chesterton makes an interesting comparison between the Buddhist swastika and the Christian cross:
The cross is a thing at right angles pointing boldly in opposite directions; but the Swastika is the very same thing in the very act of returning to the recurrent curve. That crooked cross is in fact a cross turning into a wheel. Before we dismiss even these symbols as if they were arbitrary symbols, we must remember how intense was the imaginative instinct that produced them or selected them both in the east and the west. The cross has become something more than a historical memory; it does convey, almost as by a mathematical diagram, the truth about the real point at issue; the idea of a conflict stretching outwards into eternity. It is true, and even tautological, to say that the cross is the crux of the whole matter.
In other words, the cross in fact as well as figure, does really stand for the idea of breaking out of the circle that is everything and nothing. (
The Everlasting Man, 134)
Redemption through the cross of Christ is not something we'd expect. Apart from the cross, we are enslaved to cyclicalness. We are like horses at the hot walker, shackled to the cycle of our sinful passions. Moving nowhere but to eventual condemnation. Not surprisingly, so many have taken the dark, cold cyclical view of history.
Thankfully, the cycle has been broken. The swastika, and all that it represents, has extended and become a cross. History will never be the same.
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