Early periodization of redemptive history

Abstract

"The distinguished Oxford philosopher of history, Dr. R. G. Coiling- wood, wrote in his The Idea of History (p. 49-50), "Any history written on Christian principles will be of necessity universal, providential, apocalyptic, and periodized. (i) It will be a universal history, or history of the world, going back to the origin of man... ( ii) It will ascribe events not to the wisdom of their human agents but to the workings of Providence preordaining their course... (iii) It will set itself to detect an intelligible pattern in this general course of events, and in particular it will attach a central importance in this pattern to the historical life of Christ, which is clearly one of the chief preordained features of the pattern. It will make its narrative crystalize itself around that event, and treat earlier events as leading up to it or preparing for it, and subsequent events as developing its consequences"