The Whig interpretation of history, famously critiqued by Herbert Butterfield in 1931, remains one of the most seductive frameworks in modern historical consciousness. It offers a narrative of inevitable progress — a story in which the past leads inexorably to the triumph of liberty, reason and constitutional democracy.
In this view, history is a moral arc bending toward justice, a march toward the “right side” of human development. But such a view, while rhetorically compelling, distorts the past by flattening its contradictions and sanctifying its outcomes.
Joe Marlow
In contrast, I hold to a view of history that is nuanced, contradictory and messy —NCM for short. This posture resists the seduction of inevitability and insists on the complexity of human experience.
This essay explores the Whig view, its critics and how an NCM framework offers a more honest and generative engagement with the past, especially in rejecting slogans like “the right side of history” and “the moral arc bends toward justice.” It concludes by affirming that the only true “right side of history” is not a human achievement but a divine promise: the New Jerusalem, created by God, where justice and peace are not earned but gifted.
The Whig view: Progress as destiny
The Whig interpretation of history is a teleological narrative. It assumes history is moving toward a predetermined goal — typically liberal democracy, scientific rationality and individual freedom. In this framework, historical actors are judged according to how well they anticipated or contributed to these modern ideals. Reformers, revolutionaries and scientists are cast as heroes; monarchs, traditionalists and dissenters as obstacles to progress.
This narrative was especially prominent in 19th-century British historiography. Thomas Babington Macaulay portrayed English history as a triumphant march from feudalism to parliamentary democracy, with Protestantism and constitutionalism as twin pillars of moral advancement.
“Such interpretations offered coherence and inspiration, but at the cost of historical complexity and moral ambiguity.”
The Glorious Revolution of 1688, in this telling, was not merely a political event but a moral victory — a step closer to the enlightened present.
Such interpretations offered coherence and inspiration, but at the cost of historical complexity and moral ambiguity.
The critics: Butterfield, revisionists and postmodern skeptics
Herbert Butterfield’s The Whig Interpretation of History was a watershed moment in historiography. He argued Whig history was not merely flawed but fundamentally unhistorical. By judging the past through the lens of the present, Whig historians turned history into a morality play, where the winners always were right and the losers deserved their fate. Butterfield insisted historians must resist the urge to “praise revolutions before they have been won” and instead attend to the past on its own terms.
Later critics expanded this challenge. In 1961’s What Is History?, E.H. Carr emphasized the dialogical nature of history — how it is shaped by the questions we ask and the contexts we inhabit. Postmodern historians went further, questioning whether any grand narrative could do justice to the multiplicity of voices and experiences in the historical record. They warned against the erasure of contingency, failure and dissent in the name of coherence.
Even in the history of science, scholars like Thomas Kuhn and Steven Shapin dismantled Whiggish accounts that celebrated only the victors — Newton, Darwin, Einstein — while ignoring the false starts, rival theories and sociopolitical entanglements that shaped scientific development.
The NCM view: Embracing contradiction and complexity
My own approach to history — what I call the NCM view — rejects the Whig impulse not because it is too moral, but because it is too simplistic. History is not a sermon with a clear moral arc; it is a conversation marked by paradox, reversal and unfinished business. It is a terrain where good intentions coexist with unintended consequences, where reformers can be complicit in injustice and where the oppressed sometimes replicate the logic of their oppressors.
“History is not a sermon with a clear moral arc.”
This view does not deny that progress can occur. It simply refuses to treat progress as inevitable or morally pure. It asks: What was lost in the name of what was gained? Who was silenced in the telling of this story? What alternative futures were foreclosed by the very victories we now celebrate?
In this light, slogans like “the right side of history” become deeply problematic. They presume a single, knowable trajectory and cast dissent as either ignorance or evil. They foreclose dialogue and flatten moral complexity. Similarly, the oft-quoted phrase “the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice,” while rhetorically stirring, risks becoming a theological sedative — a way to outsource moral responsibility to the cosmos rather than wrestle with the hard, daily work of justice.
Theological reframing: The New Jerusalem as the true horizon
Theologically, the Whig view commits a subtle idolatry: It treats human history as salvific. It assumes that through reason, reform and revolution, we can build the kingdom of God on earth.
But Scripture offers a different horizon. The New Jerusalem, described in Revelation 21, is not the product of human progress but the gift of divine grace. It descends from heaven, not from Parliament. It is not the culmination of liberal democracy but the fulfillment of God’s promise to dwell with God’s people.
In this eschatological vision, justice is not the endpoint of history but its interruption. The New Jerusalem does not bend toward us; it breaks into our world. It is not the reward for being on the “right side” of history but the mercy that meets us in our wrongness. It is the place where tears are wiped away not because we earned it, but because God is faithful.
This reframing liberates us from triumphalism. It allows us to name injustice without pretending history will fix it. It invites us to labor for justice not because we are guaranteed success, but because we are called to faithfulness. It reminds us our hope is not in the arc of history but in the Lamb who was slain.
Cultural implications: From vindication to witness
In public discourse, the Whig view often functions as a tool of vindication. It is used to silence dissent, to claim moral superiority, to declare victory before the battle is over. But the NCM view, grounded in theological humility, invites a different posture: Witness.
“To witness is to tell the truth without controlling the outcome.”
To witness is to tell the truth without controlling the outcome. It is to name injustice without demanding applause. It is to live as if the New Jerusalem is real, even when the world looks more like Babylon. This posture is deeply countercultural. It resists the logic of empire, the seduction of certainty and the idolatry of progress.
In this light, history becomes not a ladder we climb but a landscape we inhabit. It is a place of pilgrimage, not conquest. It is a space where we meet the saints and the sinners, the prophets and the betrayers, and learn to see ourselves in all of them.
Conclusion: History as holy ground
The Whig interpretation of history offers a seductive clarity, but at the cost of truth. Its critics have rightly exposed its limitations, and the NCM view offers a more faithful alternative — one that embraces complexity, honors ambiguity and resists the tyranny of inevitability.
In a time when public discourse is increasingly polarized and moral certainty is weaponized, we need a historiography that cultivates humility, curiosity and courage.
Not to find ourselves on the “right side of history,” but to become the kind of people who can bear witness to its full, messy truth. And to remember the only true right side of history is not ours to claim — it is God’s to reveal, in the New Jerusalem, where justice and peace are not earned but gifted.
I concur with the New Testament scholar N.T. Wright in The Challenge of Acts: Rediscovering What the Church Was and Is where he writes, “Any attempt to tidy things up (or to make them fit modern developmental schemes!) is likely to be unhistorical. True history is filled with all kinds of things that don’t fit our tidy patterns.”
Joe Marlow is a theologian, historian, educator and writer now retired in South Lyon, Mich., with his wife, son, daughter-in-law and their two dogs. His third book — Against the Grain: Historical Interpretation and the Messiness of Truth — is to be published early next year.