CH1-01 Historical Methodology

Why is it important to study church history?

People who don’t know their past, don’t have roots, and they don’t have identity, and they can drift. It’s very important to understand from where we’ve come. Many evangelicals in particular have the impression that they came directly from the Acts of the Apostles, and to know that there were twenty centuries of history between then and now is extremely important. Being aware of history not only as the study of history, of dates and places and people, but also trends and movements, and seeing the wider view, more interdisciplinary view, of looking at history. So, it’s about who we are; from where we’ve come. And hopefully better understanding where we’re going.

One of the most significant characteristics of human life is our appreciation of story. We’re telling stories by the living of our lives, and as we recall the past we look back to deeper roots and so forth; we look ahead at stories that may yet be composed. I think that’s, if I can go devotional for a moment, part of what’s so beautiful about Revelation 1 where it says that our Lord is revealed as the one “who is and the one who was and who is to come.” And so, the church has a story, and we are a part of that. God’s story is, in part, told through the lives of his people. And so, in various ways, we might say that the study of church history, knowing it, is valuable because our ability to work with a story is going to be central to our living of human life with others who have an appreciation of that dimension. So, we could say specifically about Christian history, what are some reasons to study church history? Because church history, Christian history, is everywhere in our culture. There are still symbols and stories and celebrations that find their deepest root in the Christian tradition. We should know that. Church history also liberates you from the tyranny of the present and of the recent past. This isn’t the only way things can be done. This isn’t the only wisdom that we can gain. We have some deep, deep sources for that wisdom. Life’s too short, also, to learn by experience. We don’t want to get all of our understanding by mistakes or by denying that we made mistakes — “no regrets.” We want to look back to moments where there are real lessons and real regrets, and we can draw life wisdom from that. Some have said as poets, the deeper our roots the higher we grow. Sometimes in reading Christian history, I find that it roots out my prejudice, that I understand that there are fascinating people in the past and reasons that they were involved in things, that help me stretch and understand them and my own generation.