WHY CHURCH HISTORY?

Early in my graduate school career, I was asked by a fellow student (whom I had just met and who later became a good friend) why I was researching the early Church instead of biblical studies. The unspoken but clearly implied question was, "Why don’t you do something that matters?" It is a good question. Most evangelicals are so fervent in our adherence to Scripture alone as the authority for faith and practice that we get suspicious of anyone who would devote a large amount of time to the study of anything besides Scripture. So why should evangelicals care about Church history?

First, Church history can challenge us. The last two millennia are full of examples of men and women who have courageously lived out what it means to follow Jesus Christ and to make him known to others. Many of these remained steadfast in their faith in spite of persecution, others braved hardship and danger to take the gospel to new regions, and not a few paid for their faith with their lives. Studying Church history brings us into contact not only with these men and women, but also with the milieux in which they lived, with the contexts which help us to understand and appreciate their faithfulness. We come away from such study challenged to be faithful in living for Christ in our world, our milieu, as well.

Second, Church history can encourage us, and ironically, this benefit is the converse of the previous one. Many times we imagine the heroes of our faith as virtually flawless saints, people who were so faithful precisely because they were not like you and me, not prone to discouragement or temptation or lethargy. But careful study of the lives of these people shows how flawed, how much like the rest of us, they were. There are no perfect people in the post-ascension history of Christianity. Yet those very ordinary people managed to persevere despite their failures, their discouragement, etc. We can come away from a study of their lives encouraged to persevere ourselves.

Third, Church history can teach us. Of course, our faith and doctrine are based on the Word of God, the Bible. But we do not look at the Bible as a completely strange book; we are the beneficiaries of the wisdom of previous generations of Christians who have thought carefully about the teaching of Scripture and have attempted to express it clearly and accurately. We can gain great insight into the depth of Christian truth by paying attention to what the 4th and 5th centuries wrote about the Trinity and the Person of Christ, what the 11th and 12th centuries had to say about the atonement, what the 16th and 17th centuries taught about the means of salvation.

Fourth, Church history can help to show us who we are. The word "tradition" is somewhat of a negative term among evangelicals, since we insist that we don’t follow human traditions; we follow the Bible. But the fact is that our tradition, our heritage, has a profound impact on what we see when we look at the Bible. It influences which passages we emphasize and which ones we leave under-discussed. It influences how we interpret controversial passages. It influences the way we combine biblical passages into a systematic picture of Christian teaching and life. Most of us never even consider the influence of that tradition upon us, and we may not even be aware of its existence. But the influence is there, and the tradition which impacts us has been forged in time and space, in various historical and geographical contexts. The study of Church history can help us to understand why the things we value are so important to us, why we tend to fight certain battles rather than others. At the same time, Church history can place us in a position to see our own assumptions, our own tradition, and therefore to evaluate those assumptions. Perhaps there are elements of our teaching which owe their existence more to historical accidents than to biblical doctrine and which need to be corrected. Or perhaps our tradition is appropriate but can be rounded out and made more complete if we give attention to other aspects of Christian teaching which have been emphasized at other times and in other places. Maybe the greatest value of Church history is that it can help us to see ourselves more clearly, and in doing so, to see how we can become even more faithful to Scripture in our teaching and our Christian lives.

For these four reasons, I find that the study of Church history does matter. In fact, it is the study of history which, in part, allows us to see the Bible honestly and accurately, and hopefully, to be more faithful to our Lord Jesus Christ. I invite you to join me in a lifetime of learning from the history of the Christian Church.