Part 1 of … on Historical Theology. Taught by Mike Reeves for the UCCF staff study programme. Listen to the talks here
Church history / historical theology: what’s the difference?
Church history = what has happened in history to/by/with the church
Historical theology = not just about what happened, but history of what people have believed.
Generally, people focus on the former; the benefit – we get to see how the Lord is sovereign in all history. Instead we’ll focus on the latter, so that through understanding what they think we can access great theologians quickly and not scarily. Eg persecution – not just what happened, but what did the early church say about the persecution they were going through.
As a staff team we’ll work our way through the centuries over next couple of years. Here: up to 200 AD. Firstly, the Apostolic Fathers, followed by Justin Martyr and Iranaeus.
Why study dead theologians?
Back in the summer I was in a class of bible students encouraging them to read dead theologians (eg CS Lewis introduction to Athanasius and the incarnation – read!). When I appealed, one student challenged me: “Are you suggesting that the bible doesn’t have all I need to know? Are you denying sola scriptura?” My response: what are you doing here? If you can read your bible on your own, why are you here? Historical Theology is like having a bible study with the greats. Have lunch with Luther! Theology is really done as a community; we know God together. So in Historical Theology we want to go to the great ones and find out what the Holy Spirit has taught them that he hasn’t taught us yet. So we want to learn from these guys.
However, we also want to cultivate a critical mind. If one tendency is to reject them, another is to deify them, eg ‘Augustine is papal authority who we can’t answer’. Instead – look critically at these guys; to see that there are problems even in the greats, and good things in the non-greats, so that big names don’t hold such sway – that’s the goal of cultivating this critical mind.
Why look at the early church?
(1) Their situation is remarkably similar to our situation today. In first two centuries: church persecuted, pluralist society, no idea of Christendom – it was just a persecuted cult.
(2) Facts about how the early church developed are becoming very important in apologetics. Eg Dan Brown’s ‘The Da Vinci Code’ makes claims about the corruption of Christianity in the first few centuries due to Constantine, that Nicea decided canon of scripture and discarded 80 gospels etc. We just need to know this stuff to know it’s rubbish!
The best way to study this is to try to look at these guys as objectively as possible. Because: they can often seem wrong/weird to start with, and it’s easy to condemn them straight off. OR it’s easy to loot these guys for good quotes to back up my position, without studying and earning these guys – just filling up my ammo store with big weapons to shoot people down!
This means: try not to pre-judge/quickly judge. May be uncomfortable; hang in with them to understand why they say what they say. Stress: these are their words, not mine! These are introductions, not final conclusions about them.
There are full notes out there somewhere, with a timeline at the back.
