Ross Daws has a stimulating post on how that the way we view church history impacts our theology.

He writes:

One of the factors that most subtly affects our theology is our approach to church history. Different approaches to church history can often be found beneath the surface of many criticisms leveled at the emerging church; this can be especially clear when one side cites Calvin (as though that ought to clinch the argument) and the other side responds with Justin Martyr or ever Tertullion. I’ve been thinking about this a bit, not so much because one group is right and the other wrong (though I am going to propose my own approach to church history as being pretty useful) but because the pressure that our own view of history applies is subtle, and often I think we are influenced by it without our realising. My theory is that the more we realise it, and understand the relationship between our view of history and our theology, the better theologians (and historians) we will be.

The trick is to ask yourself, when was the ‘golden age’ of the church, as you see it. How you answer this question reveals a lot about how you view, or approach, church history.

Ross outlines a number of common views of church history and then proposes a new one that is represented by this graphic:

It is interesting to reflect on our own bias in viewing church history. I wonder if it is also due to our own cultural captivity in how we view what is closer to God or not. Each era of history has its own challenge in terms of entering into the gospel story and embracing the reign of God. Perhaps our own in the western world is our wealth and consumerism – but, other eras would have other challenges.

Head on over and read the whole post here

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 29th, 2006 at 1:19 pm by phil and is filed under challenges for the church. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.