Reading: Why Study Church History? (Video Slides)

Why Study Church History?
by David Feddes

Benefits of knowing church history (Mark Noll)

• His-story: See God at work.
• Perspective on interpretations of Scripture.
• Laboratory that gives insight and sense of proportion
• Gratitude
• Encouragement

Knowing God and Scripture

• Shows God at work. 

The Christian faith involves not only dogmas, moral codes, or world picture, but events and actions of God in time and space.

• Perspective on interpretation of Scripture.

Many others before us have sought to understand and apply Scripture. We can learn much. We can also be humbled by noticing cases where godly people came up with bizarre interpretations that seemed obvious to them in their setting.

Laboratory and sense of proportion

• Christian history provides a kind of laboratory to study how Christians in various eras and societies have interacted with their culture. (Christians have had different views on church music; systems of government; family structure; education approaches; war or pacifism; King James Bible only).
• Christian history gives a sense of proportion and shows what’s been held in common over the centuries, focusing our strongest commitments on what matters most. It helps to study different eras and different cultures.
  
  

Gratitude and Encouragement

• A history of heroism and insight shows how much we owe to those who came before us.  It can also inspire us to strive all the more, surrounded by “so great a cloud of witnesses” (Heb. 11).
• A history that is honest about Christians’ wrongdoing and error shows how much we owe to God for mercifully protecting and increasing his church despite human wickedness and demonic opposition.

Preaching and teaching

• Church history provides exciting stories and inspiring heroes for sermon examples.
• Church history helps us see when some things entered the church that weren’t in the Bible.
• Church history helps us recognize “new” teachings and practices as old, discredited errors. For instance, Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity is just a recycling of unbiblical, social gospel liberalism that was popular in the late 1800s before it collapsed.  

See alternate possibilities

• History can offer alternatives to present paradigms in our own cultural setting.
• Church buildings are not the only place.
• Fulltime pastors are not the only leaders.
• Seminary-educated scholars are not the only preachers. Circuit riding preachers in the early 1800s had huge impact. Indigenous evangelists in missionary settings have been mighty for the Lord.

Great Commission framework for studying church history (Mark Noll)

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age. (Matthew 28:18-20)

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

The Lord Jesus is sovereign over all. Nothing is irrelevant to Christ, the living Word. He reigns over all experiences and events that affect his church.

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations.

• The church keeps moving outward to reach more peoples.
• The church keeps moving inward to learn and teach more of Christ.
• Christianity takes root in various cultures and influences them, but is not identical to any culture.

Surely I am with you always to the very end of the age.

• Whatever the church’s wanderings and sins, Christ’s presence sustains and builds his church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.
• A number of times it seemed the church had gone entirely to the dogs. Each time it was the dog that died.