What if one of God’s greatest gifts for our growing faithfulness to Jesus is something we rarely slow down to explore? What if there’s a valuable treasure right under our noses that previous generations were zealous for us to have in our quest for lasting happiness and a compelling purpose?
Church history, God’s story of faithfulness to his people, is that treasure.
I love how J.I. Packer draws our attention to the tremendous value of the past: “Tradition is the fruit of the Spirit’s teaching activity from the ages as God’s people have sought understanding of Scripture. It is not infallible, but neither is it negligible, and we impoverish ourselves if we disregard it.”
Why carve out time from our busy lives to study church history? Here are three reasons: church history can deepen our worship, give us wisdom we desperately need, and help us in our witness to the world.
Worship
Knowing church history deepens our worship by giving us a greater recognition of and appreciation for God’s faithfulness in the world. As we learn what God has done in the past and how he has cared for his people amid great trouble, it deepens our devotion to our gloriously faithful Father. Seeing how God has cared for and defended his people against sinister threats infuses our hearts with a greater confidence in God’s care over our lives today.
Church history can also galvanize our hearts with courage. Seeing the troubles that followers of Jesus in previous generations faced and stepped into with beautiful, costly courage is inspiring. When we learn about saints who sacrificed in costly ways, the gravity of their faithfulness makes us want to be like them.
These inspiring examples also help us spot the idolatries in our own hearts, especially the idols of comfort and ease. We notice our cultural blind spots as we examine different time periods in history and see how God’s people navigated their own challenges. And as we see the church’s failures in the past, we learn from their negative example and mistakes.
Psalm 77:11-13 demonstrates the connection between remembering God’s faithfulness in the past with reveling in his unique goodness in the present:
I will remember the deeds of the Lord;
yes, I will remember your wonders of old.
I will ponder all your work,
and meditate on your mighty deeds.
Your way, O God, is holy.
What god is great like our God?
Remembering God’s unfailing love demonstrated in his protection and care for his people has the power to kindle hope and deepen our trust in the Lord, especially in the midst of sorrow and suffering.
Church history can also help us understand our stories in light of God’s Story. That’s what Augustine does in his “Confessions.” He teaches us how to view every sphere of life through the lens of the gospel, which then deepens our affections for Christ.
Wisdom
Church history helps us acquire greater wisdom to live faithfully in our cultural context. It gives us a better understanding of the Bible and theological development.
I have known college students who are alarmed when they hear that the word “trinity” is not in the Bible. But knowing that church fathers invested much thought and care into the doctrine of the Trinity brings them confidence and comfort. When we realize how much careful work went into formulating theological treasures like the doctrine of the Trinity, it enriches our appreciation for what we have received in the church’s theological traditions. It also enhances our reading of the Bible as we continue bringing greater clarity to all that the Scriptures teach us.
Church history can help us carefully prioritize doctrines in their proper place. Gavin Ortlund lays out a helpful way to think through these things in his book “Finding the Right Hills to Die On.” As the title suggests, some hills are worth dying on. Church history can help us identify those hills.
For example, the essential doctrines of the Trinity and Christology, which were hammered out in the ecumenical councils of the first 500 years of church history, are hills we must die on, or we lose the gospel!
In my ministry to college students, I’ve also used church history as a way to respond to their reluctance to embrace all that Scripture says about God’s good design for marriage and sexuality. In addition to the clear biblical teaching, I’ll share this with students: “If we find the church speaking with essentially one voice on a particular question for over 2,000 years now, then that should give us tremendous confidence in the clarity of what God says to us in the Bible.”
We have that historic consensus when it comes to the biblical definition of marriage and sexuality, and it should fortify our convictions on those matters.
When the whole church has not landed in the same place on a particular issue, that variability should cause us to hold our positions a little more loosely but continue looking to Scripture as we wrestle through particular questions. I have denominational distinctives in mind here, such as our position on baptism (believer’s baptism vs. covenant baptism), the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit, and predestination. These are important topics, but when the church has not reached widespread consensus on them, we should show grace and have a posture of humility toward one another as we discuss them together.
Church history can help us grow in discernment and spot errors in our theology and thinking about the world, too. Every generation has its own weaknesses and blind spots, and believers from the past had different blind spots than ours. Their perspective helps us see things we might otherwise never see.
Witness
Not only are our worship and our wisdom enriched by church history, but so is our witness. Church history offers valuable lessons for apologetics, cultural engagement, and evangelism.
When conversing with non-Christians, I often mention two facts about the Christian faith: the Bible has been the most-regulated book in history; and what once started with a meager little group of terrified disciples has now become the largest, most diverse religion in the world.
Now, these realities alone don’t make the case for the truth of Christianity, but they can still pique curiosity. We can use them to invite people to consider what has made the Bible and the message of Jesus so compelling to so many people throughout the ages.
Non-Christians in power have sometimes regulated the Bible and sought to limit its spread because they recognized the powerful influence the Scriptures have on people. We can ask our non-Christian friends, “Doesn’t that intrigue you and make you want to know what it is about this book that so many people have found so compelling (or threatening for those who have banned it)?”
When college students ask me questions about the development of the canon, I have also found church history to be helpful. There are so many misconceptions surrounding this issue, and knowing the historical details helps us confront distortions and reframe the conversation.
The early church’s criteria for identifying divinely-inspired books shows the care the early church put into the decision. It used these important questions to determine which books had the marks of divine inspiration:
- Is it apostolic? Does the book have the authority of the apostles behind it?
- Is it ancient? Does it go back to the very beginning?
- Is there agreement? Did the Spirit lead the church into widespread acceptance of the book?
- Is there alignment? Is it consistent with other Scriptural teaching?
Also, in 2 Peter 3:16, when Peter speaks of “the other Scriptures” alongside Paul’s writings, Peter demonstrates that, even before the close of the first century, the apostles saw the need to identify new Scriptures that the Lord was inspiring.
Understanding the history around the canon is one of many examples where a study of church history can strengthen our witness to the unbelieving world around us.
Church history has far more to offer us than we imagine, and we ought to be eager to lay hold of this glorious treasure the Lord has given to us!
Brad Owens serves as the campus minister for Reformed University Fellowship at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.