Why We Should Root Our Theology in Church History
As a little girl I remember kneeling in front of a tree stump with my father as he explained that each ring represented another year of the tree’s life. A tree begins as a sprout, growing and reaching toward the bright sun during the warm months and then nearly stopping its growth in the winter while its core hardens. Each year, a tree builds upon its previous growth from the spring and summer.
As believers, we have the opportunity to grow like trees in our faith. We have rings upon rings to build our theology upon from church history. Theological battles already fought and won, essential doctrines condensed to catechisms and confessions, and weighty books sustained through translations and reprints are ours to glean from.
But some have neglected these rings. Instead, they’ve sought to build their own pathway based only on the present. They’ve thrown aside the dusty books with their difficult wording. Rich theology with its intricate history has been abridged to memes, social media captions, and slogans.
What was once discussed and believed from thorough exegesis and study can be summed up in pithy sentences on graphics. What took some years of study and inquiry is exposited in a thirty-minute podcast. What once required ruthless hunting through library after library, others today can learn in two minutes scanning an article found in a Google search.
While these are good gifts to the church, what have we forsaken in leaving behind our history?
EVERYONE STANDS UNDER THE SHADE OF A THEOLOGICAL TREE
The historic aspect of our faith has been cut from the stories of many believers. Many believers today seek to learn about Jesus without tradition or history to shade their eyes. They don’t want to ascribe to a particular tradition or teaching, and they shake their heads at those who do. This appears wise and mature. But what if this isn’t meant to be the ordinary way of learning our faith?
Abraham Kuyper, a profound theologian and thinker of the nineteenth century, aptly describes the historic nature of our faith:
No theologian following the direction of his own compass would ever have found by himself what he now confesses and defends on the ground of Holy Scripture. By far the largest part of his results is adopted by him from theological tradition, and even the proofs he cites from Scripture, at least as a rule, have not been discovered by himself, but have been suggested to him by his predecessors.[1]
Realistically, nobody can approach the Bible without coming under the shade of some kind of theological tree. We are part of a deeply historical faith that spans from the present age to the age of Adam and Eve. Let’s acknowledge and seek to understand this reality together. Rejecting our history isolates us from massive libraries of theological works that were given to guard the gospel and instruct those who would follow in years to come.
Maybe you’ll discover you don’t agree with the tradition you grew up in, and maybe you’ll discover another tradition better built from the Bible. Whatever the case, be willing to search and understand rather than ignore and find the way on your own.
WHY WE SHOULD ROOT OUR THEOLOGY IN CHURCH HISTORY
When we try to grow outside of church history, we have little to build on. We have few layers to strengthen our study. We give up the hard work of those who came before us. What we see is a simple, seamless document written in old English—perhaps a catechism or creed—yet we fail to see the heated debates and the blood that was spilled to write them. We don’t see the deliberation over single words. These documents weren’t written in an hour or even a day—they were agonized over for long periods of time. They wanted the truth to be persevered in its purest form. They wanted the truth guarded from those who would twist little words and phrases into false belief systems that would be damning.
In this way we see God’s hand protecting and furthering the gospel amidst attack after attack. Truths about the Trinity, justification, the work of Christ, and the Bible were being battered. They fought fiercely for these truths because when we ever so slightly twist them, we wander toward lifeless gods and gospels that are powerless to save. The church has fought and will continue to fight these same battles on different grounds and with different words. What a treasure it is to be able to turn back in church history and see what was affirmed in the past and how it was founded in Scripture.
This shows the living nature of God’s Word. When it is handled rightly, the lessons exposited from it will teach generations to come. What was true two hundred years ago about the good news is still true today. What was preached in churches one hundred years ago is still relevant today. Brother or sister, sink your roots deep into this rich theological soil we have at our fingertips.
GROWING IN A THEOLOGICAL COMMUNITY (BOTH OLD AND PRESENT)
Like trees, let’s build from the foundations set before us. Let’s learn from the lessons already learned. Let’s discern where others were perhaps misguided and study where and how they flourished in proclaiming truth. Let’s seek to add another ring upon the other, rather than start from the base. We are privileged to have so many inexpensive resources at our fingertips. Let’s not neglect them for the challenge they present but be willing to press ourselves a bit harder.
This doesn’t mean each of us should quit our jobs and begin seminary to study history or that we need to buy books we can hardly carry. We can take baby steps into understanding church history. Without church history, we only have present-day Bible teachers and movements to compare with, which offers little depth. As Michael Horton wrote,
It is important to recognize that we never come to the Bible as the first Christians, but always as those who have been inducted into a certain set of expectations about what we will find in Scripture. I did not find the doctrine of the Trinity all by myself. It is part of the rich inheritance in the communion of the saints from the past and the present. So the best way forward is to respect and evaluate our traditions, not to idolize or ignore them.[2]
Let’s give up trying to isolate ourselves from “theological traditions.” Instead, let’s seek to understand what we do believe and why we believe it. Learning from tradition doesn’t mean we’re only following fallible man—it means we are putting faith in God’s grace of continuing to sustain his living Word through generation to generation of believers. It means worshiping God for how he kept the true gospel moving forward when the devil tried and tried to twist it into condemning theology. We were not the first Christians, so let’s stop pretending we are.
Instead, let’s learn theology in community—not just local, and not just present. Let’s learn and study theology in community with believers past as well as our current churches and present-day resources. We aren’t individual people running a race to eternal life; we’re a singular body seeking to carry one another to the finish line by the sustaining grace of God. Though some believers are already worshiping in glory, they have left trail markers behind to help keep us on the right path.
Lara d’Entremont is a biblical counselor in training, and her desire in writing is to teach women to turn to God’s word in the midst of their daily lives and suffering to find the answers they need. She wants to teach women to love God with both their minds and hearts. Lara is married to Daniel and they live in Nova Scotia, Canada. See more of her writing on her website, Twitter, or Facebook.