On The Wisdom of Learning From Church History

Michael Haykin:

Ah, one good reason to read the history of the church is to avoid the follies of the past. With the passage of time, the folly is patent, though at the time when it was committed, it may well have passed for wisdom. One thinks of the defence of slavery by God-fearing men and women in the 18th and 19th centuries and further back, the “learned’ ripostes by Christians to the new science of Copernicus. In the realm of worship, we Baptists can learn a lot from the conflict that ripped apart the London Particular Baptists in the 1690s. So fierce was it, that eventually some of the pastors called a halt to the treatises being written and so attempted to find a pax Baptistica.

I am old enough to remember a wise pastor making the following statement in a public worship setting, and I quote, “There will be no rock music in heaven.” Yet, fifty years after the rock n’roll of the sixties, is it not true that in many of our worship settings, some of the music by which we worship the Lamb could not be envisioned without the rock revolution? Are we to regard this way of combining chords and rhythms as sinful or is it better seen as part and parcel of the creativity that God has packed into the human frame? And is it not true that some of the music that we like in worship or that we don’t like has more to do with personal preference than divine fiat?

Read the rest.

What Day Changed the Course of Christian History?

Interesting responses from several Christian historians.

On topic, this primer on church history is really solid and cheap for a limited time.

A Good Reminder Towards Ecclesiastical Humility

Dan Darling:

As I survey my own heart, I see three motivations that drive this tendency to constantly reframe and rebrand our faith.

1. We make an idol of cultural acceptance.
2. We think we can do ministry better than our fathers.
3. We put too much weight on our own abilities.

Read the rest for his explanations.

Get Dan's books here.

No Free-Riders When Persecuted

It would seem that costly demands must always make a religion less attractive. And indeed, the economists’ law of demand predicts just that, other things remaining equal. But it turns out that other things do not remain equal when religions impose these kinds of costs on their members. Costly demands strengthen a religious group by mitigating “free-rider” problems that otherwise lead to low levels of member commitment and participation. Sacrifice and stigma mitigate the free-rider problems faced by religious groups.

- Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity, p. 177

(HT:  T-Wax)

Why Studying Church History is a Big Deal

Don Sweeting:

I sometimes hear people talk about history as if it is the most impractical subject in the world. But that’s simply not true. On the contrary, church history is one of the most helpful studies in the preparation of Christian ministers. It gets us beyond our natural short sightedness, faddishness and pride. It becomes a source of warning, wisdom and encouragement. It provides spiritual sparks to awaken us and lift our eyes so that we might have renewed hope. And it gets us beyond our own American evangelical amnesia. This is all extremely useful. It is a study filled with blessing. 

Here are his reasons why: 

• It reaffirms a Biblical value of looking to the past
• It tells us the rest of the story
• It frees us from faddishness
• It is an antidote to arrogance
• It exposes us to some of the issues faced by the church in every age
• It helps us see further than we naturally can on our own
• It gives us insight into our own culture
• It provides warnings about what to look out for and what not to do
• It can be used to spark a longing for awakening and revival
• It Implants hope in dark times
• It offers company and help in difficult seasons of ministry

Click over to read his explanations.

Recommended Resources:

• Church History in Plain Language, 3rd Edition
• Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity
• The Story of Christianity, Vol. 1: The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation
• The Story of Christianity, Vol. 2: The Reformation to the Present Day 

 (HT: Eric McKiddie)

Don't Believe The Newsweek Hype About Jesus

Melinda at STR.org writes:

Bart Ehrman wrote the cover story in this week's Newsweek magazine.  It's classic Ehrman, raising points that many Christians and non-Christians may not be familiar with, suggesting there is a problem that calls into question the historical reliability of the biblical text, and failing to mention that these are long-recognized observations that have straightforward answers.

Ehrman opens his article mentioning the Coptic fragment revealed this past Fall that mentions Jesus' wife.  (You can read about it here and here.)  He uses its mere existence (not its authority) to point out that there are a variety of extra-biblical documents that give information missing from or contradictory to the Bible.  Many of these have been known since the early centuries of the church.  None date as early as the Gospels.  None can be traced to an eyewitness.  The church knew this and rejected them as non-authoritative for those reasons.  So what?  Ehrman hopes to sow the seeds of doubt with old news.

As Michael Kruger documents in his excellent books and blog, none of these alternative accounts dates earlier than the late second century.  Most are later than that, far removed from Jesus' time and the writing of the authoritative Gospels. (You can find radio interviewswith Kruger on April 10, 2011, and July 25 2010.) 

Ehrman also cites the differences in Matthew's and Luke's genealogies of Jesus, calling them "apparent contradictions."  But he doesn't indicate that there is a pretty simple explanation for this and it isn't a contradiction.  They are easily reconcilable differences, not "discrepancies" and "contradictions."  Matthew and Luke are citing different lines of Jesus' ancestry because they were writing to different audiences for different purposes.  You can read an excellent explanation here.

Ehrman also talks about the features of the Nativity story we all think we know that aren't mentioned in the Gospels.  Once again, so what?  Many times, questions about the Bible can be resolved simply by reading what the text actually says, rather than believing what we think it says.  An example of this Ehrman raises is the birth account in Luke and supposed historical problems with it.  I've got a post about that tomorrow.

Here's a Solid Ground Greg wrote a couple of years ago about the misinformation Ehrman has given on the historical reliability of the New Testament.

This is a good site providing answers to Ehrman's mistaken claims.

The Gospel = Not How You Feel About It, But News About History

“The free gift of God is an absolutely unaccountable event in the life of every man who accepts it. It is not the natural working out of a principle, but it is a thing that happens. But that happening in the soul is the result of a happening in the sphere of external history. The free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. There we have the central characteristic of our religion; the central characteristic of Christianity is that it is not founded merely upon what always was true but primarily upon something that happened — something that took place near Jerusalem at a definite time in the world’s history. In other words, it is founded not merely upon permanent truths of religion but upon a ‘gospel,’ a piece of news.”

- J. Gresham Machen, God Transcendent (Edinburgh, 1982), page 39.

(HT: Ray Ortlund)

Catacombs and Cathedrals

Russell Moore:

As you’re reading this, I’m in Italy leading a Southern Seminary study tour through Rome. In the past two days, I’ve spent time praying in Saint John Lateran Cathedral here, and in the ruins of the ancient Christian catacombs. It struck me that we Christians sometimes forget the paradoxical grace of God in giving us a legacy of both cathedrals and catacombs.

The catacombs, of course, are the legacy of a tiny persecuted band of believers, meeting in their graveyards to escape the all-seeing eye of imperial Rome. The cathedrals represent a very different turn in church history: a church that not only could grow in size but could, in fact, outgrow and outlast the Empire itself. The catacombs represent simplicity and earthiness; the cathedrals transcendence and wonder.

We need both, somehow.

Read the rest.

What Does Your Personal Experience Tell You About The Veracity of Your Faith?

C. Michael Patton:

Why do you believe in God?

“Because I know deep in my heart that he exists.”

Why do you believe Christ rose from the grave?

“Because I have experienced the same power in my life.”

Why do you think the Bible is true?

“Because it speaks to me in places that no other book has.”

Why do you believe God loves you?

“Because I was healed of a disease.”

These are all common answers that are given by well-meaning Christians concerning the validity of their faith. However, I have made the argument that these type of answers are not good apologetics outposts for the faith and can be very misleading and, sometimes, destructive.

Read the rest of this very important article.

Roots and Vision

What would you think of a pollster who issued a definitive report on how the American people felt about a new television program, if we discovered later that he had interviewed only one person who had seen only ten minutes of the program? We would dismiss the conclusions as frivolous.

Yet that is exactly the kind of evidence that too many Christians accept as the final truth about many much more important matters — matters such as answered prayer, God’s judgment, Christ’s forgiveness, eternal salvation. The only person they consult is themselves, and the only experience they evaluate is the most recent ten minutes.

But we need other experiences, the community of experience of brothers and sisters in the church, the centuries of experience provided by our biblical ancestors. A Christian who has David in his bones, Jeremiah in his bloodstream, Paul in his fingertips and Christ in his heart will know how much and how little value to put on his own momentary feelings and the experience of the past week.

We needs roots in the past to give obedience ballast and breadth; we need a vision of the future to give obedience direction and goal.

- Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

(HT:  Shaun Groves)

Is Nicene Christianity That Important?

Yesterday on his blog, James Macdonald wrote this in reference to the criticism I assume he has been receiving in light of asking T.D. Jakes to take part in The Elephant Room 2.  I can't give you chapter and verse but I know that some believe Pastor Jakes' views on the Trinity to be suspect at best.   McDonald writes:

I affirm the doctrine of the Trinity as I find it in Scripture. I believe it is clearly presented but not detailed or nuanced. I believe God is very happy with His Word as given to us and does not wish to update or clarify anything that He has purposefully left opaque. Somethings are stark and immensely clear, such as the deity of Jesus Christ; others are taught but shrouded in mystery, such as the Trinity. I do not trace my beliefs to credal statements that seek clarity on things the Bible clouds with mystery. I do not require T.D. Jakes or anyone else to define the details of Trinitarianism the way that I might. His [Jakes'] website states clearly that he believes God has existed eternally in three manifestations.

Dr. Carl Trueman interacts with  Pastor Macdonald's statement in this blog post.

It would be easy to write off Dr. Trueman as someone who simply likes to be the eternal critic on sidelines of mainstream evangelicalism.  He certainly has been on a roll lately.  I personally find much of what he writes to be quite enlightening if not just plain entertaining.  I would encourage you to consider this portion of his response and read the whole post.  This is no small matter.  May we be humble enough to listen to each other.

...to place Nicene orthodoxy in the category of over-scrupulous doctrinal precisianism is, in effect, to declare the entire church (except for strands of American evangelicalism, apparently) from 381 to the present day to be wrong-headed. True catholic Christianity has always regarded Nicene orthodoxy as vital. An evangelicalism which argues for the basic irrelevance of such is simply not part of that catholic tradition; rather than being generously connected to other believers, it effectively isolates itself from the mainstream Christian tradition. Maybe there are consciences here bound to scripture. I would certainly never demand that a man subscribe to something which he does not see in scripture; but for myself, I need more than a few brief blog comments to understand why I should abandon Nicaea as crucial to salvation, revelation and my doctrine of who God is and what he has done. I want to know how and why Athanasius, the Cappadocians, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin and Owen, to name just eight representatives of Trinitarianism, considered this to be more than a matter of over-scrupulousness. A humble listening to the past is important for the church in any circumstance; in the context of the creeds, such listening is absolutely non-negotiable.

The detail in Trinitarian debate was vital. Of course, many Christian believers have a shaky grasp of Trinitarianism; it is a difficult theological area and it is therefore important that those who hold teaching office do grasp this area so that they can bring their members on to maturity in this matter. Thus, for an evangelical leader to argue that creedal developments on Trinitarianism are of little importance is a fascinating glimpse into the doctrinal make-up of what constitutes contemporary evangelical leadership in the United States as it connects to catholic Christianity and, indeed, any tradition which regards the insights of Nicene Christianity as of importance in the overall transmission and articulation of the identity of Jesus Christ and thus his gospel.

I do believe that Pastor Macdonald's Elephant Room is a great idea.  It is easy for us all to default into our own little theological ghetto.  It is very important to interact with others from different tribes and even if we don't always agree we'll probably learn something and many of our caricatures will be revealed.   This is a very good thing.

Jesus and History: The Facts of the Case

Michael Horton:

Non-Muslim historians do not even investigate the historical evidence for Islam’s claim that Mohammed was assumed bodily into heaven. According to their followers, the truths of Buddhism, Hinduism, and other world religions would be true regardless of specific historical claims. However, the decisive events surrounding the life of Jesus have received and withstood sustained criticism for two millennia. And there’s a surprising degree of agreement on the historical Jesus even among non-Christians.

Read Dr. Horton's short paper here. This is very helpful as you think about discussing Jesus with those who don't know him.

Could All This Jesus Stuff Be A Myth?

Timothy Dalrymple:

It’s difficult, of course, for a non-historian to know how to sort through these things. If one historian (or at least a person who holds herself out as a historian) claims that the Jesus story is a composite of pagan myths while another historian says otherwise, how do you know whom to believe?

This is why responses like this from Bart Ehrman are so difficult for the Jesus Mythers. It’s not as though the historians and New Testament scholars who affirm the existence of Jesus are ultra-conservative Christians who will defend their Jesus no matter what. That’s not the case at all. I’ve never met Ehrman, but I’ve met plenty of people in the field, plenty of historians and biblical scholars who are eager — truly eager — to overturn traditional views of Jesus. They’re also eager to publish books that make a splash, get on the cover of Time magazine, and sell like hotcakes. The fact that even they cannot bring themselves to say that Jesus never existed is devastating to the Jesus Myth hypothesis.

As Ehrman says, there is no serious historical scholar who believes that Jesus never existed. In fact, for the longest time there was no scholarly response to the Jesus Myth hypothesis, just because there were no credible proponents of the hypothesis in scholarly circles. Ehrman makes the reason plain. We have more evidence for Jesus than we do for anyone else in the ancient world — and arguably (I would add) more than anyone up through the medieval period. If the abundance of evidence for Jesus is insufficient, then the evidence for every other figure is even more insufficient and we might as well stop reading history books.

Simply put, if you can’t say that Jesus existed, then you can’t do history at all. Dismissals of the existence of Jesus are not historical. They’re ideological.

Read the rest.

The Mosque on the Mount

Jon Bloom:

On the ancient temple mount in Jerusalem there stands a mosque.

Observant Jews see a profaning of their most holy place and plead with YHWH to remove their disgrace. Observant Muslims see Allah’s favor, a sign that the true religion sits in ascendency.

The world sees a centuries-old religious/political drama being played out on the edge of a knife, with diplomats delicately working like a bomb squad to avoid an explosion.

But most miss the real significance of the mosque on the mount.

Read the rest.

The Sword of the Lord - A Review

Trevin Wax reviews The Sword of the Lord.  This is a helpful review that looks at the impact of Fundamentalism in America.

Calm Down a Little Concerning Rob Bell

Carl Trueman with his always interesting take on things:

It strikes me that, amid all the hype and hoo-hah this week surrounding a certain author, we need to remember that promise. Teachers -- true and false -- come and go; they have done so for centuries, and few have made any lasting mark, let alone those who write paperback potboilers. But the church has survived; the gates of hell shall still not prevail; and the church will be built. Yes, we must defend the truth, with learning, passion and fortitude; but we should remember that the battle is not won through our efforts, and we must not be caught up in overestimating the importance of the present moment. After all, how many `defining moments' do we hear about in a typical year? And how many of such moments truly define anything at all?

If we really believe Matt. 16:18, I would suggest that we will not panic with every wind of false doctrine which comes our way, nor will we be intimidated by astronomical sales figures for bad books or tickets to hear false preachers. We will rather focus on what we should be doing: humbly preaching and teaching and believing the word. Sometimes, I suspect the over-the-top panic and outrage of the orthodox when faced by the latest challenge are really functions of self-importance and an impoverished doctrine of God. They seem to imply that our age is unique, the future of Christianity really does depend solely on us, and the church is really jeopardised by the latest heterodox blockbuster.

Read the rest.

When Conservative Denominations Decline

Anthony Bradley:

If your denomination is 25-years-old or older, it is has likely peaked and plateaued in terms of numbers and influence—unless you are from a Pentecostal or Charismatic tradition. The pace of social change is faster in our era than ever before and denominations cannot keep up. As denominations grow they become slow, more bureaucratic, less creative, and less innovative. Denominations increasingly become centered on preserving their institutions while ignoring needed reforms to address social change. As such, the generation that initially grew the denomination becomes the primary target audience. As that population ages and become culturally leveraged, so follows the denomination they helped to grow.

Read the rest as he interacts with some ideas from John Frame and Mark Driscoll.

A Theology of Church Extinction

Here is an interesting interview from CT with Philip Jenkins. Dr. Jenkins is the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Humanities at Penn State University.

I found the final three questions to be the most interesting.

You argue that we are lacking a theology of church extinction. Why do we need one?

I sometimes ask audiences how many people have ever read a book on the growth or establishment of a church, and many people raise their hands. Then I ask how many people have ever read a book on the death or extinction of a church, and virtually nobody does. But in history, church death is a very common phenomenon. Christianity moves from one area to another, but it also dies in areas where it has been strong. That fact violates a lot of what we expect about Christian growth. We have a theology of mission, not a theology of retreat. So do we explain these episodes as the churches doing something horribly wrong? Do we regard them as a natural part of historical development? Do we think that if Muslims replaced Christians in a country like Iraq, the expansion of Islam must be within God's plan? How Christians actually deal with things like the destruction of the church in Iraq is by not talking about it. We pay no attention to it because we don't know about it.

So our ignorance is both a product of our own historical situation and maybe a willful turning of our eyes from the carnage?

It's something of that. But I don't want to criticize Americans who, for example, are very conscious of the suffering church. And they try to alleviate that suffering and intervene politically. But suppose churches do vanish. Across much of the Middle East, the last century since 1915 has been catastrophic in terms of the destruction or annihilation of churches. I really don't know people who are writing about that or trying to address that theologically.

How do you relate that need to the obvious spread of Christianity around the world?

I suppose coincidence is not a word that should be used by anyone who has any sense of Providence, but 1915 marks the beginning of the end of Christians in the Middle East, and the beginning of mass Christianity in Africa. It's almost as if one door closes and another one opens elsewhere. I would not say God closed one eye and opened another, but when Christianity is at its weakest in one area, amazing new opportunities open elsewhere. My concern is that when we write Christian history, so often it's a matter of, "Let's look at this expansion, and let's look at this growth and new opportunity." We're not really seeing the doors that are closing—which would have been a great title for the book.

Read the whole thing.

Philip Jenkins is the author of The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia — and How It Died (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2008).

Other books by Dr. Jenkins.

"The Coming Evangelical Crisis" - A Response

Michael Spencer writes:

"Within two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants. (Between 25 and 35 percent of Americans today are Evangelicals.) In the "Protestant" 20th century, Evangelicals flourished. But they will soon be living in a very secular and religiously antagonistic 21st century.

This collapse will herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West. Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become hostile toward evangelical Christianity, seeing it as the opponent of the common good.

Millions of Evangelicals will quit. Thousands of ministries will end. Christian media will be reduced, if not eliminated. Many Christian schools will go into rapid decline. I'm convinced the grace and mission of God will reach to the ends of the earth. But the end of evangelicalism as we know it is close."

I don't doubt any of this will come to pass. We can easily already start to see it happening. But I have to humbly ask: Who cares?

I wrote this a few months ago and I think it completely applies to the above comments.

"How easily we forget church history to our own detriment.

May we keep in mind that Christianity emerged under the hand of the Roman Empire which at that time was the most ruthless force of bloody domination the world had ever seen. What is even more remarkable is that contrary to Roman will, amid these odds defying circumstances, Christianity became the most explosive religious movement the world had ever seen.

The mere fact that Christianity exists is a miracle of God. Our culture is dark, yes, but I am still full of faith for Christianity to continue well in the future."

Mr. Spencer is not being alarmist here. If you read his whole piece to the end you will see that he doesn't think the sky is falling for Christianity.

It's important to remember that when Christianity has been persecuted in the past (and in other parts of the world today) it tends to purify and flourish. I think we will see that in the days ahead. So let's press on and speak the gospel and demonstrate the gospel through acts of love. Let's fight for justice, but not be the least bit surprised when this pursuit leads to greater and great persecution and less and less of institutional Christianity. Institutions and the political power they represent will come and go. Church history clearly tells us this will be the case, but the Church will continue regardless.

Practically speaking, if Mr. Spencer's predictions all come true I don't think it needs to affect us in the least. If you love the gospel and take seriously the call of evangelism, just keep doing what you're doing and we'll be ok.

Matthew 16:18 - "...I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

A Reminder To Myself Amid The Culture Wars

How easily we forgot church history to our own detriment.

May we keep in mind that Christianity emerged from within the governance of the Roman Empire which was the most ruthless force of bloody domination the world had ever seen. What is even more remarkable is that contrary to Roman will, amid these odds defying circumstances, Christianity became the most explosive religious movement the world had ever seen.

The mere fact that Christianity exists is a miracle of God. Our culture is dark, yes, but I am still full of faith for our faith to continue well in the future.