The Importance of a Historical Faith
“Read the book before you watch the movie—it’s way better.” If you’re a novel-lover like myself, you’ve probably said this before. Perhaps you’ve read Jane Austen’s books multiple times and can tell me the reasons why you hate or love certain renditions over others. Maybe you fell in love with Tolkien’s The Hobbit when you first read it, but you were horrified how much was changed in the film.
A film is limited—often times they only have 1-2 hours to portray a story that consists of many reading hours. Inner dialogue isn’t well captured, or perhaps not captured at all. Emotions must be shown by strong acting. And beloved scenes must be shortened to fit in the other necessary pieces of the plot. The journey we went on with the author and their story becomes abridged and retold.
Something similar has happened with our theology I believe. Rich theology with it’s complex 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, question-asking, and many books from a variety of libraries to understand, others today can learn in thirty minutes listening to a podcast or two minutes scanning an article. While there are good things to be taken from these, I wonder if we’ve forsaken anything for them.
Perhaps the historic aspect of our faith has been cut from the stories of many believers. They found Jesus on their own and they learned about him without tradition or history colouring their glasses. It sounds so mature to say, “I follow Jesus, not [insert theologian name here].” Or, “I’m a Bible believing Christian, not a follower of religion.” Or, “I don’t ascribe to any denomination or tradition—I ascribe to the Bible.” As simple and profound as this sounds, what if it’s not really true or helpful? What if this isn’t meant to be the ordinary way? Abraham Kuper wrote,
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
Claiming that tradition has no effect on us is perhaps dishonest—whether intentional or not. We all have backgrounds and lenses through which we read the Bible. Nobody can approach the Bible with a completely blank slate. We are part of a deeply historical faith that spans from our parents to Adam and Eve.
Trying to be an isolated Christian from church history is unwise. There’s a reason we have thorough creeds and confessions—they are the result of wars, conflicts, heresies fought, and debates had to retain the essential doctrines of our faith. These topics weren’t simply deliberated and discussed over steaming drinks in a coffee shop; they were debated while cannons fired in the background. “In early modernity, theology was no ivory tower endeavour—theology often wrote checks that were cashed in blood.”²
There’s a reason why they battled so fiercely for these doctrines. There’s a reason why they belaboured every word in these creeds and confessions. They are important. These doctrines are essential to the gospel. When we change the basic truths about the Trinity, the atonement, the life and work of Christ, or justification we divert into another gospel. The church has fought these same theological battles over and over again—what a treasure it is to be able to turn back in church history and see what has been confirmed and affirmed in the past and how it was founded in Scripture.
Having a foundation in church history gives us the ability to re-evaluate what we believe and compare it to Scripture. Without church history, we only have present-day Bible teachers and movements to compare with.³ 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.⁴
A part of maturing as believers is growing in our knowledge of what God’s Word says. He has given us a book with thousands of words in it written by his people with the guiding hand of the Holy Spirit. As we follow him, shouldn’t we desire to learn more about him and how he has called us to live? As we mature, shouldn’t we desire to understand what he meant in his Word and develop our theology from it?
As we touched on in the beginning, there’s a reason the books are always better than the movies—they are rounder and more vibrant. In a similar way, looking behind at church history and its creeds and confessions is so much richer than a meme. 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. We can ease our way towards the confessions and creeds. You don’t need to learn to recite each catechism by the end of the week—simply begin studying it and seeking to understand it.
Theology should be learned in community—not just local, and not just present. But in the community of all believers past as well. 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 worshipping in glory, they have left pieces behind to help keep us on the right trail.
Resources for Further Study:
Westminster Shorter Catechism
ESV Bible with Creeds and Confessions
A Survey of Church History, Parts 1-6 by W. Robert Godfrey (teaching series through Ligonier)
The Theology of the Westminster Standards by J. V. Fesko
The Truths We Confess by R. C. Sproul
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Abramham Kuyper, Principles of Sacred Theology (trans. J. Vriend; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1980), 574-575.
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J. V. Fesko, The Theology of the Westminster Standards (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2014), p.48
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Michael Horton, Ordinary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2014), p.72.
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Ibid, 72.
