Why Church History Matters: An Invitation to Love and Learn from Our Past
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
Does it matter how Christians in other times and places thought?
If the Bible alone is God's revelation, why spend time studying church history?
Aren't history and tradition more of a problem than a solution?
For many Christians who believe the Bible is the ultimate authority for faith and life, questions about the role and value of the church's traditions can be difficult to tackle. But let's be honest: even those of us who admit that church history is important are often too intimidated or busy to delve into it deeply. And for students, it is sometimes difficult to see how church history matters in practical ways for future vocations inside and outside the contemporary church.
In this wide-ranging book, veteran teacher Bob Rea tackles these barriers to understanding and embracing the significance of the faith and practice of our spiritual forefathers. In three parts he covers how Christians understand church tradition, why it is beneficial to broaden our horizons of community and how tradition helps us understand ministry. Rea not only skillfully explains why church history matters—he shows why it should matter to us.
- Provides a defense of church history thought-provoking study
- Shows why there is no biblical reason to fear 'tradition' properly understood, but every reason to heed believers from the past as guides to Christian life today
- Presents the fruit of years spent studying and teaching the ideas of Christian thinkers who flourished in the centuries after Jesus Christ and his apostles, with close attention to their historical circumstances
How We Understand the Tradition
- What Is the Tradition?
- How Have We Understood Tradition Historically?
- How Do We Understand the Tradition Today?
Expanding Circles of Inquiry
- Who Am I? History and Christian Identity
- A Great Cloud of Witnesses: Christian Community across the Centuries
- Accountability Partners: Sharing Accountability with Historic Christians
- Mentors and Friends: Historic Christians Broaden Our Horizons and Fill Gaps in Our Understanding
Tradition Serving the Church
- Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth: Christian Exegesis across the Centuries
- Tradition and Ministry
Robert Rea has done something unique in this volume. He has dispelled the false notion that knowing the Bible makes understanding church history irrelevant. He has made church history a vital cornerstone for those who desire to serve the church well today and into the future. He has done this by taking the time to tie it deliberately and directly to the local church and practical ministry. Written by a veteran of the classroom and the church, this volume serves both venues well.
—William R. Baker, professor of New Testament, Hope International University, and editor of Stone-Campbell Journal
Robert Rea provides us with a passionate yet reasoned defense of church history in this thought-provoking study. Having been formed both intellectually and spiritually in a Protestant tradition that prioritized the Bible as the source of God's revelation to humankind, Rea discovered the wisdom of the church fathers and their successors in the course of his academic training. He presents in this book the fruit of years spent studying and teaching the ideas of Christian thinkers who flourished in the centuries after Jesus Christ and his apostles, with close attention to their historical circumstances. This is essential reading for all who teach or study church history or historical theology—two fields which Rea would prefer not to separate—since it offers not only an overview of the methods and concerns of theologians in the past but also important insights into how their work is received by Christian commentators in the present day.
—Mary Cunningham, lecturer in historical theology, University of Nottingham, England
Church history is the most important subject in the theological curriculum. I say this not only because I am a church historian but simply because it is true. Without a good grasp of the history of God's people through the ages one cannot understand the Bible, doctrine, ethics, ecumenism, spiritual formation or any other topic related to the life of faith. Robert Rea has given us here a readable and compelling statement of why that is so. This is a great primer for the study of Christian history in all of its multicolored meanings and forms.
—Timothy George, founding dean, Beeson Divinity School of Samford University; general editor, Reformation Commentary on Scripture