00:03:25.460It's impossible to separate ourselves from church history.
00:03:29.580And if I could, just in thinking about this, let me mention a few things to consider, really
00:03:37.900just to kind of pinpoint, if you will, why Christians should study church history and
00:03:43.040the importance of it and really the vitality that it can have in our lives and thinking
00:03:48.360in our Christian walk. First of all, I would say, Dale, history has meaning. Like it or not,
00:03:57.300each one of us are historical beings. That is, we are living in history. I remember a quote by
00:04:05.940Cicero, who said or who observed that history regulates our lives. And I've often thought
00:04:14.020about that and think that he's right. In other words, no one is able to escape the effects of
00:04:20.920history. Government, politics, economy, art, literature, all the rest of it, it has the
00:04:28.420essence of shaping the current culture that we're in. So we are products at the moment of what is
00:04:35.820happened in the past to us. So we interact with history every single day, especially now that we
00:04:44.480are living in the UK. When I travel to the campus of Union School of Theology every day, I travel
00:04:51.740over roads that were built by the Romans. And it's fascinating to do that. So I'm interacting
00:04:58.540with a bit of history every day. So for the Christian community, to know history is vital
00:05:06.320because ultimately history is the stage upon which God plays out the redemptive history of
00:05:16.400his son. So at the beginning is the fall from the garden, and then at the end is the last judgment,
00:05:24.080And in between is the most crucial event of all, the entry of the eternal God into time as a man, Jesus Christ, the incarnate word.
00:05:36.720And so within that timeline, we see God who is undoubtedly active in history.
00:05:44.020So history has meaning because it has been planned and it has been structured by God.
00:05:53.520So that's something that we as Christians need to know.
00:05:56.080History has meaning because we are connected to it, like it or not.
00:06:02.040We can also, secondly, I would say, learn from the past.
00:06:05.760This is one of the more obvious reasons for studying church history, to learn from the mistakes of the past.
00:06:13.880We all know the famous proverb, he who does not remember the past is doomed to repeat it.
00:06:20.340So, for example, we can study the nuances of the ancient history Arianism to help us combat the heretical views maintained by modern day Jehovah's Witnesses, for instance.
00:06:36.680So the thoughts and the writings of those within church history serve the church today if only we are willing to learn from them.
00:06:47.800being yeah i think yeah i'm sorry go ahead no i say i think this is so key i mean it's just
00:06:53.820we can't escape i think that's true is that it's so formative whether we want to admit it or not
00:07:01.580i love that point that you made there dustin is that it's it's such a critical recognition
00:07:07.880that it's shaping us now, and it's inescapable.
00:07:15.260And the point that you made of Arianism, right?
00:07:20.240A lot of people might be thinking about, you know, what's going on in World War II?
00:08:06.080Yeah, I would also say, Dale, that being a historian, and I'm still young, we are young, and so I don't think of myself as a historian as such, but being a historian, enjoying history, studying history, throughout the years, it has really built a sense of humility within me.
00:08:26.460And I think that's another reason why Christians should know history and study history, because the study of church history informs us about our predecessors in the faith.
00:08:38.700That is, those who have helped shape our Christian communities, our churches, our ministries, and really thus making us who we are as people.
00:08:49.960And so studying church history builds humility into our lives.
00:08:58.620And therefore, I think ultimately it has a sanctifying influence upon us because it provides for us a map for the Christian life.
00:09:09.020It's a map based on the countless faithful men and women that have gone before us.
00:09:16.340Now, of course, the Bible provides the basic map for the Christian life, but the thought of other Christians down through the ages can help illumine and even illustrate what is contained in the scripture.
00:09:31.840And so if I did not have church history to go back and read these faithful writings, there are many things perhaps that I would not arrive at myself.
00:09:42.420And so it does build a sense of humility in me recognizing that there is a vast tradition of God working upon the minds and within the pens of those who have gone before me.
00:09:58.680Yeah, that's a huge point right there, Dustin, is that you're saying when we have this kind of autonomous view and we don't realize that there's a history around us.
00:10:11.240I remember watching a video of Paul Washer giving a tour of his library, and he walks
00:10:19.080up to a section of his shelf, and it's all great confessions of faith, and he says he
00:10:28.160was angry when he read them the first time because he had been trying for so many months
00:10:37.000or so many years trying to understand some of the truths that men had already clarified.
00:10:49.600And he was so frustrated that he spent years trying to understand concepts that were so
00:10:55.940simplified in this one statement, and he had never read it.
00:11:00.740And he was, again, just this idea of being detached from the pens of church history, that there are men that have come before, that if we could stand on the shoulders of theologians who were standing on the shoulders of theologians, and to think that we would operate without that wonderful gift is just strange.
00:11:26.580Well, it's quite odd, isn't it, that we would just ignore really models for imitation.
00:11:34.360I think that's another thing that just kind of pops into my mind as a reason to study church history is ultimately history provides models of imitation.
00:11:44.680We read Hebrews 11, for instance, and how the writer of Hebrews uses the history of God's faithful people in the Old Covenant to encourage his own readers to run the race of faith.
00:12:02.500So the writer of Hebrews is using, in essence, church history to say to his modern day readers, these are examples that you need to follow.
00:12:12.560These are examples that you need to imitate. And so he wants them to draw encouragement and to press on in the faith and obedience towards the final goal of the certainty that we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses.
00:12:31.380And we lose the essence of that understanding when we neglect the history that has come before us.
00:13:55.180You know, we should move on to this next question because we could just keep talking forever on this.
00:14:01.480But, you know, Dustin, many modern Christians, they're just attracted to these modern churches.
00:14:09.300But these modern churches, as we were just talking about, can feel detached from church history, not just in their newness, but just in the way that they're preaching.
00:14:19.720They're writing their own statements of faith as if, again, they're the first Christians on earth.
00:14:27.640They have no denominational heritage, not necessarily that, I'm not saying that we need that,0.84
00:14:33.640but I'm saying they're just not connected to the main rivers or the main streams of historical Christianity.
00:14:39.840There's no clear commitment to historical theology, meaning that they're in a sense of incongruent theological convictions.
00:14:49.720And so my question is, why is it important for modern churches, corporately, really to attach
00:14:57.480themselves to Christian history? I mean, how can we really encourage pastors to
00:15:06.860place themselves in the Christian family tree? What's the value there of doing that as a church?
00:15:13.940well first i would say that no church is created in a vacuum no church is an island as it were
00:15:22.740that's the complete antithesis of how the church was founded in the book of acts
00:15:27.640there's no way dale to faithfully preach and teach the bible without looking from our modern context
00:15:37.160into the past. After all, when you open the Bible, you're not only opening God's Word and God's
00:15:45.260revelation to us, but the Bible is in and of itself a book of God's history. And so to purposefully
00:15:54.780detach ourselves from Christian history is essentially impossible. It's important for
00:16:02.440pastors to emphasize history and our forebears, to demonstrate that the Christian life was not
00:16:08.960meant to be lived in isolation from the greater context of God's history of redemption. I mean,
00:16:17.060let's think about it for a moment. Even to say our God is the father of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
00:16:24.340is to place ourselves within the context of a history, that is, the history of Israel,
00:16:32.720what God did through his people in Israel, how eventually the Messiah came forth, lived a sinless
00:16:38.880life, died a substitutionary death, rose from the dead, and ascended back to God. All of this,
00:16:46.960of course, is the message of the gospel, which is also a message of history. So at no point can
00:16:55.400the church avoid history or think that they have a better or more modern way of doing things.
00:17:02.740And then for the reasons that I mentioned before, history is meant to demonstrate to God's people
00:17:08.540that we are not traveling the Christian road alone, but that we have a rich heritage from
00:17:16.000which to learn in order to provide a proper map for us to follow. So no church can open the Bible,
00:17:24.880faithfully proclaim the Bible, faithfully proclaim God's revelation to man through Christ,
00:17:30.940which is the gospel, and avoid history. Because that message must be planted in time and space
00:17:39.800and history in order to be validated. Yeah, I think this is so true. And, you know,
00:17:47.520we need to recognize, I believe, as Christians and as pastors, the Lord's theological clarifying
00:17:55.820that has occurred, especially, you know, over the past 2,000 years, right? Obviously, there was a
00:18:03.340huge theological clarifying moment when Christ came. And so, you know, God's making clear all
00:18:09.900of the prophetic promises that were coming. And then over the last 2000 years, I always think
00:18:15.560about it took a long time for theological clarity to occur because nobody had a copy of the
00:18:23.660scriptures to study, to scrutinize, to have discussions about. The fact that Augustine had
00:18:30.640the Bible that he had, how many other individuals could he really have deep theological discourse
00:18:38.000over that document that he had? I mean, not many. And so, you know, people wonder why it took so
00:18:45.160many centuries for certain theological conclusions to really take root. Well, it's like there was
00:18:51.160such a huge amount of time before we, we didn't have the printing press until, you know, the 1500s
00:18:56.900or some argue a little earlier in a sense, but we didn't have multiple copies of the Bible for
00:19:01.940scrutiny, for discussion, for discourse. And so that's why the boom of the Reformation creates
00:19:08.740this beautiful mass of theological clarity because all these people have a Bible now and they can
00:19:16.880read it in their language and they can discuss it. And you have this Puritan movement of just
00:19:22.280huge amounts of writing and clarity and confessional statements that come out of the church.
00:19:29.760And for me, I've just realized, one, I'm not saying that we ever make confessions elevated
00:19:37.580higher than the scriptures, but these confessions as a church, being a confessional church,
00:19:42.180meaning that, hey, we align with this statement of faith, the 1689 London Baptist Confession of
00:19:47.120faith. Hey, that's a confession that we can stand behind. Is it tit for tat 99 or 100% of everything
00:19:54.560you agree with? Maybe not. But generally speaking, we can align with that statement of faith or the
00:19:59.180Westminster Confession of Faith. And I just see so many churches now, Dustin, that are me, my Bible,
00:20:05.000and I. They're just, we grabbed our Bible and we're going to start our new version of Christianity
00:20:11.480detached from this church history. And I go, why? Why? You're missing out on the rich,
00:20:20.940clarified truths, and you're going to make the same mistakes,
00:20:24.340and they already are making the same mistakes that they don't even see because they don't know.
00:20:29.000Well, so many churches just aren't interested in that theological clarity, are they?
00:20:46.300We see them as dusty figures in the past that have nothing to teach us in our modern context.
00:20:53.960And so it's the changing of the language that we use.0.52
00:20:58.600We're not interested in historically how you define a Christian because we put on the glasses of modern day culture in order to define a Christian.
00:21:08.680And so instead of seeing the Bible through a historical, theological, clear lens, they rather put on the lens of culture and view the Bible, which always, always leads to error.
00:21:24.260Yeah, I think about Dr. MacArthur, who's done such a great job of every time I listen to his
00:21:30.760sermons, I feel like he takes me into the world of the Bible. When he talks about even church
00:21:37.560history, he might talk about Augustine. I feel like I'm there in Rome with Augustine, and I'm
00:21:43.960being brought in to the scriptures instead of projecting my modern view, which is what you're
00:21:50.560talking about on the scriptures? Well, it's a completely different worldview, isn't it? The
00:21:56.040view of the modern church is that Christ makes much of us, and the view of the doctrinal,
00:22:05.240biblical, theologically grounded, clear church, that is the church of the scripture, the church
00:22:11.100of the Bible, is that we make much of God. And so it's a complete antithesis. The mission is0.85
00:22:18.580different. The gospel is different. The message is different. The preaching is different. And
00:22:26.200eventually, which is what we have at the moment rising up, we just begin to see different
00:22:32.400definitions of the gospel come forward. Yeah, when I first got into church history a few years ago,
00:22:39.540I remember having a sense of discovering who I am in all the right ways.
00:22:48.560in terms of I remember having this sense of feeling home
00:22:57.060that I finally found that there is a scarlet thread
00:23:03.360or a bloodline back to Christ of the biblical church
00:30:01.060And to appreciate those things is so valuable, especially if the brother or sister is fruitful and sanctified, right?
00:30:08.100I think about when I read the Valley of Vision, right?
00:30:12.260This is, if you guys aren't familiar with it, it's a prayer journal of great Puritan prayers.
00:30:19.480And the Valley of Vision, when I read those prayers, one, I just go, I cannot believe the maturity of these individuals, the prayers they're praying.
00:30:29.660But it makes me trust what they're writing.
00:30:34.400It makes me trust what else they wrote.
00:30:38.480And I just want to encourage us all to, yeah, not shove off church history and go, I'm going to figure it out on my own.
00:30:45.400I was a part of a church who did that.
00:31:05.480So I love that, that clarity that you brought there, Dustin.
00:31:13.200150 years ago, Dustin, the sources of information were very limited in comparison today.
00:31:20.640I think I read an article once that was talking about, you know, the amount of content that we read in a day is what most people would read or would read over a year in terms of just the scroll or the content that was at least presented to us.
00:31:40.240And as a result, the false teaching and heretical theology at that time had fewer ways to be passed along.
00:31:48.800But today, in the information age, with social media, podcasts, sermons, abundance of books, just one click on Amazon, documentaries, movies, see, the average Christian is bombarded with an opportunity to hear many false ideas and bad theology on a weekly, if not a daily basis.
00:32:09.080And so how can a grasp of church history and historical theology help these modern
00:32:17.300Christians identify what's not true, to refute it, and actually present the truth in response?
00:32:26.120Ecclesiastes 1.9 says, there is nothing new under the sun. And that's such a good verse0.93
00:32:35.020for the context of the conversation here.
00:32:38.080In other words, when I hear of new theology or new revelation,
00:32:46.740I automatically become extremely skeptical about the belief system,
00:32:55.340the theology, the biblical understanding of that particular individual.
00:33:00.180Young men love to stand in the pulpits today and talk about their new theology.
00:33:07.160But church history teaches us that as believers, we need to hold tightly to that one single redemptive thread that God has woven throughout church history.
00:33:21.120We must be committed not to the new faith, but to the faith once delivered to all the saints.
00:33:28.480And that is a historical faith. Over and over throughout Paul's epistles, for instance, Paul warns the church to stay close to that faith, to preach that one faith, to follow that one path.
00:33:46.300We are in a long line of godly men and women, and good students of church history are able
00:33:55.160to go back into the past and examine the confessions of faith and sermons and councils
00:34:01.260and creeds and all of the rest of it, seeing how they match up to the teaching of Scripture
00:34:07.520and then use that as a rubric over which to examine every aspect of teaching today
00:34:17.680in order to determine the validity of that teaching.
00:34:23.120Dale, most heresies today are just repackaged from the past.
00:34:28.900There's no heresy that I can think of at the moment that has just been invented in the past 50 years.
00:34:36.720nine times out of 10, as it were, you can go back in church history and find that heresy
00:34:42.960appearing somewhere, though today it may be cloaked in different language. Most heresies
00:34:49.820are just repackaged. And so our enemy has always led people in the same direction of falsehood.
00:34:57.020It may be packaged differently, but it's essentially the same. We know this only if
00:35:05.100we know church history. You have to go back to the past in order to identify and refute false
00:35:14.180teaching. And so that means we have to be very familiar with the writings of the past, the
00:35:21.060preaching of the past, the history of the past, and the events of the past in order to know,
00:35:28.060hey, this is not new. There's nothing new under the sun. This is an old heresy repackaged in
00:35:37.160different language. I need to avoid that. And the only way to do that is to know church history.
00:35:46.020Well, and you can look back about how did the church refute it then? So you can lean heavily
00:35:53.580on the hard work's done for you in most cases. Now, again, we have a modern context. We might
00:36:02.480need to accommodate new language, but we can learn how the church reacted. We can learn the
00:36:09.780defense that occurred on both sides. We can learn how to stand for the truth as a replacement of
00:36:15.860that heresy. And so I've seen so many individuals miss out on that because they don't know the
00:36:26.140councils and the confessions. Those two things alone, right? If you just can look back at the
00:36:32.300church councils, the major church councils throughout church history and the great
00:36:35.840confessions of faith, you have a pretty good look at what has been presented to the church.
00:36:45.100And man, I'll tell you, some of the stuff looks really good at first.
00:36:49.280Not too long ago, I actually had a Bible study.
00:36:53.340And one of the ways that I was teaching our group that the heresy is not always right
00:37:00.380on the front of the page in bold letters is for about 10 minutes, I taught and read the
00:37:08.300Trinity out of the Mormon's definition of the Trinity.
00:37:12.740and nobody in my 40-person Bible study had caught it until I said, hey guys, I just want to let you
00:37:20.520know, I said a few statements here that were from the Mormon view of the Trinity and they were
00:37:28.080heretical. And I was using that to illustrate my point that it's the fine details. And that's what
00:37:34.780you'll see throughout church history is these heresies that aren't rejected immediately because
00:37:40.580it takes some time to look at them and you go, wow, that's really close, but it's not right.
00:37:48.040And the councils and the confessions do a great job with precision. When I read the
00:37:55.040confession of faith or the Westminster confession, every single word was chosen specifically to
00:38:01.880convey a specific meaning. And what a helpful tool those things have been so that I can know
00:38:08.760what the real thing is throughout church history in alignment with the scriptures. I can study the
00:38:14.540word of God so that when a counterfeit rises up, I can see it. And so I love that perspective,
00:38:21.960Dustin, that you've had on knowing those truths. Dustin, as we get ready to close out here in a
00:38:28.320few minutes, if you had to think of some individuals, let's say three of them from
00:38:32.460church history, which I know is very difficult to do. And you had to study them deeply.
00:38:40.000Who are those people and why? Well, that's like asking a father to pick his favorite child.
00:38:49.280It's a really difficult question because there's so many. I go into my office every day
00:38:56.300on campus or here in my home office, and I'm surrounded by books that cry forth from church
00:39:04.920history glorious truths that I want to devour. It seems there's something glorious every day,
00:39:13.060a diamond or a bar of gold that I've missed. But if I were to choose three, they may be quite
00:39:20.420obvious because I've already mentioned their names, even perhaps a couple times, almost from
00:39:26.440three different eras of church history, because God throughout church history, it's been interesting
00:39:32.140how he has emphasized certain things when they needed to be emphasized. And so from three
00:39:39.000different eras of church history, I would select, first of all, probably Augustine or Augustine as
00:39:45.460Some know him because he rises to the forefront of our connection with the church fathers.
00:39:52.580He taught us, for instance, of the supreme authority of scripture, the necessity of the church, what it means to have a real relationship with Christ.
00:40:05.580So some of those practical, major, primary doctrinal issues, Augustine is really a go-to.
00:40:13.400And most everyone else I study after him, we would call Augustinian in their theology
00:40:20.080because he is the ocean from which most all those rivers flow.
00:40:25.840Secondly, coming to the period of the Reformation, I would probably choose Calvin,
00:40:33.040perhaps not for the obvious reasons that one would choose Calvin because of his teachings on salvation,
00:40:38.940even though I'm in agreement with those but more practically I love Calvin's instruction on the
00:40:45.940Christian life and as a pastor he was preeminently teaching about sanctification and how to live
00:40:55.760as a Christian believer in the world and his institutes though beautifully theological are
00:41:04.700basically a roadmap or a handbook for practical Christian living. He's writing this not necessarily
00:41:15.620for the academy. He's writing this for people in the pews of his church every single Lord's Day,
00:41:22.580writing copiously on prayer, things like prayer and fighting and dealing with sin in our lives.
00:41:31.340And so Calvin, because of very practical Christian living.
00:41:36.320And then third, just post-Puritan era, some would argue, would be probably Jonathan Edwards.