Retrieving History (Evangelical Ressourcement)

Memory and Identity Formation in the Early Church

Dan Laing, Stefana, Williams, D. H.

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781493406678
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Théologie chrétienne

This volume introduces the early Christian ideas of history and history writing and shows their value for developing Christian communities of the patristic era. It examines the ways early Christians related and transmitted their history: apologetics, martyrdom accounts, sacred biography, and the genre of church history proper. The book shows that exploring the lives and writings of both men and women of the ancient church helps readers understand how Christian identity is rooted in the faithful work of preceding generations. It also offers a corrective to the individualistic and ahistorical tendencies within contemporary Christianity.

1
Invitation to the Past

In my career I’ve found that “thinking outside the box” works better if I know what’s “inside the box.” In music (as in life) we need to understand our pertinent history, . . . and moving on is so much easier once we know where we’ve been.

—Dave Grusin, musician (this quote appears on a Starbucks cup in the series “The Way I See It,” #182)

Before we can responsibly go into the future, we must go back.

—D. H. Williams, Retrieving Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism, 13

The Past Is Trending

Most people have some interest in their origins, whether geographical, familial, or cultural; indeed many are self-consciously shaped by their past. Some also have an interest in their spiritual origins, allowing these to shape and form their spiritual identities, as well as their theology and worship. The latter is increasingly becoming the case, as a spirit of antiquity or appreciation of “the past” seems to be blowing through evangelicalism, even through such an ultracontemporary permutation of evangelicalism as the Emergent Church movement.1 It may even be part of a broader cultural movement, as suggested by the above quote from Dave Grusin, popularized by Starbucks. Many Christians are turning back to an earlier era, that of the church fathers, seeking renewal in their worship practices (liturgy) and doctrine. Some are revisiting the past to mine apologetic arguments and strategies for defending the faith against current opposition such as the New Atheism or cults, or just to learn from ancient apologists how to engage a hostile or unbelieving culture; others seek ancient wisdom for living as a Christian in a pluralistic and postmodern society, or for living as a disciple, growing and thriving spiritually in an age of affluence, freedom, godlessness, and pop spirituality.2 Some appear to be searching for a sense of historical, personal, and theological identity in this age of the nondenominational megachurch.3 All these groups have at least one commonality: they hope to somehow refresh their Christian walk and renew their witness in the world by revisiting and reclaiming their Christian roots. By reconnecting with the heritage of the ancient church, they are reminded of the “faith once for all delivered to the saints,” as well as the particular saints who have lived it out in various forms of witness down through twenty centuries. Scholars and clerics alike are turning to the fathers for theological as well as homiletic refreshment and renewal. Both Catholics and Protestants have been producing multivolume works—directed at students, pastors, and laypersons—that seek to give access in an accurate English translation to the riches of patristic theology, hermeneutics, and homiletics.4

This movement is not limited to clerics and theologians but is also present among the laity. Several personal examples can serve as cases in point. Bonnie, a friend from an evangelical Southern Baptist church, is a mom, director of Awana, and freelance writer for a denominational publication. She became interested in Athanasius, Augustine, and other patristic theologians who set the doctrinal foundations of Christianity. She said that knowing the origins of her faith gave her grounding and confidence in the doctrines that have defined Christians and have endured these twenty centuries. She and about ten others joined me in a discipleship group in which we read and discussed Augustine’s Confessions. Many of the participants were amazed at the similarities between the philosophical and spiritual issues of the fourth and twenty-first centuries. Another friend, Walker (not his real name), is a dad and works in information technology. He became interested in Athanasius’s works. I was stunned (and pleased) when he approached me one day and told me he was reading Athanasius’s On the Incarnation. When I asked him why, he replied that his interest stemmed from his personal background. He had suffered from an abusive father and drew comfort from the view of God’s fatherhood presented by Athanasius. Yet another friend, Ricky, is a dad and chemical engineer for a pharmaceutical company. He maintains a strong interest in Christianity’s doctrinal foundations and is especially intrigued by developments in trinitarian doctrine up to the Council of Nicaea (325) and beyond. By his own account, his interest stems from his evangelistic and apologetic activities. Ricky bears witness to Christ through thoughtful conversations with his work colleagues, and he has become convinced that the nature of truth is under attack in contemporary culture. Through discipleship training classes, he trained others in our church to engage the culture effectively by becoming firmly grounded in Christian doctrine, especially in Christology and the doctrine of the Trinity. In his teaching material on the Trinity, he even developed his own curriculum after conducting some scholarly research, incorporating not only biblical exegesis but also historical study of doctrinal development from the earliest years of the church. Ricky finds value in studying doctrinal and apologetic arguments proffered by earlier Christians because there is no need to reinvent the wheel, so to speak.

An Ancient-Contemporary Example

As Augustine’s Confessions demonstrate, the psychological and even theological issues of the fourth century offer some unexpected parallels to those of our own era. On many occasions during our discipleship class on Augustine, participants commented, “He could be talking about today!” For example, the tenets of Manichaeanism—a religion in which Augustine was involved for almost a decade—have strong affinities with the New Age teachings of Oprah Winfrey’s spiritual guru, Eckhart Tolle. Both deny the reality of personal sin and the necessity for Jesus’s atoning, sacrificial death.5 Both emphasize knowledge, self-realization, and self-actualization.6 Mani, the founder of Manichaeanism, also adhered to a dualistic/Gnostic understanding of God and reality. For Mani and his followers, all reality consisted of conflicts between diametrical opposites: light versus darkness, matter versus spirit, body/flesh versus soul, and good versus evil. This dualism pervaded their thought system, extending even to their view of the body (and matter in general) as hostile to the soul or mind.7 For his part, Tolle clearly praises Gnostic thought and its emphasis on “realization and inner transformation.”8 Tolle also posits some degree of dualism in his own spiritual thought, namely, between what he calls the “pain-body” (a somewhat unclear concept) and the consciousness. While the pain-body is associated with darkness and negativity, the consciousness is associated with light and life.9

Further, both Tolle and Mani mingled their teachings with Christian concepts. They spoke in biblical terms and infused (if not twisted completely) Jesus’s words with their own interpretations, thereby seducing even Christians with their message.10 Augustine provides an especially illuminating example of the eerie similarity between the tactics of the Manichaeans and Tolle and his contemporary followers:

[The Manichaeans] baited the traps [to reel in converts from Christianity] by confusing the syllables of the names of God the Father, God the Son our Lord Jesus Christ, and God the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete, who comforts us. These names were always on the tips of their tongues, but only as sounds which they mouthed aloud, for in their hearts they had no inkling of the truth. Yet, “Truth and truth alone” was the motto which they repeated to me again and again, although the truth was nowhere to be found in them.11

Tolle claims that throughout his life he has been influenced by the Bible, and he purports to impart a true understanding of the Scriptures through his teachings; he believes that currently most biblical teachings are misunderstood by Christians.12

The point of this extended comparison is to emphasize the value and even the critical necessity of looking back to the early church’s works. As the contemporary church faces current theological and ideological challenges, it is both comforting and instructive to realize that many of these challenges have already been confronted and answered. By rebutting pseudo-Christian ideologies, Augustine and other church fathers helped clarify Christian theology and thus lent definition to Christianity: by combating Manichaeanism, for example, Augustine defined not only what Christians believed, but also what they specifically did not and should not believe.

Impediments to the Backward Glance

Doctrinal grounding (as in the example above), pastoral needs, evangelism, and apologetic engagement are all good reasons to look back at the church’s history and to mine that history for resources and answers. But some of these reasons are what we might call “cerebral.” They contribute to aspects of the life of the mind that are somewhat abstract, and they retrieve information used for theological and/or philosophical engagement or debate. There are also more concrete and practical reasons to look back. Contemporary spirituality, liturgy, and discipleship can all be enriched by turning to past Christians and examining their lives and writings. An interest in these topics might seek to discover how Christians prayed and worshiped, and how they defined and maintained their identity as Christians within their culture.13

In addition to these solid but somewhat utilitarian reasons for a backward glance, I also suggest that evangelicals encounter some deeper issues that contribute to historical myopia, as evidenced by many in the Free Church tradition who may reject or be oblivious to the rich and far-reaching historical tradition from which we emerged. Some Reformed-leaning evangelicals are familiar with Reformation ideals and theological commitments, but we must look also to the tradition extending even further back to the patristic and apostolic eras. In my experience, Free Church evangelicals often relinquish the history of the church between the apostles and Luther to so-called Great Tradition churches or mainline liturgical churches, when in fact there is no reason to think that early Christians are not our own forebears as well, and their contributions were clearly acknowledged as foundational by the Reformers themselves.14 This very phenomenon impelled late nineteenth-century Protestant scholars to produce English translations of the fathers’ works in the series Ante-Nicene Fathers and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers.15

Although American evangelicals seem to prioritize a sense of community (coffee shops in churches, small-group/cell-group studies, the peppering of the American evangelical landscape with “community” churches), it nonetheless appears that a Christian understanding of “community” in a broader, global, and historical sense is impoverished by at least three factors: certain denominational/theological commitments, declining biblical literacy in the broader culture as well as within the church, and an attitude toward history (e.g., the church’s memory) as an impractical and therefore optional discipline.

First, certain denominational convictions sometimes detract from a full appreciation of the global nature of the body of Christ. One contributing factor may be the individualistic emphasis, which is both ecclesiologically and soteriologically apparent. On the first count, many Free Churches are committed to local church autonomy as their primary ecclesiastical model. A Reformation emphasis on each person’s individual responsibility and accountability ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Series Preface
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• 1. Invitation to the Past
• 2. Ancient Historical Writing and the Rise of Historical Literary Forms
• 3. History as Apologetic
• 4. Martyrology
• 5. Hagiography
• 6. Ecclesiastical History
• 7. Conclusions and Trajectories
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover