Church history: is it relevant? Is it useful? What I say to sceptical theological students

I have the privilege of teaching church history to theological students.

And though they are almost always too polite to say so outright, a fair few of their number come to the study of the past with a bit of scepticism. Is this relevant? Is this useful? Is this actually helping me to ‘grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’ (2 Pet. 3:18)?

Among the many good answers one might give to these, not unreasonable, questions, one of my favourites is this: the study of church history reminds us of life’s brief duration and challenges us to build today on that which really matters.

One of the Bible’s great themes is the call to remember our inescapable finitude. Whether we think of the prophet’s reminder that ‘all flesh is grass’ that withers quickly away (Isa.40:6-8), or the psalmist’s insight that a ‘heart of wisdom’ comes through learning to ‘number our days’ (Ps.90:12), the Bible repeatedly insists that a mature perspective on this life will acknowledge its brief duration. Yet maintaining this perspective is difficult, perhaps especially so in the context of a 21st-century consumer culture that is forever promising to extend indefinitely our fading vigour through just one more surgery, supplement, or self-help talk.

Here is where I find church history to be such a valuable corrective. Church history shows us the lives of believers who have now faithfully run their course and finished the race. Reading, say, a Christian biography, holds before us in compressed fashion the complete arc of a Christian life, from birth to death, and allows us to take in the whole, giving thanks to God for a life well-lived, but reminded that even the fullest of lives ‘are like an evening shadow’ and ‘wither away like grass’ (Ps.102:11).

Across a span of quiet afternoons, the reader of Christian history joins Augustine of Hippo (354–430) struggling to envision what Christian faithfulness might look like as the Roman empire collapses around him, or walks alongside the Puritan pastor Richard Baxter (1615–1691) expending tremendous energy and creativity in mid-17th-century England to shepherd his flock in Kidderminster, or sits with Amy Carmichael (1867–1951) struggling with ill health in Bangalore but persevering in faith and bringing spiritual and physical rescue to untold numbers of girls and young women. And all of this striving, praying, toiling, rejoicing, weeping, and labouring – all of this living for the glory of God – is distilled for our benefit if we will only take up and read.

We often find it difficult to remember that this life is ‘a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes’ (James 4:14) because in our present-centredness it’s easy to assume that things will carry on indefinitely as they are today.

But when we enter in to the now-completed lives of saints who walked before us, we see that the days and years they were given to glorify God with their lives did not, in fact, last forever, and we, in turn, are encouraged to make the most of ours while we still can. In this way, as the 17th-century historian Thomas Fuller put it: ‘History maketh a young man to be old, without either wrinkles or grey hairs, privileging him with the experience of age, without either the infirmities or inconveniences thereof.’ And for the Christian reader of Christian history, this compounding effect can be directed towards the psalmist’s prayer: ‘O Lord, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am!’ (Ps.39:4)

Matthew Bingham is a lecturer in Systematic Theology and Church History at Oak Hill College, London