Historical theology

The church's memory

God repeatedly told his people to remember:

Remember the days of old; consider the years long past. Ask your father, and he will tell you, your elders, and they will inform you.

Deuteronomy 32:7

Historical theology studies that memory. It asks not only what the church believed, but why it confessed as it did when challenged, and which passages of Scripture it argued from. The controversy over Arianism in the fourth century produced the Nicene Creed; the arguments about Christ in the fifth produced the Definition of Chalcedon. Again and again the church's confession became clearer under questioning. So historical theology listens to the Church Fathers and the councils, the medieval teachers and the Reformers, each in their own setting. It overlaps with church history, which follows events and institutions, but its main concern is the history of thought and teaching.

"Remember your leaders who spoke the word of God to you," says Hebrews (Hebrews 13:7). John Wesley explains: remember those "who are now with God, considering the happy end of their conversation on earth" Wesley.

Growth without change

Early in the fourth century Eusebius of Caesarea wrote his Church History, often counted the first attempt to tell the church's story as a whole Eusebius, Church History. Around 434 Vincent of Lérins asked whether there can be progress in the church's faith. Certainly, he answered, but it must be growth and not alteration, as a child grows into a man and remains the same person. He also urged believers to hold "that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all" Vincent of Lérins, Commonitory. What the church meant to keep was "the faith entrusted once for all to the saints" (Jude 1:3). The history of doctrine became a field of detailed scholarly study in the nineteenth century.

Historical theology guards against two dangers. One is to ignore the church's wisdom, as if no one had read the Bible before us, and so to repeat as something new an error the church long ago answered from Scripture. The other is to idolize the past. Those who went before us also made mistakes, and their words too must be tested by Scripture. The LORD says through Jeremiah, "Ask for the ancient paths: ‘Where is the good way?’ Then walk in it" (Jeremiah 6:16). We walk the old path not because it is old but because it is good.

How the traditions weigh the past

The traditions give different authority to the voices historical theology recovers (see tradition). The Catholic Church teaches that Scripture and Sacred Tradition form one sacred deposit of faith, interpreted by the church's teaching office, within which the church's understanding grows Dei Verbum. The Orthodox churches read Scripture within Holy Tradition, alive in the councils, the Fathers and the liturgy. The Reformation churches value the Fathers, councils and confessions, but place them under Scripture and test them by it. See the lessons Historical and practical theology and The sources of theology.