I recently read Christianity through the Centuries by Earle E. Cairns. It is a good introduction to the history of Christianity. Cairns was a professor of history at Wheaton College several decades ago. As such he writes from a conservative, evangelical perspective. The book has several benefits to recommend it:

• It is written as a simple introduction to the history of Christianity, and so one can read it without having a background in church history.
• The book does as good a job as can be expected integrating the history of Christianity with general history. The history of Christianity is shown in its broader historical context.
• The book is written as a textbook. As such, it is clearly organized with an explicit outline. The whole scope of the history of Christianity is divided and subdivided into periods; each chapter is further outlined.
• The book has several helpful charts.
• The style of the book is clear, informative, and engaging.
• Many books are recommended at the end of each chapter as guides for further study.

The book has a few drawbacks, but they aren’t very significant. Cairns can get a bit preachy in a few places. The chapters about recent history read like a descriptive lists of groups and movements rather than an analysis of the relationships between groups and broader movements, but the earlier chapters are much better. On the whole, this is the book that I would recommend to anyone who either wanted to read just one book on church history or who is beginning the study of church history.

I’d hate to devote my life to something—anything—because of a humorous poster; I’d hate to convince someone else to devote his life to something using a humerous poster: “Pop culture heroes help recruit priests” from The Washington Times. Motivations and methods matter.

It is often said that the Bible is a “timeless” book. The Bible certainly is an eternal book, but it is also a book that is not timeless but very much in time. The Bible is an ancient book; its earliest words were written well over three millennia ago, and its latest words were written no later than the first century A.D. The Bible is also a contemporary book through which God speaks to men at this very moment. To call the Bible “timeless” would be to miss the wonder of God’s revelation of himself in time through human language.

But if the Bible is a book both ancient and contemporary, in man’s interpretation of the Bible there is a tension between its being ancient and its being contemporary. We must understand the Bible as it applied historically. For that reason, the normal or literal hermeneutic is often called the grammatical-historical hermeneutic. But we must also apply the Bible as it is understood today. In other words, there is a tension between history and homiletics, between reading the Bible as a historian and as a preacher.

Perhaps an example can illustrate what I am trying to explain. It is common for preachers to illustrate to take a Biblical narrative and paraphrase it in modern terms. Jesse calls David in from the field with his cell phone and tells him to hop in his car and drive down to the battlefield. After getting directions from MapQuest, David arrives at his brothers barracks. There he gives his brothers a care package from his dad before he is called into Saul’s headquarters . . . Of course, reading the Bible as a historian, such a paraphrase is ridiculous and false because it ignores the Bible’s historical context. And though all the modern details that I have given here are inconsequential, there is a real danger that we will read our modern thought back into God’s Word. For example, modern definitions of words like faith, love, or freedom are not necessarily biblical definitions of those words. In other words (and to adapt a common witticism), the text of the Bible outside its historical context can become a pretext to justify whatever one wants it to justify. There is, however, another side to this tension. A historian could lecture on the Bible as a primary source that informs us about a conflict between Israelites and the Philistines sometime in the eleventh century B.C. Of course, reading the Bible as a preacher or believer, such an explanation is ridiculous and false because it ignores the application of the Bible to the spirit of the believer.

To conclude, if we are to understand the Bible as God intends us to, we must maintain the tension between history and application. Tension in understanding God’s Word is not a contradiction in God’s Word. The tension is a check and balance that protects both a proper interpretation and a proper application; it is an indication that God’s Word is both historically reliable and living today.

I have added a calendar to my website that will allow family and friends to see what I am doing. [Read more »]

I’ve said goodbye to the ugly Microsoft FrontPage generated front page to my website. I’ve replaced it with a the same design that is on the weblog and scrapped all the pages that I intended for the main domain. Eventually the home page and the weblog need to be overhauled, redesigned, and integrated, but that will have to wait till I have more time.

Here is a list of posts that you can expect before the end of the summer. (I’m writing this list of future posts because I want to write these posts, and now I’m obligated to write them.) [Read more »]

I was going to write something about the Brockton trip, but others seem to be doing the job more adequately and in greater detail than I could. And so, here is a list of write-ups and galleries about Brockton that have been posted so far:

• Stephen Dearth’s write-up about Brockton. This promises to be quite a lengthy series. He has already written more about Sunday and Monday than I would have been able to about Sunday through Friday.
• Ian Carton’s comments on the week.
• First Baptist Church’s gallery of Brockton photos.
• Ian Carton’s gallery of Brockton photos.

If I have forgotten any others, or if more are added later, please leave a comment so that the church people can have that link too.