Why History?

One reason I believe history is so important, is the fact it has the ability to help us not fall into theological darkness of our own age. One of the great truths of the Christian faith is that truth has always been truth. What was true 2000 years ago is still true today. History becomes helpful when we look back and see what other men of God have said in the past about God and his revelation of Himself in scriptures. One way it helps is that if church history for the last 2000 years has denied a certain doctrine, then it's a good chance that doctrine is wrong. Or if it has embraced a doctrine for the last 2000 years, it's a good chance that it's Orthodoxie, that is correct teaching. One example of this is the Trinity. For 2000 years is has been fought for and confirmed time and time again. Yet there is still people who deny the Biblical concept. Some on the basis that it doesn't making any sense, yet others on a misconception that the early church didn't believe in the Trinity and that it was a latter concept invented 300 years after the birth of the Church.

This is were history can at least to some extent come into play. It's true that the term Trinity wasn't used by the early Church (The Apostles), but that's not to mean the concept wasn't believed and embraced. The early church was birthed in a time of persecution, both from the Jews and from the Romans. False doctrines came both from outside and from with in the church. False views of Christ arouse, false views of the "God of the Old Testament" arouse, the heretics were undermining the faith by undermining the person and nature of Jesus. It was out of this that the Church Fathers arouse to defend what the scriptures reveled about God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Studying History shows that the early Church Fathers didn't come up with the idea of the Trinity, they just defended what the scriptures had already revealed.