History? When Will I Ever Need That?

Why history?

Someone, somewhere has asked about history, “When will I ever need this?”

Did knowing when Columbus sailed the ocean blue double your coupon?  Did knowing about the Moors at Tours and Charles “the Hammer” Martel lower your taxes?

Of course, if you ever tried to become a millionaire with Regis Philbin, then knowing the day the music died helped (or, at least, making sure the friend you phoned knew, did).

History is more than dates and names and places. History teaches us about the human condition – Who are we? What have we done? Where have we gone? Where are we going? – so that we can repeat the good and avoid the bad. Philosopher George Santayana famously wrote:  “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Why church history?

But if we stop there we’re just Darwinian slaves. History isn’t aimed at achieving your best life now. History isn’t dates and names and places. History isn’t only about mankind. History is HIS-story. God’s story. Justo Gonzalez writes:

From its very beginning, the Christian message was grafted onto human history. The Good News Christians have proclaimed through the ages is that in Jesus Christ, and for our salvation, God has entered human history in a unique way. History is crucial for understanding not only the life of Jesus, but also the entire biblical message” (Justo Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity, Vol. 1:xv).

History began in the beginning: God created the heavens and the earth. The Word was with God, was God and created! The Spirit overshadowed; a virgin bore the Word. History culminated at the cross: the Word crucified, yet winning and giving forgiveness!

Philip Schaff called history both divine and human.

On the part of God, it is His revelation in the order of time…a plan of infinite wisdom, justice, and mercy…. On the part of man, history is the biography of the human race” (Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Vol. 1:2).

All history is church history, or, better, Church history – the history of all believers in Christ! It’s no coincidence that a history of the popes helps you grasp Western Civ (a basic college course). Or that you find at the center of the Renaissance the Reformation! We even tell time by Christ: BC and AD, “before Christ” and “Anno Domini,” “in the year of our Lord.”

When we study history, then, we look for God’s hand in God’s story – HIS-story, history – confident, as Paul said, that God works out all things. While we watch HIS-story unfold, we see man’s part: sometimes God’s foil, sometimes the damsel in distress, tied to the railroad tracks by our sins, desperate for an escape that only comes when the Lord of History enters history as one of us to bear our sins.
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The purpose of this blog, then, will be to help us remember HIS-story, to study history so that we remember God and how he remembered us in Christ.

Why me?

Good question. I’m not a historian, per se. As Sam Cooke sang, “I don’t know much about history,” (Great song. Google it:  “Wonderful world”). I’m a parish pastor in South Dakota. I served for seven years just outside of Dallas (St. Mark Lutheran Church) before accepting a Call to my current home, Bethel Evangelical Lutheran Church and School (Sioux Falls)

I came to St. Mark after attending Michigan Lutheran Seminary (1998), Martin Luther College (B.A., 2002) and Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary (M.Div., 2006). In 2006 I married Kristen Scharf, another history lover, and we have three children: Katherine, Samuel, and Hannah.

I enjoy history. I’ve done some history tours and took enough history courses in college to earn a minor, had one been available. My shelves are filled with history: world history, military history, political history, church history, history of history…. I love to read about the Reformation, Martin Luther, Lutheranism in America, the papacy, and lately Islam. When not reading Church history, I’m also partial to the American Revolution, the American presidency, the Civil War, World War II, the Napoleonic Wars, the Roman Empire, the Greek wars against the Persians, or whatever historical epic’s on my DVR. Do you think I enjoy historical fiction?

I still maintain that I don’t know much about history. Maybe the tip of the iceberg. Maybe the tip of the tip. Think about PhDs who are experts on the War Powers Act. They know a lot, but not everything. Diarmaid MacCulloch just published his thousand page magnum opus, Christianity: The First 3,000 Years, yet he doesn’t know everything and left out vast chunks. Socrates supposedly said, “All I know is that I know nothing.” May we kneel before HIS-story.

And yet, as Christians, we know something. With Paul we say, “I resolved to know nothing while I was with you, except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.” (1 Corinthians 2:2) I hope to help you love history as much as I do, but more, to grow in the grace and knowledge of your Savior Jesus. I have ideas. Perhaps examine some intriguing “What if’s” in church history. Check out some of little thought-of historical contexts to familiar portions of Scripture. Review history you have to read.

The whole point is to remember. Paul told Timothy: “Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead.” (2 Timothy 2:8) Remembering keeps us afloat. We remember that God remembered us. He saw our pain, our suffering, our sin. He remembered us with Christ.

Back to Sam Cooke. He didn’t know much, but he knew this: “I do know that I love you, and I know that if you love me too, what a wonderful world this would be.” God revealed himself on the cross as Jesus dying for our sins, proving that God loves us. And because the Holy Spirit works through what God revealed, by faith we this love is for us and love him and his forgiveness which he gives to us in Christ. We need that history.  If you forget everything else, remember that.