The year is 2121. That’s not a typo…it’s 100 years from now. During the zombie apocalypse almost all of our Christian books were destroyed. Not because of any malicious intent by our zombie overlords but mostly because they weren’t very good at preserving paperback and they accidentally blew up the internet. The zombie kids of 2121 have only a handful of the millions of Christian resources we have available today.
They have a Joel Osteen book, a few pages from Calvin’s Institutes, some book on anxiety by an obscure author, Book 3 of the Left Behind series, a couple Amish romance novels, a commentary on the Gospel of John, and thankfully a completely intact copy of the Scriptures.
How much confidence would you have if a zombie historian compiled this material to write his What Christians Believed? You would expect our author to miss whole swaths of teaching. It would be skewed towards the information available to him. Because he has such scant material he would by necessity give undue weight to every jot and tittle. A passing thought from Mr. Osteen could become for our zombie writer a key belief.
I’m sharing this ridiculous illustration because I believe we can have a tendency to give undue weight to passing phrases in the writings of the early church. I will give you a rather extreme example to make my point.
In The Apology of Aristides the Philosopher, our pal Aristides calls the Egyptians, “more base and stupid than every people that is on the earth”. We have very little other material from the early 100s. Would it be right for us to conclude that a widely held Christian belief was that Egyptians were stupid? Of course it wouldn’t. We would need more evidence. And it would be equally silly for us to say, “because early Christians believed Egyptians were stupid we should make this part of our Christian practice.”
Likewise, there are passing phrases in many of the early church fathers about how they did church together. I’ll admit, there are things which at times leave me scratching my head. If those who lived closest to Jesus (like Aristides) believed that baptized infants were sinless, does this mean I should embrace that view?
No, our standard is still the Bible. If our zombie historian were tasked with planting a church that is faithful to Christ, he could certainly learn from the material given to him. But at the end of the day he would be bound to the Scriptures. Scripture would be authoritative. He could perhaps cobble together a bit about what Christians believed in 2021—and that should inform his own interpretations. But at the end of the day both he, and us in 2021, must bow a knee to what the Scripture actually says and teaches.
I’m not attempting to say that we cannot trust history or that what the church has historically believed has no value. Nor am I attempting to argue that there was some sort of unpopular and underground church that held the real Christianity in its hand. Rather, I’m attempting to communicate that we should be cautious when reading history. It ought to inform us but not rule over us.
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