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Ideas & Answers Foundation Stones What Do We Mean When We Say Christianity is Historic and Biblical?
Ideas & Answers Foundation Stones What Do We Mean When We Say Christianity is Historic and Biblical?
| What Do We Mean When We Say Christianity is Historic and Biblical? |
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| Christianity is historical in two ways. First, Christianity is historical in that it stands on the actual events as described in the Old and New Testaments, leading up to and concerning Jesus. There is sufficient evidence for reasonable belief that the events described and interpreted to us in the Bible are true and a reliable witness to what happened in history. Second, Christianity’s historicity is evident in the integrity of its expressed reality lived and witnessed for 2000 years by believers, the Body of Christ, who have loved and followed the triune God. We do not claim to have anything new. What we have has been tried and tested. There is wisdom in the Church: through the centuries the form and expression may change, but the content remains the same. Each generation is faced with different questions and issues. We must face the questions and issues of our times and be faithful in our generation. We bear the history of the Church as both a blessing and a burden: as a blessing in lessons learned and theology clarified; as a burden in mistakes and failures from which we must learn. This history, while not ultimately authoritative, is beneficial. We must not idealize any one period of church history as the “golden age”. We may learn from all of them, but must not allow nostalgia to blind us to the universal standards and principles that transcend them all and relativise them, helping us to see that they are all beset with their own characteristic weaknesses and sins. These perennial imperfections must not give occasion for the cynicism that is so prevalent in our own age. If we must not idealize a particular age, neither must we demonise another, although we recognize that there are periods of relative strength and weakness. As the Apostles’ Creed says, we believe in the “catholic [one true] Church”. We should act in that spirit, exposing the difference between true and false no matter under what cover it hides. |
