Historical Theologians as Hired Guns
“The study of doctrinal truth, apart from its historical background, leads to a truncated theology. There has been too much of this in the past, and there is a great deal of it even in the present day. The result has been the lack of a sound understanding and proper evaluation of the truth.”[1]
–Louis Berkhof
The Problem
I am neither a historian nor the son of a historian, but I can remember my first church history professor warning, “We don’t study older theologians so we can use them like bullets in a gun.”[2]
That same professor wrote elsewhere, “Most Christians who have been exposed to the early church fathers probably have seen them marshaled as evidence for one theological argument or another. Too often a snippet from an ancient writer is yanked out of context to support a modern viewpoint. Such an approach is unfair to authors who never intended that their writings be excerpted out of their whole corpus to serve as ammunition in a future-day war of words.”[3]
Yet, in many of the theological, internet debates of today, this is exactly how historical sources are quoted. Rich mines of theological truth are reduced to “gotcha!” tweets. Historical sources are used, not engaged. And the greatest minds God has given to the church are summarized in 280 characters or less.
In the end, what we often find is that Twitter theologians quote historical sources for the same reason 14-year-old girls buy Metallica t-shirts at Forever 21: more for the aesthetic than the content.
In this post, I want to offer two explanations for why this unhealthy practice has become common.
Appealing to Authority
First, theological combatants frequently quote historical sources to replace a real argument. They claim their position must be true because some venerated historical source holds their position (assuming they’ve interpreted him correctly!).
When presented as an argument, this is an “appeal to authority” fallacy. This fallacy is described as “insisting that a claim is true simply because a valid authority or expert on the issue said it was true, without any other supporting evidence offered.”[4]
It usually sounds like this: “Are you saying Bavinck and Berkhof were wrong?” or, “I stand with Theologians A, B, and C—unlike you!” The implication being that anyone who disagrees with A, B, and C couldn’t possibly be correct.
It’s a way of constructing artificial high ground on borrowed reputation.
But, admittedly, it’s tempting to simply say “I stand with Spurgeon!” and be done with the matter instead of doing sincere historical research. But the work must be done if we are to confidently quote our sources.
This brings me to a second common reason that theologians abuse historical sources.
Laziness (ctrl+f)
Understanding theologians and their writings in context is hard work.
Consider these words from the great Reformation historian Heiko Oberman:
“Amidst the conflicting claims about what makes a good historian, one area of common ground is uncontested: the primary task is to become bilingual, gaining control of the languages of the past and of the present—not merely languages frozen in dictionaries, but also those gleaned from the historical record and perceived in contemporary experience. Both kinds are hard to master, yet for very different reasons; distance and proximity provide for equally formidable ‘sound barriers.’”[5]
Now consider these statistics from a 2016 article written by a wildly popular modern theologian: He quotes 18 theologians from 5 countries who wrote in 4 languages and come from 5 different centuries.[6] He quotes these 18 theologians without context because he believed they all used similar terminology and, therefore, proved his position as legitimate. And he does this all in under 4,200 words!
Yet, he made no attempt to reconcile the fact that these men wrote centuries apart, or even that some of them were English translations of other languages. Are we to believe that these men all used the same word in the same way across cultures, languages, and circumstances? No attempt was made to cross the “sound barriers,” as Oberman called them.
Instead, they were all loaded into the chamber and fired at the opposing team—regardless of their context or intended meaning.
This same method of “copy and paste” historical research gets thrown around on the internet every day. In the process, the truth is distorted and the great theologians of history are treated as personal platforms instead of helpful teachers.
Conclusion
How, then, are we to reference historical sources? Answer: with painful caution. Especially if we are critical of them (WSC Qs 77–79). (Check out this video from the Junius Institute for an example of dealing carefully with historical sources.)
As I said at the beginning, I am no historian. So, I’d like to close with the measured advice of a real historian, Michael Haykin:
“Having taught as a church historian full-time for forty years…I am persuaded that the prime way to do history is through a careful reading of the primary sources.
Historiographical debates are vital to know—but, in the final analysis, it is the primary sources that must determine an historian's historical judgments.
I stress this for a number of reasons—the debate about the 1619 Project, for example, and the brouhaha about the nature of evangelicalism for another and also one that has to do with the recent, and ongoing, dust-up regarding Thomas Aquinas.
With regard to the latter, I am not a medievalist. I have read much in the early Middle Ages, i.e. mostly Anglo-Saxon Britain in the eighth and ninth centuries. Probably the High Middle Ages (the era in which Aquinas lived) is the era that I have least visited. Nor have I read tons of Aquinas. He stands as one of a number of great lacunae in my reading (others would include Cyril of Alexandria, John Chrysostom, William Perkins, Karl Barth).
But as an historian I am deeply concerned when I see his thought critiqued solely through the medium of a secondary source. If I am going to critique Thomas I need to read him (ideally read him in Latin—but given the degeneracy of modern education, that privilege is beyond most these days—I am hopeful that classical education will give us Latin scholars once again) and read him carefully.
I need to also listen to scholars who have spent oodles of time reading Thomas and know his world. Because his world of the thirteenth century is definitely a foreign country and to think that I can waltz in and grasp the nuances of his thought at one fell swoop is naïveté par excellence.
Anyone who has read my [Facebook] page knows that I believe in a learned pastoral ministry, one in which Greek and Hebrew are regularly-used tools by the preacher. We should be horrified if a man thinks he can preach God's Word because he has read a few popular commentaries on, say, 1 Corinthians or Habakkuk. No, a thousand times, we would say. Have you grappled with the text of 1 Cor or Habakkuk?
So, when someone has read a few pages by this popular commentator or that popular preacher on Thomas, you think he or she is equipped to critique the fountainhead of Thomism? Give me a break! Or better yet, is this not simply human hubris?
You want to know what Thomas said, read the man for yourself. Spend time reading him. Understand first why he says what he says. Then, and only then, will you be quipped to render an historical judgment.”[7]
References:
[1] Louis Berkhof, The History of Christian Doctrines (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1953), 9.
[2] This is a paraphrase.
[3] Bryan M. Litfin, Getting to Know the Church Fathers: An Evangelical Introduction, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2016), 3–4.
[4] https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Appeal-to-Authority
[5] Heiko A. Oberman, Luther: Man Between God and the Devil, trans. Eileen Walliser-Schwarzbart (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), xv.
[6] I have chosen not to include the article itself since I am not interacting with its content and have no interest in attacking this particular man.
[7] https://www.facebook.com/michael.haykin.96/posts/5280243422007713