A REVIEW OF THE STORY OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY: TWENTY CENTURIES OF TRADITION AND REFORM, by Roger E. Olson. Intervarsity Press, 1999. 652 pp. $34.99. This review appeared originally in Modern Reformation, July/August 2001 Historical theology is an important part of the process . . . Continue reading →
Historiography
When Eschatology Swallows History
We call it Marxism. Alan Jacobs posts a fascinating quote illustrating this phenomenon. This is timely as we were just discussing the Marxist historians last week in HT501.
Calvin Makes the Huffington Post
Because of their size and the economy of scale there are two states that largely determine what will be in public school textbooks: Texas and California. For some time now the adoption of standards for textbooks has been highly political and thus . . . Continue reading →
Reading Authors and Texts in Context
I was alerted to this new volume by Daniel Swift and wanted to let you know about it for two reasons: 1) It’s an interesting topic in which two groups of readers have an interesting, those interested in the history of worship . . . Continue reading →
Heroes, Villains, And Pretty Packages
The dead, in other words, are people too. Scoring points on their failings does not seem to be particularly charitable or self-interested (since one day we won’t be around to defend ourselves or the limitations of our historical moment). It is not . . . Continue reading →
A Bibliography of Historical Theology and Historiography
Note: This bibliography is intended to alert HT students to the existence of some important and/or useful works for students of historical theology. I have omitted standard and older works in church history (e.g., Schaff) and reference works, since they are available . . . Continue reading →
Fifteen (Mostly 19th-Century) Myths About The Middle Ages
There are a number of myths about the so-called middle ages: they thought that earth was flat etc. Most of these myths were fabricated in the 19th century. Why? Because that was the apex, in the West, of “Modernity,” the Enlightenment, when . . . Continue reading →
An Ogre Minding Long Term Developments
Because of this emphasis on mentalités, Le Goff preferred to speak of birth and genesis rather than origins, decline, or decadence. Hence he wrote The Birth of Purgatory (1981) and The Birth of Europe (2003) (the French title posed a question: L’Europe . . . Continue reading →
The Difference Between What We Know And What We Think We Know
…much of what is commonly written on the history and development of the western liturgy is dependent upon reconstructions…. —D. M. Hope, “Liturgical Books” in Cheslyn Jones, Geoffrey Wainwright, and Edward Yarnold, ed. The Study of Liturgy (NY: OUP, 1978), 66.
Whence “The Right Side Of History”?
This idea of history having a ‘side’, which is liberal, enlightened and so on, harks back to the enlightenment of the 18th century, to the emergence of what David Hume called ‘these enlightened ages’, in sharp contrast to the side of the . . . Continue reading →
On Turning The World Upside Down
Evangelical Christians are often charged to follow the Apostles by going forth to “turn the world upside down” for Christ. This is a powerful injunction because it captures a great truth: that the gospel message is unexpectedly and delightfully powerful. Continue reading →
Where Were The Church And The Truth Between The Fathers And The Reformation?
Johnny Carson was a kid from Nebraska, who hosted The Tonight Show from 1962–92. One of his more famous recurring gags was Carnac the Magnificent, ostensibly a magician—Carson had a magic act as a high school and college student—who was able to . . . Continue reading →
Princeton Historian Rebukes 1619 Project: The Facts Still Matter
No effort to educate the public in order to advance social justice can afford to dispense with a respect for basic facts. In the long and continuing battle against oppression of every kind, an insistence on plain and accurate facts has been . . . Continue reading →
What Is Historical Theology?
DEFINITION Historical theology refers to the discipline of narrating the development of Christian theology. SUMMARY Historical theology is closely related to but distinct from the discipline of Church History, which is more interested in the institutional history of the church and its . . . Continue reading →
National Association Of Scholars: Revoke Pulitzer Prize For 1619 Project
The Project as a whole was marred by similar faults. Prominent historians, most of them deeply sympathetic to the Project’s goal of bringing the African American experience more fully into our understanding of the American past, nevertheless felt obliged to point out, . . . Continue reading →
The 1619 Project Is Bad History And Boring
Thus to speak of America’s “founding” at all is necessarily to speak of what makes Americans a “people.” When Abraham Lincoln said that the nation was “conceived in liberty” four score and seven years before the dedication of Gettysburg Cemetery—that is, in . . . Continue reading →
Trueman: Critical Theory Is Self-Certifying And Resistant To Evidence
Critical race theory, like other critical theories—postcolonialism or queer theory, for example—is self-certifying. Its basic claims, for example, that racism is systemic or that being non-racist is impossible, are not conclusions drawn from arguments. They are axioms, and they cannot be challenged . . . Continue reading →
Were The Protestant Reformers Missionary Failures? Challenging The Nineteenth-Century Narrative
One of the stories told about the Reformation in missiological circles is that the reformers weren’t interested in seeing the gospel go to the ends of the earth.
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The 1619 Project Privileges Narrative Over Facts
According to a significant number of scholars of American history, one of the most serious weaknesses in the self-described 1619 Project, which argues that racism and slavery was a central motivation for the origin of the American Republic, is that it is factually inaccurate. Continue reading
New Resource Page: Resources On The 1619 Project
The 1619 Project, a product of the New York Times, now a television series on Hulu, is a deeply flawed re-telling of American history. It is not simply that one disagrees with the conclusions of the 1619 Project—historians often disagree about conclusions—what . . . Continue reading →