I've been reading Church History in Plain Language by Bruce L. Shelley, and learning all sort of interesting things. One of those things is that Church history isn't necessarily the same thing as the history of the Kingdom of Heaven. I suppose if God were to write a book about the history of his kingdom, he might choose different key players to highlight. Certainly, popes and heretics and reformers all played a part in guiding and shaping different time periods, but perhaps they are not as important as we think.
One rather fascinating aspect that Shelley traces through time is the church's various sources of guidance and leadership. There are the church fathers, the emperors, the popes, the councils, the kings, the reformers, the councils, etc. From Constantinople on, church matters were decided by those in power and leadership: the emperor, the king, the pope. And while this style of leadership and decision-making continued in some places after the reformation, the reformation began a new way of discovering the truth and making decisions, and that was through the authority of scripture.
Authoritative positions continued to hold sway, since only those who could read the scriptures in their original languages could interpret them and only those in power could change the laws, but the truth became slightly less dependent upon those in power and more dependent on what the Bible itself said.
These shifts in authority aren't characteristic of all Christians everywhere. Shelley is tracing mainstream organized churches. I'm sure there were little groups of Christ followers who were still being lead by the Holy Spirit despite not having access to scriptures, but we probably won't learn about those people until we're in heaven.
The next shift that Shelley notes is from scripture to human reason, which occurred during the 1700's. I find it interesting that this is when the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of rights were written. Deism also became a popular because it gave people a way to continue believing in God but not have to bother about him much.
Obviously, not all Christians substituted the Bible for reason. There were theologians who argued that human reason couldn't discover all truth on its own. It needed divine revelation. However, I see how this era influenced the Christians of the day and thereafter. One example is in the Bible Commentaries of William Barclay. In these commentaries, Barclay assumes most all miracles couldn't have actually happened. It's rather peculiar because he doesn't defend this assumption. He just continues on as if we all thought the same. Perhaps his original audience were still living in the fall-out of the Age of Human Reason. Or maybe there was an Age of Science that prompted this as well.
Tracing such trends prompts me to wonder what age we're in now. What influences are guiding Christians to believe certain truths and act upon them? I haven't come to that part in the book yet, but my guess is that mankind is transitioning from the Age of Science to the Age of Environment. The Age of Science would be the era where if science said one thing and scripture said another, church authorities follow what science said. For example, if scripture say the sun rises, and science says the earth spins, we believe science not scripture. This is a bad example. Saying the sun rises is just a turn of phrase. But this is the idea. Again, the Age of Science has reason to doubt miracles and throw out Christ's resurrection too, but some Christians have come to see how God uses science to interact in the world. We don't need to reject one or the other.
The Age of Environment—please recall this is Abby making stuff up not Shelley—would be this new era we're coming into where we're influenced and motivated by our impact on the environment. If Scripture says to increase and multiply, but the environment says, we can't handle it, then we obey what the popular thinking of the Age of Environment says. By "we" I mean popular church trends, not all Christians. The Age of Equality and Freedom is probably in there too, where we're motivated by treating everyone equally regardless of color, gender, or persuasion and letting everyone do or believe whatever they wish.
It seems that each age has some good to offer, something new it adds to the world. We learn more about God's world through each new era. But there's also plenty to throw out in each era too, plenty that people take too far, that disregards God's revelation and the Crucifix and it's power in our lives.
It's tricky isn't it? Knowing what to throw out and what to keep? I imagine if we were to resort back to the beliefs of the first church, we would have a lot of false beliefs about shame and individuality, inequality, racism, and science. We don't want to go back to that. No. Nor do we want to build walls against the new beliefs mounting around us: this Age of Equality or Age of Environment, as I've called it. They have something to offer us too. If we will listen to what the Holy Spirit is saying through them.
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