Proclaimer Blog
Preachers loving history, with a few exceptions!
At this year's senior ministers' conference and being greatly challenged by John Dickson's sessions on history, evangelism and exegesis. Helpful stuff for preachers which will be online in next few weeks. When John told Dick what he was speaking on, Dick said, "how fresh." John wasn't sure whether to take this as a compliment or not! But here's a summary from day one:
History, argued John is critical. Why?
- Because Christianity is definitionally historical. Unlike many other religions it is fundamentally about events that happened in history
- We're always doing history whether we like it or not. When we read the Bible and understand Greek words, for example, we're basing this on history
But, said John, history has limitations too:
- History is random. We have less than 1% of NT documents and archeology. For example, no personal correspondence from Tiberius who ruled the world but we have a complaint from a junior tax collector about being beaten up at the gym from the same period.
- History is incapable of demonstrating some things that are essential to our faith, e.g. that Christ died for sins
- It is sometimes difficult to avoid bad history, e.g. 'there is more evidence for Jesus than Julius Caesar' which is simply not true.
- History can tempt the preacher to show off
- History can distance people from the text of Scripture. It can become like a secret knowledge.
- History is not an objective discipline. Some historians have stretched history to disprove the Bible and we can sometimes be guilty of the opposite.
But tonight, John is just getting going on why history is friendly to the preacher… so it's not all bad news.