Why Study Church History?
Posted On October 06, 2026
Written by Dr. John Tweeddale, Vice President of Academics and professor of theology at Reformation Bible College.
“History is bunk.”
So declares Mustapha Mond in Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel, Brave New World. Mond is quoting the famed industrialist whom the World State reveres as “Our Ford.” Huxley adapted an oft-cited quip by the car manufacturer Henry Ford, who reportedly declared in a 1916 interview that “history is more or less bunk.” In Huxley’s world, Ford’s qualification disappears. The rejection of history is a way of life. Citizens of this imagined World State have been conditioned by technology, consumerism, pleasure, and drugs to live without any meaningful connection to the past. History is dangerous because it might expose them to a different standard by which to live and evaluate the present.
Huxley was not alone in recognizing the danger of rejecting history. Several twentieth-century dystopian novels depict societies at war with history. In C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength, the conclusion of his underappreciated cosmic trilogy, readers learn the harsh lesson that science severed from morality attempts to remake humanity. In George Orwell’s 1984, totalitarian power attempts to erase the past. Additionally, in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, people apathetically abandon books, and the state burns them. Taken together, a troubling picture emerges. Hedonistic pleasure dismisses history. Scientism subverts history. Unrestrained power rewrites history. Ultimately, apathy abandons history to the flames.
As historian Sarah Irving-Stonebraker argues, we now inhabit an “Ahistorical Age.” We live in an era largely disconnected from the people, stories, beliefs, practices, and traditions that once helped us understand who we are. Christians should resist this “cultural amnesia,” to use a phrase Carl Trueman and others have used to describe this phenomenon. The reason is simple: the Christian faith is inescapably historical. As Paul argues in 1 Corinthians 15, if the resurrection did not occur, then Christ would still be dead and buried, and we would be “of all people most to be pitied” (1 Cor. 15:17–19). The resurrection grounds our faith in the rich soil of history, if for no other reason than that the One who rose in history continues to build His church through history. As Christians, we have a vested interest in the past.
For anyone interested in how Christians have understood God’s work throughout the ages, here are six reasons to study church history.
1. Church History Illustrates What We Believe
In a letter to a friend on the “use and advantages of the study of history,” the eighteenth-century statesman Henry St. John, Lord Viscount Bolingbroke, famously recalled an ancient Greek maxim that defined history as “philosophy teaching by examples.” The basic point is that ideas are often best learned when illustrated in everyday life. Building on this principle, we might define church history as theology taught by examples.
The study of church history shows us what the Christian faith looks like when confessed, denied, defended, and embodied. In the early church, for example, we see the deity of Christ confessed at Nicaea, the full humanity of Christ denied by Apollinaris, the deity of the Holy Spirit defended by Basil of Caesarea, and confidence in God’s grace embodied in Monica’s prayers for her son Augustine. By studying the texts, people, and debates of the past, we learn not only how Christians formulated theology but also how their beliefs shaped their worship and witness. We can even learn how the times might have informed what they believed and how they lived.
2. Church History Equips Us to Serve
The twentieth-century London preacher D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones argued in a lecture titled “Can We Learn from History?” that Christians should “supplement [their] reading of theology with the reading of church history.” Without history, he warned, our theology can become abstract and detached from the practical realities of ministry.
Pastors, missionaries, elders, teachers, parents, and students repeatedly encounter questions that earlier Christians also faced. How should followers of Christ, for example, respond to persecution, doctrinal errors, moral scandal, cultural hostility, technological opportunities, political pressure, or institutional decline? Church history does not provide a formula for these situations, but it does expose us to the experiences of saints from eras very different from our own. They saw the world from a different vantage point than we occupy today. By studying the world as they saw and experienced it, we can become wiser and more faithful servants of Christ.
3. Church History Reveals the Contexts of Human Action
As W. Robert Godfrey observes, “humans are not motivated by theology alone, but often make their choices on the basis of other factors as well.” As important as intellectual questions are for explaining the past, human actions are also informed by politics, fear, love, ambition, friendship, personality, geography, education, and other social dynamics. These factors shape Christians no less than others.
Ideas have consequences, but they also have contexts. And these contexts often help explain why people believe and behave the way they do. This lesson is especially important when evaluating controversies. Events that appear simple and straightforward from a distance are often tangled with mixed motives, incomplete knowledge, competing narratives, and unintended outcomes. Studying church history helps us cultivate wisdom and discernment, not to mention patience and humility, when assessing doctrinal and ecclesiastical conflicts. Even more, it reminds us that we, too, are complex creatures whose motives and judgments require the searching light of God’s Word.
4. Church History Gives Perspective on the Present
Philip Schaff, the nineteenth-century historian, made the case in the introduction to his multi-volume History of the Christian Church that “the present is the fruit of the past, and the germ of the future.” We will struggle to understand our contemporary moment as Christians, for instance, if we ignore how our particular churches came to be. Our doctrines, denominations, patterns of piety and worship, institutions, and disagreements all have histories. As Schaff vividly explains, “No work can stand unless it grow out of the real wants of the age and strike firm root in the soil of history. No one who tramples on the rights of a past generation can claim the regard of its posterity.”
Historical perspective protects us from the conceit of thinking our generation is unique, whether in thinking we’re more enlightened or more troubled than everyone else. The questions and problems that perplex us––whether technological or theological, political or relational––have roots. Studying them helps us to recognize old errors in new dress. From the perspective of church history, we learn to distinguish between the dead faith of the living and the living faith of the dead. In this way, every professing Christian is part of the ongoing saga of Christian tradition. As the Yale historian Jaroslav Pelikan memorably put it, “Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.” By listening to those who have gone before us, Christians today are better equipped to “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3).
5. Church History Teaches Us to Love People
Church history is more than a study of dry facts and dusty figures. At root, it is a collection of stories about people devoted to Jesus Christ. To study church history is to learn from the lives of ordinary and sometimes extraordinary Christians who sought to follow Christ in circumstances often different from our own.
In his widely used textbook, historian Everett Ferguson defines church history as “the study of the history of God’s people in Christ . . . or, speaking more neutrally, of those who have wanted to be God’s people in Christ. . . It is a human story of a divinely called people who wanted to live by a divine revelation.” Church history, in other words, is a story of “a very human people” who struggled to understand and live in light of “the greatest event in history, the coming of the Son of God.” Ferguson goes on to say, rather provocatively, “those who profess to dislike history may as well profess to dislike people.”
Reading about the experiences of God’s people should make us more sympathetic without making us uncritical. Studying the lives of fellow Christians across centuries, cultures, and traditions can strengthen our love for fellow Christians across the pew.
6. Church History Bears Witness to Jesus Christ
For Christians, church history matters because the church belongs to Jesus Christ. Historian Mark Noll observes that Christianity’s “tangled history” points us back to Christ’s promise, “I will build my church” (Matt. 16:18). Church history is a footnote on these words from Christ. The growth and persistence of Christian communities over centuries cannot be fully explained by human resourcefulness. Ultimately, the varied stories of God’s people throughout church history testify to the faithfulness of the risen and reigning Christ to His church.
In an age often neglectful of the past, Christians should study church history to learn from examples of faith, serve others with greater wisdom, gain perspective on our times, love God’s people, and marvel at the work of Christ building His church throughout the ages.
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