Early Church History Rant

Now that the quarter has come to a close and life has taken on less of a shrill tone, I can finally take the time to rant about my class, Early Church History.

First of all, the class should really be called Early Church History of Theology, NOT Early Church History. An abundance of time was dedicated to learning about hermits, monks, ascetics, bishops, theologians, and councils. The church history material on the 1^st – 5^th Century world felt as removed from the social, political, cultural, historical contexts as the monasteries of the early church were from the life outside of their abbey walls! Granted, we learned about the development of doctrine, the trajectory of Christian thought, the debate around the trinitarian controversy and initial ventures in methods of biblical interpretation. Ok! Christian historical material was covered. I admit that. However, it is a history that is taught disembodied from its context. For example, we spent maybe 5 minutes on the rift between East and West in the church. On the other hand, we spent over 2 hours on the Blessed Virgin Mary and way too much time in purgatory (pun intended).

In regards to my nervousness about the final exam, a friend of mine said “what's there to know about church history other than you had Jesus and the Apostles, than the fall of Constantine happened, and later the restoration of the Anabaptists came along? Seem pretty simple to me.” (He is Mennonite and not being sarcastic.) I had to remind my friend that there exists a vast array of unimportant stuff that happened in between those points on his time line. Apparently they are significant enough that my professor has made a livelihood out of teaching that stuff. In fact, he did cover Constantine for almost 10 whole minutes. Come to think of it, my friend’s comments are the completely opposite to what was covered in our class material. The apostles were briefly mentioned. Constantine was a "major transitional historical figure" where after "nominalism became an issue in the church" and nothing apparently needed to be "restored," only reformed. Basically, my professor comes out of the reform tradition and is keeping the major theological encounter of the reformation in mind as he develops the trajectory of Christian history.

In my mind we could have spent less time on monks who buried themselves up to their necks in sand at night, theologians who cut off their junk to remove the temptation of lust and bishops who endlessly bickered about the substance/essence/humanity/divinity/spirit of Jesus. I would have appreciated more time on the persecuted church in tension with the empire and Greco-Roman culture, the way communities of Christians formed and practiced their faith, the story of how the gospel movement spread throughout the Mediterranean and Europe, how conversion was understood, the impact of imperial patronage of the church after Constantine and the rise of institutionalization of religion in the church.

Am I being a typical Anabaptist?

To end, I want to make sure that I note the quality of the course and the professor. He was a great lecturer and knew his material inside out. The course, even if it had a typical Western perspective on the advancement of the church, was extremely helpful in understanding the way Christianity developed in the West.

And on a serious note, Monks did learn how to brew some good beer.