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Definition of Church History.

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which originally they take their rise. What Bacon says of philosophy holds good of science in general: Philosophia obiter libata abducit a Deo, penitus hausta reducit ad eundem. The arts in general the church takes into her service, and produces herself the noblest creations in architecture, painting, music and poetry. The scope of history in this direction, is the spiritualization of all arts in worship, or divine service. Lastly, Christianity tranforms the whole moral life, both of individuals and of entire nations, infuses into morality its proper soul, namely, love to God, and rests not till all sin is banished from the earth, and holiness as it belongs essentially to the idea of the church is fully realized in the life of redeemed humanity.

§ 6. Church History.

We have now opened the way to a definition of church history. It is nothing else than the gradual actualization of the plan of the kingdom of God in the life of humanity, the outward and inward development of the church; that is, her extension throughout the earth, and the introduction of the spirit of Christ into all spheres of human existence, the family, the State, arts, sciences, and morality, to form them into organs and expressions of this spirit, for the glory of God and the advancement of man to his proper perfection and happiness. It is the sum of all the utterances and deeds, experiences and fortunes, all the sufferings and conflicts and victories, of Christianity in general, as well as of all manifestations which God has made of himself in it and by its means.

As the church militant lives in the midst of the ungodly world, which also forces itself into it in manifold ways, it follows of course that in church history also all kinds of sinful passions, perversions and caricatures of divine truth, heresies and divisions, will come into view; as we find indeed to have been the case extensively, in the age of the New Testament itself. For, in proportion as the kingdom of light causes itself to be felt, the kingdom of darkness also shows itself more active, and whets its weapons on Christianity itself. Judas not only stood in the sacred circle of the apostles, but wanders also as Ahasuerus through the ecclesiastical sanctuary of all centuries. The most dangerous and hateful forms of human and diabolical perversion, are called forth in direct opposition to the highest manifestations of the Spirit of God. But church history shows, in the first place, that this opposition, that all errors and divisions, even where they may have come for a long time to almost universal prevalence, must still in the end serve only to assist the church to a sense of her true calling, to

evoke the inmost powers of her life, to open the way for higher developments, and thus to glorify the name of God and his Son Jesus Christ. All troubles and persecutions also are for her, as for the single Christian, only a powerful refining fire, in which she is purged always more and more from her remaining dross, till in the end, upon the renovated earth, adorned as a bride at the side of her heavenly bridegroom, she shall celebrate the resurrection morning as her last and most glorious pentecost.

But, in the next place, this dark side of church history is only as it were its earthly and transient outside. Its deeper and more permanent substance, its heart's blood, is the manifestation it carries in itself of the divine love and wisdom. It shows us above all the Lord Christ, as he moves through all time, living and working in his church, expelling all sinful and false elements more and more from her communion, and triumphing over the world and Satan. It is the repository of the manifold signatures and seals of his Holy Spirit, in that bright cloud of bloody and unbloody witnesses, who have not counted their lives dear even to death itself; who have maintained true and faithful conflict with all ungodliness in and out of themselves; who have preached the gospel of peace to every creature, bathed themselves in the depths of the divine life and of everlasting truth, and brought forth and interpreted the treasures of revelation for the instruction, improvement, and comfort of their contemporaries and subsequent generations; who with many tears and prayers, willingly bearing the cross of their Master, but through much joyful experience also, triumphing in faith and hope, and boldly disregarding death and the grave, have passed into the upper sanctuary, to rest there forever from all their labor.

The commencement of church history is strictly the incarnation of the Son of God, or the entrance of the new principle of light and life into humanity. The life of Jesus Christ forms the unalterable divine human foundation of the entire structure. Gieseler, Hase, and other historians, accordingly, embrace a short sketch of this in their systems, while Neander has devoted to it a special work. But inasmuch as the church first comes into view, under the form of an organic union of the disciples of Jesus, on the day of Pentecost, we may begin also with this; and it is better to do so, as by reason of the mass of matter to be handled no room can be found to do full justice to so difficult and momentous a subject as the life of Christ. In any case however there must be prefixed to the account given of the apostolic age, a preliminary sketch of the condition of the Jewish and Heathen world, at the time when the church thus entered into it as a new creation; since it is only thus that any clear conception can be had of the world-historical

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Extent of Church History.

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significance of Christianity. The relative goal of church history is the present as it stands at any given time, or rather the epoch which lies nearest to the historian; since what is immediately passing before our eyes and is not yet brought to its conclusion, cannot well be the object of free, impartial representation. Its absolute goal is the final judgment; though here of course what is still future for us can only be the object of prophetic representation, and falls consequently beyond the range of any simply human history. Only the inspired Apocalypse, whose exposition belongs to exegetical science, is a prophetical church history, in grand symbols, the full understanding of which will be possible only when all is fulfilled in actual event, just as the prophecies of the Old Testament are much clearer to us Christians than they were to the Jews before the coming of the Messiah.

For us, then, church history embraces a period of eighteen hundred years. This at once shows it to be, of all branches of divinity by far the most comprehensive and extensive. It is preceded by exegesis; that is, the exposition of the canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, with all needful introductory and auxiliary science. Since the Bible is the storehouse of divine revelation, and the rule of faith and practice for the church, this department may be styled Fundamental Theology. Much exegetical matter at the same time enters also into history, particularly in the patristic age and in that of the reformation, the way namely in which the Bible has been understood and explained at different times and by different theologians; whence exegesis itself again has its history. Where exegesis ceases, church history begins, in such way however that they both come together in the apostolic age; for the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles of the New Testament, are source and object for both sciences, only under a different view. Historical Theology, in the next place, is followed in natural order by speculative, or as it is usually styled, systematic theology, whose province it is to explain and vindicate the Christian faith scientifically, from the position of its own time. The whole organism of the science of religion completes itself finally in Practical Theology, which, resting upon exegesis, church history, and systematic divinity, gives direction for the advancement of the Christian faith and life among God's people, by preaching (Homiletik), instruction (Katechetik), administration of divine services (Liturgik), and church government (theory of ecclesiastical law and discipline). Thus exegesis has to do with the normative charter in which the revelation starts,church history with the manner of its conception in time past, speculative theology with the present church consciousness, while practical theology looks towards the future. But as present and future are always VOL. VI. No. 23.

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becoming past, speculative and practical theology fall again continually into church history, which in this way also is found to be the most comprehensive theological discipline.

7. Single Branches of Church History. History of Missions.

Since the Christian religion, by reason of its universal character, pervades like leaven all spheres of human life, with its regenerative force (5), church history divides itself of course into as many corresponding branches, any one of which may be treated separately, and is rich enough indeed to occupy a whole life. Only by the cooperation then of innumerable learned powers, can any tolerable justice be done to the whole; and even in this case, when a work of history rests upon the shoulders of many centuries of labor, it is still but a piecemeal production, as compared with objective history itself.

1. The first section of church history, which usually also is first handled, is the history of missions; that is, of the spread of Christianity among unconverted nations. By some it is embraced, by others rejected, the preparation and want of preparation for it also discovering themselves in very various degrees. The missionary work, which the Lord himself has solemnly committed to the church, must continue as long as there are still heathen, Jews or Turks, or a single soul on the face of the earth to which the sound of the gospel has not come. It is not carried forward however at all times, with the same zeal and success. The conversion of the heathen meets us on the largest and most effective scale, in the first and second centuries; then on the threshold of the Middle Ages, in the christianization of the Germanic nations; and finally in our own time, when Asia, Africa, and Australia, are overspread with a net of Protestant and Roman Catholic missionary stations. But often the church is so occupied with her internal affairs and conflicts, with her own purification and the right understanding of herself, that the poor heathen are almost entirely forgotten; as was the case, for instance, in the age of the Reformation, and in the Protestant church of the seventeenth century. Ordinarily then, however, in place of the foreign missionary interest, one of a home character prevails, directed towards the defenceless or lifeless portions of the church itself. Under the head of such inward missionary work, we may reckon the course of the reformation through the Roman Catholic countries of Europe in the sixteenth century, the labors of the Evangelical Society in France in favor of Protestantism, the highly important and successful activity of the American Home Missionary Society, and other associations for providing the Western States of

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History of Doctrines.

423 North America with ministers and means of grace; and indeed, strictly speaking, the Protestant missions also among the Abyssinians and the Oriental churches.

2. Just the opposite of the history of missions, we have in the history of the compression of the church, through the persecution of hostile powers, as of the Roman empire in the first three centuries, and of Mohammedanism in the seventh and eighth. But what appears in one aspect a compression or limitation, is in a higher view a purifying and invigorating process, and serves in the end to promote even the outward diffusion of Christianity. So under the Roman emperors, the blood of the martyrs became the seed of the church. Here again also we may distinguish between outward persecution proceeding from openly infidel powers, and an inward persecution of one part of the church against another. To the last belongs, for instance, the suppression of the reformation in Spain, Italy, Austria, and other regions, by the Roman Catholic Inquisition and the machinations of Jesuitism. Protestantism also has its martyrs, particularly in France, Holland, and England.

When however Christianity has effected its settlement among a people, the more slow and tedious inward work commences, which has for its object the full extirpation of all remains of its old sinful heathenism, and the transformation of its thinking and working, manners and customs, into an evangelical mould. The church must take root, gain firm growth, and bring forth its proper flowers and fruits. This conducts us into new portions of church history, which are much more difficult to treat than the two now mentioned.

§ 8. Continuation. History of Doctrines.

3. Christianity cannot seek to suppress the desire of knowledge and science implanted in the human spirit by the Creator, but must encourage it rather and give it right direction, leading it to the primitive source of all truth. Faith itself urges to gnosis; it aims always at a clearer sense of its object; a still deeper apprehension of God, of his word and of his relations to men, is for it always a sacred duty and lofty satisfaction. With this is joined, in the way of impulse from without, the opposition of science and learning, and still further the perversions of the Christian doctrine by heretical sects. These attacks force the church (which must be ready always to give an account of her faith to every man) to inquiry and vindication. In this way, partly through the inward tendency faith has to knowledge and partly through assaults from without, arises theology, or the science of the

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