History and Christianity

UNC Asheville trained me well in the discipline of history. I can pull apart texts. I can find bias. I can compare methods and ideas. I can see a deep relationship between historical events and how they affect our everyday life and our stereotypes. The discipline is absolutely necessary for understanding society.

So what happens when society, history and Christianity intersect? I feel that I can assure one thing with confidence that always seems to apply to human beings and the Gospel: it gets messy. Our Protestant buddy Martin Luther claimed that the epistle of James was a letter of straw. How does that affect hundreds of years of Protestantism, Catholicism and Judaism? I don't know about you, but I'm not ready to toss James. What happens when you discover that a good chunk of Christian doctrine is mixed into the context of Greek philosophy and philosophies of other eras? How do we bring correction when modern-day people twist Scripture for their own agendas? What happens when so much more of the Scriptures become clearer once you learn to read the Old and New Testament well by studying languages, history, literature etc. because they were written thousands of years ago?

So often the answers to these questions can become clearer when using the tools of the historian. But at what point do those methods go too far? At what point are the tools no longer applicable to studying something as personal as Christianity?

I have some thoughts on this, but I think it is time to live in the tension of this often unrecognized tension.