Back in the day, when I worked as a research historian for the Church of Christ in Thailand, I used what was then the brand spanking new technology of the Web to send out almost daily research emails. I called them "HeRD," which stands for "Herb's Research Diary." The following note was sent out on January 4, 1996. I keep it now on my personal website (here).HeRD #109 - Power of the Past
It is often difficult for those of us living in the present to appreciate the vast diversity of the past. Early church history provides an example. Protestants have long looked at the early church as being a unified entity. We have engaged in a centuries' long struggle to "return" to the golden age of the early church. Koester in his History and Literature of Early Christianity, however, reminds us that such an understanding of the early church is entirely incorrect. In describing the rapid expansion of the early church, he writes, "However fragmentary the total picture may be, it is nevertheless obvious that the mission and expansion of Christianity in the first years and decades after the death of Jesus was a phenomenon that utterly lacked unity. On the contrary, great variety resulted from these early missions." (p. 94).
Images concerning the past are themselves powerful historical factors. These images frequently have little to do with what actually happened in that past, yet they profoundly influence later behavior. The Protestant attempts to recapture a mythical unified early church is one important example. How we understand the past matters---it matters a great deal.
