Church History

Background

Church history (敎會史) refers to the history of the church from its beginnings. The term also designates the discipline that studies that history. Many regard the New Testament book of Acts, which records the spread of the gospel from Jerusalem to Rome, as the starting point for the writing of church history.

Systematic church historiography is generally considered to have begun with the Ecclesiastical History (in ten books), written in the early fourth century by Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea. For this reason Eusebius is called "the Father of Church History." The Ecclesiastical History covers the period from the apostolic age to the reign of the Emperor Constantine. Its principal subjects are the succession of bishops, persecution and martyrdom, and controversies over heresy. Because it quotes numerous documents whose originals are now lost, it is an indispensable source for the study of the early church.

Development

• Antiquity: In the fifth century, Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret, and others continued Eusebius's narrative. In The City of God, Augustine offered a framework for interpreting history under God's providence.
• Middle Ages: Regional church histories were written. A notable example is the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, completed around 731 by the English monk Bede.
• Reformation era: After the Reformation, church history became an arena of confessional controversy. Beginning in 1559, Lutheran scholars published the Magdeburg Centuries, arguing that the medieval church had departed from the faith of the apostles. On the Roman Catholic side, Cesare Baronio wrote the Annales Ecclesiastici (published from 1588 onward), defending the unbroken continuity of the church.
• Modern period: In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, research methods based on the critical examination of sources became established, particularly in Germany, and church history became an independent academic discipline in the universities. Today church history, together with the history of doctrine, which traces how doctrine has developed over time, is classified as part of historical theology.

Results and Influence

Among the early achievements in the study of Korean church history is L. George Paik (Paik Nak-chun)'s research on the history of Protestant missions. He submitted his dissertation to Yale University in 1927 and, building on it, published an English-language study in 1929. Today graduate schools of theology teach the history of Korean Protestantism alongside ancient, medieval, Reformation, and modern church history. Church history is also reportedly covered in the ordination examinations of a number of denominations. In congregations, topics such as the Pyongyang Great Revival, Shinto shrine worship, and the divisions of Korean Presbyterianism are frequently cited to explain a denomination's identity and roots.

Assessment

Different traditions place different emphases in writing church history.

• Roman Catholicism and the Orthodox Church: Emphasize the continuity of the church from the apostles.
• Various Protestant denominations: View the Reformation as the recovery of biblical faith.
• Presbyterians: Present the Reformed tradition of John Calvin as a key point of origin in their history.
• Methodists and Holiness churches: Regard John Wesley and the revival movement as a key point of origin.
• Pentecostals: Regard the early twentieth-century Azusa Street Revival as a key point of origin.
• Baptist and Anabaptist traditions: Emphasize the tradition of a voluntary community of believers distinct from the state church.

Scholars also differ over the nature of church history. Some view it as a theological enterprise that reveals God's providence. Others regard it as a branch of general historical scholarship, studied by the same methods as any other history—that is, as "the history of Christianity." Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History likewise receives mixed assessments: it has been criticized for excessively exalting the Emperor Constantine, but it is also credited with preserving valuable historical sources.