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Monday, October 31, 2011

Historical Theology

I was reading the article and discussion on "Lutheranism" in Wikipedia and noticed the considerable controversies there.  There is an attempt to present church history and Historical Theology there but this topic is not one to be covered without God's perspective from the Scriptures.  Franz Pieper covered this in his Christian Dogmatics book, vol. 1, page 100-101 last paragraph:
...it is the dogma, that is, the doctrine of Scripture, which stamps these various branches of theology as theological disciplines and unifies them.  It is the function of historical theology not only to give a historically true picture of the events, but also to evaluate these established facts in the light of Scripture.  Historical theology is the divinely taught art of ascertaining from Scripture God's verdict on the historical events and conditions.  That is what makes church history a theological discipline.  When the church historian judges events according to his subjective view or any other extra-Biblical norm, church history is no longer a theological discipline. ...Where things are as they should be, the Church will, therefore, elect only such men as professors of church history as are thoroughly conversant with the Scripture doctrine in all its parts, well informed in dogmatics, in order that the instruction in church history will not confuse but aid Christian understanding.  (my bolding)
So it is impossible to get true church history without the light of Scripture, although there is ever so much written without it.  That is why you will get true church history from... Franz Pieper and those old German Missouri Synod fathers who held to the true doctrines.  This blog is dedicated to bring them to light again... more to follow.

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