How The Christian Church Got To Where It Is A Sketch of Historical Theology to 1900 H. Carl Shank How The Christian Church Got To Where It Is: A Sketch of Historical Theology to 1900 Copyright © 2018 by H. Carl Shank. All rights reserved. ISBN 978-0-359-22145-5 Permission to photocopy any portion of this book for ministry purposes must be obtained from the author. Any photocopy must include copyright credits as stated above. Most Scripture references are taken from the the ESV Bible, © 2001 by Crossway, a ministry of Good News Publishers. All references used by permission from the publishers. All rights reserved. Cover design: H. Carl Shank. Background photo montage from historical sites in England and Scotland from a personal history tour in 2017. Historical figures via public domain from bottom right: Saint Augustine of Hippo, William Tyndale, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and John Wesley. First Edition 2018. Second Edition 2019. Printed in the United States of America 2 About the Author In addition to his M.Div. and Th.M. (systematics) work, H. Carl Shank has been a youth, associate, solo, staff and lead pastor in over forty years of church ministry, pastoring beginning and established congregations in Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and New York state. His passion for leadership development has resulted in mentoring numerous pastors, teaching in a number of local Bible institutes as well as serving as an adjunct faculty member of The King’s College, and training InterVarsity leaders on the East Coast. Carl has been regularly sought out for his acknowledged gifts of discernment and wisdom in dealing with church issues. He had been serving as the Executive Pastor of a church in Lancaster, PA, as well as a church health consultant through NCDAmerica. He is recently retired. Besides numerous seminars and church related articles, his recently published Bible study contributions include Living Life God’s Way: Reflections from the Psalms, Study Guide and Leader’s Guide, Romans: The Glory of God As Seen in the Righteousness of God, Jonah: A Reluctant Messenger, A Needy People, and God’s Amazing Grace, Esther: For Such A Time As This, A Study of God’s Providence, Church Warnings! The Seven Churches of Revelation for Today, Building For God: Leadership and Life Lessons from Nehemiah, and The Pastoral Letters Revisited: Behavior and Belief available from Lulu Press, Amazon and other booksellers. Carl is married to his wonderful wife, Nancy, and has three grown, married children. He lives in the Marietta, PA area and can be reached for consulting, seminars or leadership and mentoring development at [email protected] www.carlshankconsulting.com 3 4 Table of Contents Selected Bibliography ..........................................................................7 Foreword ...............................................................................................9 Who Cares? Why Study Historical Theology .............................. 13 Historical Theology: An Introduction........................................... 25 The Sweep of History: A Broad Overview of Historical Theology ............................. 31 The Triune God: The Trinity in Historical Theology .......................................... 43 Christology: Jesus Christ in Historical Theology ......................................... 49 Anthropology Creation, State and Nature of Man .......................................... 57 Appendix: Finney’s New Measures: The Controversy and Its Effects ........ 77 Other Titles by the Author 5 6 Selected Bibliography Berkhof, Louis. History of Christian Doctrines. Banner of Truth, 1996. Bracher, Dennis ed. The Confession of Dositheus. Eastern Orthodox, 1672hjbvbhi. http://www.crivoice.org/creeddositheus.html. Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion: Four Volumes in One Digital Library Volume. Albany, OR: SAGE Software, 1996. Early Church Fathers. Including texts from The Anti-Nicene Fathers, the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 37 Files. Electronic Bible Society. Ericksen, Millard. Christian Theology. Baker Academic, 2013. Ferguson, Sinclair B., Beeke, Joel R., and Haykin, Michael A. B. Church History 101: The Highlights of Twenty Centuries. Kindle Edition. Reformation Heritage Books, 2016. Finney, Charles G. Finney’s Lectures on Theology. SAGE Software, 1995. Finney, Charles G. Revivals of Religion or Lectures on Revivals. Albany, OR: SAGE Software, 1996. Grudem, Wayne. Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine. Zondervan, 1994. Hoeksema, Herman. The Triple Knowledge: An Exposition of the Heidelberg Catechism (3 Volume Set). Reformed Free Publishing, 1990. Hodge A.A. Outlines of Theology. Hardpress reprint, 2018. Leith, John H. Creeds of the Churches, Third Edition: A Reader in Christian Doctrine from the Bible to the Present. Westminster: John Knox Press, 1982 Lloyd Jones, Martyn. “Can We Learn From History?,” By Schisms Rent Asunder, Puritan-Reformed Studies Conference, 1969. Louth, Andrew and Thomas Clark Oden, eds.Genesis 1-11. Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, Old Testament, Vol. 1. Downers Grove IL: InterVarsity Press, 2011. 7 Michael J. McClymond, Michael J. and McDermott, Gerald R.The Theology of Jonathan Edwards. Oxford University Press, 2011. New Hampshire Confession of Faith. http://baptiststudiesonline.com/wp- content/uploads/2007/02/the-new-hampshire-confession-of-faith. pdf. Owen, John. Christologia. SAGE Digital Library Theology. Albany, OR: SAGE Software, 1996. Owen, John. The Doctrine of the Trinity and the Person and Satisfaction of Christ. SAGE Digital Library. Albany, OR:SAGE Software, 1996. Ramm, Bernard and Vanhoozer, Kevin. The Evangelical Heritage: A Study in Historical Theology. Baker Book House, 2000 reprint. Renwick, A. M. The Story of the Church. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1958. Schaff, Philip.Creeds of Christendom, Vol 1. Baker, 1998. Singer, C. Gregg. “A Philosophy of History,” Jerusalem & Athens: Critical Discussions on the Philosophy and Apologetics of Cornelius Van Til. Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing, 1993. Smail, Tom. Like Father, Like Son: The Trinity Imaged in Our Humanity. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006. The Dordrecht Confession of Faith. https://gameo.org/index. php?title=Dordrecht_Confession_of_Faith_(Mennonite,_1632). Walker, Williston. A History of the Christian Church, Classic Reprint. Forgotten Books, 2012. The Westminster Confession of Faith and Larger and Shorter Catechisms. Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, 1967. 8 Foreword n 1984, as part of the extension courses of The King’s College at Albany Bible Institute, in Schenectady, New York, I had the privilege to teach a course on the History of Doctrine, 1650–1900. I was the Isenior pastor at an Orthodox Presbyterian Church in the city at the time, and on the extension faculty of The King’s College in New York State. My interest in the history of theology and doctrine came from a practical pastoral question as to why there had historically been so much resistance to evangelical thought and churches in that area. I learned that the particular region in which I was ministering was part of what was called the “burned over” district. It was a vast area in New England and New York that had experienced the Charles Finney revivals of the 1800s.1 While many so-called converts were added to the churches of the period through “hot seat” evangelistic methods,2 their children and children’s children resented and resisted such in-your-face evangelism and the evangelical movement in general. They ended up forsaking the church and allowing it to grow old and cold. (See the Appendix on Finney.) While historians may debate the summary statements above, I was personally told this history by an embittered family in the Amsterdam, NY area, as our church sought to plant a daughter church there. It was, without a doubt, tough going in seeking to establish a local base for an evangelical Presbyterian church in that town. When I had an opportunity to teach a historical theology course at a local Bible institute, I took on the task of seeking to understand the broader history of the evangelical church through the ages from the sixteenth century Protestant Reformation onward. I learned there is much reason for an aversion to evangelical thought and evangelical churches in New 9 England. That aversion, I was to learn later, resulted in very few major evangelical churches in New England. Those that were evangelically oriented were usually smaller and fighting for their existence in a region known for Unitarian universalism. Church growth experts from Fuller Seminary and other institutions in the 1980s would regularly avoid New England, preferring to focus their efforts and expertise on the southern and western parts of the country. I recall one church growth seminar in which I was explaining my woes of seeking to grow a gospel church in northern New York state. The seminar leader’s advice was brief and to the point — “Move!” It was just too hard to establish a significant foothold for the gospel in New England. The Puritan experiment of a “city on a hill” generally failed in New England, notwithstanding the revivals under Jonathan Edwards in Northampton, MA in the 1700s. Puritan scholars will greatly disagree as to the causes of this failure, but the fact that New England shows strong resistance to biblical, evangelical thought demonstrates and illustrates such widespread failure. Why all of this happened to the center of historic, old Princeton led evangelical thought and life demands a study of historical