The Historian as Priestly Gardener

Irving-Stonebraker is convinced that Christians especially should value the past: “History … is the key to understanding God,” she argues with a quote from her fellow Australian Peter F. Jensen. She goes on to detail the numerous ways that historical study and reflection can help the church: It anchors Christians to the great traditions of biblical orthodoxy. By exposing them to the riches of the past, it fosters a sense of the sacred and a love for beauty. It develops empathy as believers seek to listen to the voices from the past, many of them our brothers and sisters in Christ, who disagree on matters secondary and tertiary. And in all this, there is growth in humility, which Basil of Caesarea rightly saw as the treasure chest of all the virtues, and which Christian thinkers from the Apostle Paul to Jonathan Edwards have identified as being at the core of Christian discipleship and maturity. This is also an antidote to the shoddy Christian ruminations about history that are all too common in North America and that become fodder for various ahistorical ideologies. Often found on various forms of social media, such “ahistoricists” use the past to feed what seems to be perpetual outrage and take delight in the lambasting of Christian brothers and sisters over nonessential issues.