As in any case, it is imperative that, in order to understand oneself, one must understand one’s family history. So it is with us. We did not invent the Reformed faith. Indeed, in many important ways it created us. Before go about re-creating the faith in our own image, let us learn our family history and heritage so we can read the bible with the family and we can work intelligently and thoughtfully with the inheritance we’ve received.

Nunc Super Tunc is Latin for “Now is superior to then.”1 It’s a shorthand way of getting at an attitude that is widespread among American Christians that whatever we think and do now is necessarily superior to anything that was thought and done in the past.

I am a historian or at least I’m trying to become a historian and as such I’ve become increasingly conscious of the strong presumption among American Christians in favor of the present over the past. It’s hard to know how often, in the midst of discussion, when I appeal to the past, ones American conversation partner will say, “That’s all well and good, but what does the Bible say?” The implication of this question is that the only argument that really matters in any discussion is a biblical argument.

For such folk it doesn’t even really matter that the saints to whom a historian might appeal as precedent were also reading the Bible. For many American Christians it is as if the past never happened. In that respect, we are like my (late) cat. She seemed to think that if she couldn’t see me, then I couldn’t see her. She was a four-footed, furry Narcissist. She believed that the world revolved around her—she was a cat. She believed that I worked for her, that I existed to satisfy her needs.

We American Christians tend to regard the past the way my cat used to regard me. We cover our eyes and pretend the past did not exist. We thing the world revolves around us. We’re like the child who puts his fingers in his ears and says, “Nah, nah, nah, I can’t hear you” when being told something he will not hear. When someone brings up the past in conversation with American Christians the response is to cover the eyes and plug the ears. We seem to decided that there is no past. Every moment is a new creation of reality. We are acting de novo and in nihilum.

Of course this is the great privilege of being an American: the first Americans (and successive waves of immigrants) came to this country to escape the past. We tend to regard the past as corrupt and corrupting. In a way it is. The past (or knowledge of the past) tends to marginalize the present, to dirty up our shiny toy. Christians, however, cannot afford to be purely “American” in their Christianity. We may live in America but, as Christians, we are citizens of a heavenly city (Phil 3:20) We are a people of history. We are a people of the past. Read the Psalms. How often do the psalmists remind God’s people that Yahweh delivered them out of Egypt, on dry ground? (See e.g. Psalm 78). Sometimes the psalmist recites the entire history of redemption in one Psalm!

The Christian faith is grounded in history in other ways. We confess, believe, preach, and teach that our redemption was accomplished in history. God the Son became incarnate, in time, and in space. He wasn’t raised in our hearts but in history. There was a real, historical, literal tomb that was found to be empty by real, historical people.

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