Let’s learn and study theology in community with believers past as well as our current churches and present-day resources. We aren’t individual people running a race to eternal life; we’re a singular body seeking to carry one another to the finish line by the sustaining grace of God. Though some believers are already worshiping in glory, they have left trail markers behind to help keep us on the right path.

As a little girl I remember kneeling in front of a tree stump with my father as he explained that each ring represented another year of the tree’s life. A tree begins as a sprout, growing and reaching toward the bright sun during the warm months and then nearly stopping its growth in the winter while its core hardens. Each year, a tree builds upon its previous growth from the spring and summer.

As believers, we have the opportunity to grow like trees in our faith. We have rings upon rings to build our theology upon from church history. Theological battles already fought and won, essential doctrines condensed to catechisms and confessions, and weighty books sustained through translations and reprints are ours to glean from.

But some have neglected these rings. Instead, they’ve sought to build their own pathway based only on the present. They’ve thrown aside the dusty books with their difficult wording. Rich theology with its intricate history has been abridged to memes, social media captions, and slogans.

What was once discussed and believed from thorough exegesis and study can be summed up in pithy sentences on graphics. What took some years of study and inquiry is exposited in a thirty-minute podcast. What once required ruthless hunting through library after library, others today can learn in two minutes scanning an article found in a Google search.

While these are good gifts to the church, what have we forsaken in leaving behind our history?

Everyone Stands Under the Shade of a Theological Tree

The historic aspect of our faith has been cut from the stories of many believers. Many believers today seek to learn about Jesus without tradition or history to shade their eyes. They don’t want to ascribe to a particular tradition or teaching, and they shake their heads at those who do. This appears wise and mature. But what if this isn’t meant to be the ordinary way of learning our faith?

Abraham Kuyper, a profound theologian and thinker of the nineteenth century, aptly describes the historic nature of our faith:

No theologian following the direction of his own compass would ever have found by himself what he now confesses and defends on the ground of Holy Scripture. By far the largest part of his results is adopted by him from theological tradition, and even the proofs he cites from Scripture, at least as a rule, have not been discovered by himself, but have been suggested to him by his predecessors.[1]

Realistically, nobody can approach the Bible without coming under the shade of some kind of theological tree. We are part of a deeply historical faith that spans from the present age to the age of Adam and Eve. Let’s acknowledge and seek to understand this reality together. Rejecting our history isolates us from massive libraries of theological works that were given to guard the gospel and instruct those who would follow in years to come.

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