Look at the Book

We're going to the Desiring God National Conference, where John Piper will be demonstrating and showing us what to expect when they launch Look at the Book this fall. This post from the DG blog tells a little bit more about the conference and has a "Lab Preview" video (shown below). I'm really looking forward to this.

Why study Church history?

“Ecclesiastical amnesia is a serious and crippling disease. A church without a memory is doomed to invent the churchly and the theological wheels anew. The writing of religious history, in other words, is the necessary prop our naked memory requires in order to draw upon the accumulated wisdom of the ages, enabling us to withdraw at our need the deposit of insight and truth generously stored up for us in written form.” – Michael Bauman, Historians of the Christian Tradition

“It is the forgotten, not the remembered past, that enslaves us.” – C. S. Lewis

One for the history books

Finally received all my books for my next course, "History of Christianity I". This is way more history than I really want to read about. I haven't taken a history class since high school, and it was always one of my worst subjects because I just wan't any good at rote memorization... all the dates, names, etc! I'm hoping things will be different this time...haha

While I was waiting for some of my other books to arrive, I read ahead in Eusebius: The Church History. Eusebius was a pioneer, so to speak, being the first person (in the 4th century) to try to document the early history of Christianity. By today's standards, he wouldn't be considered a very critical/analytical historian. But I think he was just doing his best to gather, organize, and sift out reliable accounts from rumours and traditions. So we see that Eusebius makes a few errors and slip ups, based on what we know now in this age. Every time I come across one of these types of footnotes, it challenges me a little bit. Is what we know about the early history of Christianity reliable? Do extra-Biblical sources align with what we read about regarding Paul's missionary journeys? What about the other apostles' missionary journeys and martyrdom? How much of it is legend and tradition? Well, I guess I have 3 other books and the lectures themselves to help me think through all this.

Neighbours

I know more Canadians living in our apartment complex than NYers...

Done!

Yes! I submitted my last paper........of the Orientation Seminar. still have a gablillion more courses to go...