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Eastern Christianity – Filling in the Gaps

Saturday, December 22, 2012 14:50

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I try to engage with Islam in various ways. Sometimes through debate, sometimes through articles, sometimes by just having Muslim friends and enjoying their culture. One of the ways has been to encourage theological colleges to address the topic of Islam in terms of history and theology.

It seems to me that many Protestant theological colleges are still structured for the Roman Catholic – Protestant divide. This means in terms of church history they cover the 1st-5th centuries to understand the christological debates then jump straight to the Reformation period to study justification. Look at how John Foxe viewed history:

Constantine so established the peace of the Church, that for the space of a thousand years we read of no set persecution against the Christians, unto the time of John Wickliff (d. 1384). (John Foxe, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, chap. 2, p. 47)

The problem with traditional Protestant theological education is that it skips the 1000 years when Islam ruled and the theological challenges that it brought to the church. This may have been okay in previous generations but not anymore. I know that some colleges are responding to this but I have spoken to many recent graduates who tell me they know very little about the Islamic period. The Islamic period does not seem to be part of the compulsory Protestant theological education in the same way that christology and justification are and in today’s world I think it needs to be. (I realize that Roman Catholic and Orthodox theological education includes this period but in the West it is our Protestant history which is still dominant.)

It is because of this that I invited Dr. Parry to give a series of lectures on the history of the Eastern church. The lectures are not about Islam but about the church of the East. My hope is that these lectures can broaden our understanding of church history and help us to engage with Islam in new ways.

The Eastern Orthodox