All of us wear perspectival glasses; we look at the Christian faith from a perspective honed in the crucible of our history. Not only is this true, but the glasses we wear also impact the way we look at the history that in turn affects the way we look at Christian life today.

We work with an conscious or unconscious perspective about the past. That perspective grows out of our approach to Christian life today, but the interpretation of the past produced by that perspective also influences our approach to the faith in the present. Thus, the question of whether we have the “right” (or at least, an “acceptable”) perspective on the earlier history of the church is an important one.

Our perspective on the Christian faith as we live it today affects our perspective on the history of the patristic church (and vice versa). We cannot get around this perspectival influence. But once we recognize that the influence is there, we can allow the material of history to reshape our perspective where needed, to broaden our attitude toward the history of our faith. This is the way the study of history changes us and should change us. It is my hope that with a more complete and nuanced picture of the patristic church, we will also come to a more complete grasp of the Christian faith as a whole and thus be better able to worship, to live out our faith, and to minister in a complex world today.

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