Wound of Knowledge ebook

In 4 chapters and only 114 pages Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams gives a penetrating and discerning theology of church history. How has the church described what is unique to itself from the first early centuries, through the Middle Ages, the Reformation and modern times? Williams traces deep patterns of how the church has struggled through the pressures of different historical eras to witness to the unique community that is created by the work of God in Christ. A discerning look at the past will discover something strange and different from ourselves but in a way that helps us discover our community with the past in ways that will change how we see ourselves in the present and so face new challenges as we move into the future.

Williams give some very good reasons why stidy of the past can help us to understand the present and prepare us for the future. After every major change tjere might be a good reason to re-write history to integrate the lessons learned. Some says the winner write the history. Williams make the very important point that there is no such thing as the true old church to be returned to. Each is a child of its time.

This diversity over time is a good example of continous adaptions and shows clearly the possibility of a clever managemant of todays co flicts in society.

excellent copy

The Archbishop does a fine job presenting the imortance of studying the past. Our history must be understood (actually learned) in order to wisely interpret our present spirituality and worship life. Many of us live a myopic spirituality, liking what we know and mostly only what we know. Rowan Williams pastors a large church (the Anglican communion) that is presented with divisions and is paying the price for the revisionist segment of the communion. The concept of via media is just one of the frames of reference that has come about due to an abismal lack of knowledge of Christian worship history. Hopefully this text will bring light into dark corners, not on specifics of theology but certainly on the importance of knowing our own history.

A good book to read along with others on the subject

This is a book required for my Church History course that begins February 26 so I have not began reading this book yet. I am pleased with the shipping and the price was great!

“Christian history shows how believers have constantly, if not reinvented the Church, then at least rediscovered and redefined its essence.” (p. 113) Reinvented. Rediscovered. Redefined. Words that ask one to go to the very heart of what the Church has been, is, and (at least tentatively) will be.

Considering all that he’s been involved in and with over a number of years, many people are surprised to learn that Rowan Williams is only 67 years old. His momentous (and at times tempestous) pastoral responsibilities as Archbishop of Canterbury tended to eclipse in the public mind his years of academic accomplishment and output.

Does church history matter? And even if it does, can those who “simply write off the past as a record of sad or cruel or stupid error” (p. 3) be excused for so doing? No, Christian history has value, for Williams, as nourishment for Christian maturity. Even “the sense of alienness and difficulty of the past should reinforce for the believer the sense of astonishment at the range of human expression and experience that can be counted as Christian.” (p. 111)

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” (Søren Kierkegaard) Williams’ brief treatment can only provide more questions than answers, but the questions that it insightfully and implicitly raises are important questions. The book’s title question is the gateway to a host of questions upon which the very future of Christianity rests.

Former Archbishop of Canterbury's Rowan Williams's Why Study the Past?: The Quest for the Historical Church consists of four chapters, each one corresponding to a lecture given in May 2003 at Salisbury Cathedral in Salisbury, England. The lectures were revised and expanded before publication in 2005. On the surface, the book looks like another academic work that Williams could write in his sleep; whether you agree or disagree with him on any given issue, his scholarly giftedness is undeniable. For readers familiar with recent Anglican history, however, it's hard not to see subtexts running throughout this work that both point to then-current Anglican events and, in retrospect, shed insightful light on what Williams was trying to do during his tenure as "first among equals" of Anglican primates.

Williams starts from the viewpoint that history is written to make sense of current crises (a statement true as far as it goes, but I think Williams underestimates the human desire to write history just to understand the past apart from other extrinsic motivations). He proceeds from there to look at how Church history has been handled throughout the Church's existence and how we should handle it today. A meaty initial chapter covers several topics, opening with assumptions to make and avoid when studying history, continuing with a well-detailed overview of Christian historians throughout the Church's life, and concluding with some theological reflections on the importance of Church history. Chapter 2 looks in more detail at the early church, while Chapter 3 does the same for the Reformation. (Disappointingly, Williams mostly skips the Medieval Church.) The final chapter deals with present-day applications.

Throughout, Williams frequently critiques common assumptions held by both theological conservatives and theological liberals/progressives. Instead of looking for unbroken continuity concerning any given issue over the course of church history or appealing to any "golden age" of the Church, theological conservatives should recognize that prior Christians often did not mean the same things as we do today even when they used the same language. More importantly, while God's revelation is fixed and not malleable, it is fully understood by the Church only over time. This belief leads Williams to conclude that we will only be able to fully know what is orthodox when history has reached its consummation. He repeatedly asserts that orthodoxy is something to be upheld--his belief that it can only be partly grasped by Christians at any given point in history is not an argument to either treat orthodoxy casually or jettison it, but rather a viewpoint that sees the Church as still a work-in-progress. For all of his reputation as an Anglo-Catholic, Williams agrees with the Reformers that the Church sometimes has to recover something from prior ages in church history that has been lost.

And rather than reading current understandings of issues back into earlier periods of church history or attempting to justify innovations with the proclamation that "the Holy Spirit is doing a new thing," theological liberals/progressives should instead realize that past Christians are their "other" and that God acts in ways consonant with both his nature and what he has done in the past. Some might mistakenly think that God's revelation changes when it's the Church's understanding of it that must be modified over time--and such modifications are not always correct ones. Importantly, neither the Church nor humanity is inevitably progressing for the better over time; Williams rejects that out-of-hand. He stresses that it is up to the innovators to prove that any "new thing" is a valid continuation of what God has been doing throughout history, namely redemption through the cross and the Holy Spirit's work to sanctify each member of the body of Christ. It is also necessary to look at what has not changed in the Church over the centuries and why that is so; normally, there is a very good reason for what has not changed. Only with substantive theological grounding in what God is doing through Christ can anything new be accepted by the Church.

The way forward that Williams offers is a complex one. We are to balance the two poles, neither expecting perfect continuity nor drastic dissimilarity from how God has operated in the past through the Church. Commonality is found in the language of worship over time, much of which comes from the Bible. The Bible's authority for the Church and the individual Christian is not derived from either inerrancy or prophetic passages that speak to modern-day issues, but in the fact that it is used by the Holy Spirit to shape and sanctify the Christian--and has been used that way since the inception of the Church. Since all of the members of the body of Christ share a common relationship through baptism, redemption, and sanctification, and because Christ prays through them and they share the "common language" of worship, reconciliation should be possible when Christians differ. However, since not everything is of Christ (not even in the Church) and some boundaries are necessary, church discipline is required at times. Even church splits might be necessary when the "common language" of worship has broken down and/or the action of God through Christ in the Church is lost.

What we have, then, is not simply an argument for studying church history, but an appeal to both theological conservatives and theological liberals/progressives to approach then-current Anglican issues from a particular vantage point that is atypical for them. Observant Anglicans might well hear echoes of 2004's The Windsor Report, a formal Anglican Communion attempt to chart a way forward from the threat to unity posed by The Episcopal Church's consecration of Bishop Gene Robinson and other theological issues, in these expanded lectures. Williams's hope for reconciliation also brings to mind his future advocacy of indaba as a means of listening and dialogue during the 2008 Lambeth Conference. Overall, the book provides fascinating glimpses into the rationale, faith, and ecclesiology behind Williams's largely unsuccessful attempts to hold the Anglican Communion together.

How valuable is Why Study the Past? nearly a decade after its publication? As a theological conservative myself, I find Williams thought-provoking and sometimes persuasive, but rarely fully convincing; his high views of revelation, orthodoxy, and the Church are refreshing when compared to more common progressive beliefs, but are not enough to make me abandon more traditionally orthodox understandings (e.g., I'm not convinced that common beliefs are as rare over church history as Williams makes them out to be). Sadly, as well, the Anglican Communion seems closer today to dissolution than ever. But much of Williams's high ecclesiology and the importance he places upon understanding church history could benefit the Church today. (A moving passage near the end of Chapter 1 on how past Christian lives impact present-day Christian identities is especially noteworthy in this regard.) This work is not an introductory one on church history (although it could supplement one), but for those familiar with church history, ecclesiology, and/or Anglicanism, it can provide much worthwhile to ponder.