“A world, and a church, which is hooked on novelty like some cultural equivalent of crack cocaine needs the cold, cynical eye of the historian to stand as a prophetic witness against it. And make no mistake, when it comes to my approach to trendy evangelical claims to epoch-making insights, beneath the cold, cynical exterior of this particular historian beats a heart of stone.”
-Carl Trueman, Minority Report (Scotland: Christian Focus, 2008), p. 26
If you need some help with what this means here is some commentary on the quote:Mr. Trueman is saying church history and church historians are important as the church moves forward in contemporary culture. Rather than marginalizing things like the Reformation, these historically significant events in history should inform us to how we faithfully accomplish and define our ecclesiology. It will protect the church from jumping at every new wave of innovation. And it brings Carl’s character out, too.
In reference to the "heart of stone" it seems that Mr. Trueman means that in a church age that gets hyped up over breakthroughs in technique, he’s not interested. In a climate like ours that dismisses the significance of church history how ironic that so many breakthroughs seem to be discovered. Trueman has a heart of stone towards these supposed breakthroughs.
Copied from Shepherd's Scrapbook blog site
