Timelessness speaks (at least to me) of historical events that hold a value above normal. Just as faithfulness speaks of lives lived on values above, over, through and beyond time's limitations. So too, timelessness focuses on "uniquely valuable times." Times that are timeless, may then, refer to histories viewed from their greater, even eternal, perspective.
Real Reform?
Few seem to be taking the time to understand time itself - time as real history and as important influencing historical culture. One important theme and example is the history of the early Centuries of Christianity which would influence in a timeless sense the rest of time. The value of an accurate history of theology or "Historical Theology" - as I am using it - is its goal of seeking to address the reasons for the early church’s ‘drift’ away from its anchorage in the person and work of Christ, in Biblical truth, and in the faithful apostolic witness and interpretation of the New Testament.
The history of the development of a Christianity sourced in dogma (in the name of defending the church against heresy) is a limited and often confused form of history since it is often written by those most interested in presenting their own false presuppositions and some very biased viewpoints. I am sorry to say that Church History (in general) and certainly most Evangelical and Fundamentalist history books were developed under the influence of earlier Reformed Church historians, who to a great degree accepted the Early Catholic and Middle-Ages Catholicism as the only church. The Reformations earliest leaders such as Luther, Zwingli and others originally thought they could reform the Roman Catholic Church [from which they came
In addition the rejection of any real attention to the history of the earliest Eastern churches gives a convoluted picture of the history of “the church.” The Reformation influenced churches, accepted Roman Catholic history as its own history and then ...of course, joined the Roman Catholic church in rejecting all the so-called sects and break-off groups from Catholicism. All independent congregations had been condemned as erroneous and dangerous or as "heretical." But failed Catholicism and the often mis-directed and incomplete Reformation leadership were rejecting the actual Biblically-based churches over the centuries, in an effort to defend their own theological and ecclesiastical errors. All of this needs serious attention and a re-balancing of history is needed.
We should carefully discuss the rise of Ecclesiastical hierarchal religion and rethink the early errors of Traditionalist Christianity and its ‘strange lack of understanding’ of the deeper teachings of Paul, John, James, Peter and the other writers. To fail to study the historic church's understandings of the Scripture is to fail to do any real history.
