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Hello my name is Simon Oliver and welcome to the Department of Theology and Religious Studies
at the University of Nottingham and another in our ‘Why Study’ series of videos.
Today I’m joined by Tom O’Loughlin who is the Professor of Historical Theology.
Tom you study the Christian past - why that subject area? Why study Christian history?
Well one could study the Christian past in many ways and the most common way is to study texts,
but the danger with studying texts is you understand the text and you forget the texts are the product of people.
Can I give you an example of studying the Christian past?
Look at this it’s a cheap mass produced lamp from 4th century North Africa.
It was found in a rubbish pit somewhere just outside Carthage
and the reason it was thrown into the rubbish pit was there was a slight crack
when it was made and you can see the crack
and so it was no longer fit for purpose: it started to splutter.
It’s been used for many years because you can see all the carbon around it, and you can believe me
because you can’t see this, you can still smell olive oil, fifteen hundred years later, off this.
It’s a very simple thing it was made by, it was mass produced and there’s the maker’s name.
It was made deliberately for Christians,
but the man who made it was not a Christian because there is the Chi-Rho.
The first two letters of the word ‘Christ’… Greek letters
The two Greek letters C, H and R, ‘Chi’ and ‘Rho’ spelling Christos
but by the 4th century this is a symbol.
When you see these two letters together it’s the symbol for the word Christ.
And how we know it wasn’t made by a Christian
or wasn’t made by someone who was very learned, is the ‘Rho’ is back-to-front.
Around the light is a victory sign because Christ is the one who is the victor.
This is before Christians started thinking of the suffering Christ.
Their thinking of Christ is the one who has conquered death
and there is that great symbol olive leaves all around it.
Now what did this little lamp mean?
Well when this was used in a Christian household it was used by people, it was used by a family.
This gave them light in the evening time. They would have thought back to the words in the psalm
‘Your word is a lamp from my path and a light for my way’.
They would have thought back to the story by Jesus, you know, ‘Hold your light up on a lamp stand’.
But when this was used they would have begun by saying, ‘May God give us the light of heaven’.
They would have had a little lighting ceremony in the house
and every so often they would have gathered together as a community
and they would have said the prayers that stand behind what’s now called vespers or evening prayer
and they would have had a lamp lighting ceremony.
And St Basil The Great, writing at the beginning of the 4th Century, says
every time we gather in the evening time we sing to Christ as the evening star.
We sing a song ‘Phos Hilaron’, ‘The Light of the Evening’,
and writing back then he says this prayer is so ancient, we don’t even know who wrote it.
The Greek Church still use that prayer, westerners use a translation of that prayer.
So what we have to imagine is a family somewhere in North Africa,
and when they lit this they used it as a prayer to Christ as the light.
And when they were thinking of Christ as the light
they were living in a very different universe to ours because light was the very first thing created.
We think of the universe as darkness and empty space, you know the phrase from Pascal,
‘the infinite spaces of the eternal darkness frightens me’
but their universe is full of light, ‘in the beginning let there be light’
and what they were doing was sharing this light.
Light was the first creation and to have it was to have a gift of God.
But Christ was also light so this lamp was celebrating the creation
it was celebrating Christ as light, it was celebrating Christ as victor
and it was also a practical thing you could cook, you could do your homework with a little lamp like this.
It probably cost a couple…it may not have even made, been worth a Denarius,
and yet to me looking at this light, this little lamp, I’m reminded that Christianity is a community
I’m reminded how differently that community looked on Jesus
and I’m reminded how differently they looked on the creation
and suddenly this becomes a tangible way of seeing Christian faith
which is at once the same faith, but also an incredibly different faith.
So rather than a text and something that you just read there’s something that you can hold
that connects you to the people who once also held that object, and what it meant to them.
And they were holding light. How then is light, the symbolism of light, important in Christian history?
For some theologians they were able to build their entire theology around the idea of light
light came forth from God, it came forth it enlightened minds, it enlightened the universe
it enlightened minds, it shone in such a way that people in its reflection could see God
just as in its light we see all around us.
So light is one of the central metaphors of Christian thought
and this actually brings it before us.
And it becomes a central metaphor for God doesn’t it?
Because we’re saturated in light but we can’t point to it, it makes all things visible.
It’s certainly a fascinating image.
And it’s something you cannot see.
Yes exactly and it diffuses itself constantly but is always infinitely close to us, it’s a wonderful image.
So what other, what light can we shed on the Christian past in the 21st century now?
We’re so distant from objects like this from imaginations that saw light everywhere
how can we know about the past now?
I think there’s a danger in looking at the past in that
we can think of Christianity as a theory which had disciples.
Why I like this is, it reminds us that Christianity is a community that produced texts
and so we may not get a sense of Christ our light
when we flick a switch but if we actually don’t realise that light is something divine
we don’t realise how it changes us and changes the creation,
then there’s something we’re missing
and I hope that this little light would remind us of that.
Right. I mean we live in a world of theories of grand theories, grand scientific theories that have no…
we don’t really have much sense of their history
and there is a tendency isn’t there to turn Christianity into just another theory about the universe,
or a theory about what human beings are like, or a theory about how we ought to live that’s really quite abstract.
So as a Christian historian, as a student of the past
how can that help to inform us about what Christian theology really is all about?
Is it just another theory about the world?
The reason why Christianity must involve history
and therefore why the historian has something useful to say, is that Jesus is not a philosopher.
We believe that Jesus is a human being acting in history.
It’s in discipleship to the person.
The philosopher can write and you just encounter the thoughts
it’s about encountering the community who encountered the individual
and it’s about this individual historical encounter.
And what this lamp reminds us is that this individual, Jesus
they saw as Christ our light and it was that personal affirmation rather than
a philosophical assertion that was at the centre.
So if I was wanting to study Christian history, study the past, there’s more than 2000 years of it now
where should I begin?
A useful book is Wayne Meeks ‘The First Urban Christians’.
The reason it’s useful is you will have read many of the sources you will have heard many of the sources
but he will look at them in terms of what they tell you about a people rather than about abstract theories.
So there we have something about Christian history, about our physical connection to the past
about a religion and a community that’s done so much to form the world in
which we live in today and of which Tom is a scholar
leading other students into that past, into a study of our inheritance.
We hope that you have found this short film informative
and that it will encourage you to find out just a little bit more about Christian history.
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