Scripture gives commands to teach the children the works of God, and warnings about what happens when they do not learn.
The Psalmist, when talking about the works of God, says in Psalm 78:4:
“We will not conceal them from their children,
But tell to the generation to come the praises of the LORD,
And His strength and His wondrous works that He has done.”
Then, at the start of the cycle of apostasy in Judges, we read: “All that generation also were gathered to their fathers; and there arose another generation after them who did not know the LORD, nor yet the work which He had done for Israel.” (Judges 2:10-12)
We need to study church history to see and remember how God has worked over the ages, and that He did not stop working at the close of the canon; He is still working and in control.
We can also learn from the Christians of the past by understanding where they were right and where they went wrong; how they stood firm and why they gave in or compromised their faith. In this way, we can be better prepared for whatever happens because we know that there is nothing new under the sun, and we can be prepared for the enemy’s tricks. We can be encouraged by the men and women who remained faithful under pressure. Studying church history gives us worthy heroes.
Knowing the fights for sound doctrine that have gone before not only helps us understand the necessity of not compromising on important points, but allows us to recognize when those errors, issues, and heresies come up again (and they will come up again).
Finally, we need to remember that our study of history is not meant to be simply an intellectual pursuit, but is intended to teach us more about the God who is sovereign over all history. If we learn people, places, and dates, but do not learn more about Him, we have not learned history properly.
Why women of church history, specifically?
The first reason is that I was teaching about the Reformation once a month to my Sunday School class several years ago and discovered that because everyone I had taught about was a man, they had come to believe that God only uses men to do His work. The following month I taught them about women who were important in the Reformation.
Beyond that, we need to have a proper view of women and we won’t get that from the world; we will get it from Scripture and we see it lived out in the lives of godly women.
In the world, women are considered to be the same as men. They can do whatever a man can do and should be encouraged to be like men. We know this is wrong; Scripture is clear that there is a difference between men and women, and we should embrace, not deny, those differences.
Eric Metaxas, who writes biographies of Christian men and women (although he includes Catholics in his lists of Christians), explains this well. He wrote a book called 7 Men and the Secret of Their Greatness, and then he thought that he could also write 7 Women and the Secret of Their Greatness. In the introduction of 7 Women, he talks about how he asked people for suggestions about who to include, and they tended to be “the first woman to do this thing that men have already done.” He instead wanted to tell the stories of women “who were great for reasons that derived precisely from their being women.” He points out that men and women are not interchangeable and were deliberately designed to be different. Women were not created to do exactly what men do; they were created to do what men cannot do. When we look at Scripture and at church history, we see this as well: while there is some overlap in abilities and roles, we know that just as men have roles that women do not hold, often women are often used in ways that men are not.
At the same time, we need to remember that the goal of all church history is to learn more about the God and to see how He has worked and is working in the world. Noel Piper wrote a book about women called Faithful Women and their Extraordinary God, and that’s what I want to show you through the short biographical sketches of women in church history: some women of faith and the amazing God who they served.
