Ecclesiastical History

When humans transcend themselves and their existence, when they ask about the meaningfulness of their being and doing, they seek out those places where their experiences of meaning can be put together to form a whole and thus can be expected to provide answers to the question of meaning. One such place are their own biographies, but also the history in which their own is placed. The orientation towards meaning that is characteristic of humans is therefore a reason for them to study their history, and is a criterion for what they regard as historically significant. Another place of orientation may be religion, in which everyone participates with his or her own religious competence, to whatever extent and in whatever form it is present. Where such religious competence is spoken of and is asking for meaning and answers, it becomes theology: theology, understood as a constant and multifarious attempt to give account of the reason for hope in us, as the author of the first letter of Peter (3:15) expressed it. Theology thus addresses what is believed and hoped for as well as feared in the very heart of a person and makes it communicable - in the actual sense of this word. Theology can therefore be understood as trying to keep the discourse on the question of meaning open. When I engage with the history of this endeavor in its manifold forms of expression, then I enter this discourse with my own attempts at orientation towards meaning, with my own question of meaning. This discourse helps me to find a language, it leads me to the manifold answers that have been found and discarded in the course of history, and I thus come closer to my own answer.
Seen in this way, ecclesiastical history is history and theology. It makes use of historical methods like any other academic research on historical evidence. Once it takes into account the discourse on the question of meaning in its historical objects, however, it becomes part of theology.