The old chestnut about being condemned to repeat the history we do not know applies to Church history as much as to anything else. But we are often these days at a loss to know how to approach it.

Much of what passed once for Church history was propagandist; and much of the best now written is brilliantly done but apparently detached from the Church's present needs. We need a theological approach to Church history but not one that is just partisan.

In seeking to explore this need, Rowan Williams offers some reflection on how we think about the past in general - a complex issue in today's culture. He goes on to consider how Church history has been used by theologians not just to prove points or win arguments, but to clarify what we are as human (timebound) beings. Emerging form this is a sense of the importance of Church history as something that deepens our present thinking and obliges us to think with more varied and resourceful analogies about our present problems.