ectypal.net

...history offers a source of limitation inasmuch as its resources frequently manifest the failure of plans, projects, ideas, and systems, or demonstrate the inability of certain teachings to bear an intellectual freight for which they were not designed. It has sometimes times been said that the modern church, usually because of its ignorance of the patristic period, has tended to duplicate in its theology most of the errors and problems of the first five centuries of Christian thought. When approached in a balanced and objective manner, history provides insight into the limitation of our powers, if only by preserving the reasons for the failures of the past and, in the case of the theological tradition, showing the boundaries within which the community has chosen to formulate its views.