Today I read an interview with Bruce Gordon, Titus Street Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Yale Divinity School. Since I read an article of his hand about Zwingli’s liturgy of the Lord’s Supper, I’m very keen to follow what he is writing and doing. That article gave a totally different approach to Zwingli. I never had read that before. His Calvin-biography is equally excellent.
In this interview he claims the importance of the historical knowledge of the Reformation period. 
Without such knowledge we can’t really value what is going in today’s cultural change. That’s quite a claim, but, yes, I fully agree. Without history we don´t understand why we ask the questions we do.
When I tell people of my study of Calvin´s sermons on the Lord´s Supper, they often ask me: why on earth are you busy with such an old man? Here is the answer: without studying the past we don’t know what is going on today!
Qualitative Theology 