The history of Christianity can be interpreted as succession of paradigms: the Jewish Christian apocalyptic paradigm of the patristic age; the Roman-Catholic paradigm of the Middle Ages; the Evangelical Protestant paradigm of the enlightenment; and the post-enlightenment or post-modern paradigm which still being formed. Looking at the history of the church as a series of changing paradigms can help us to recognise the crises which lead to the emergence of new ways of thinking, judging and acting in the church. In turn the resistance which these new ways of thinking encounter can be more easily understood.