Why and when did Christians start constructing special buildings for worship?
Answered by Everett Ferguson | posted 11/12/2008 02:16PM
1 of 1
ADVERTISEMENT
The New Testament speaks of a large church in Jerusalem meeting together in a public space (e.g., the outer court of the temple in Acts 2:46) and in smaller groups in houses (e.g., the house of Mary, mother of Mark, in Acts 12:12). This practice must have been carried on in many cities of the Roman empire. For the most part, the church was dependent on members or supporters (patrons) who owned larger houses, providing a place for meeting. In Rome, there are indications that early Christians met in other public spaces such as warehouses or apartment buildings. Even when there were several meeting sites in a city, the Christians had the sense of being one church. They maintained unity through organization (from the second century on, beginning at different times in different places, one bishop in a city became the center of unity for orthodox Christians there) and symbolic gestures (in Rome, the eucharistic bread was sent from the bishop's church to other assemblies).
Before Emperor Constantine recognized Christianity as a legal religion in 313, corporate ownership of property by the church could be legally ambiguous. It seems that the first property owned by the Roman church were the catacombs. These were not places of meeting, however, but burial sites.
Unless claims for recent discoveries of early Christian meeting places are confirmed, the earliest building certainly devoted to Christian use is at Dura Europos on the Euphrates River in eastern Roman Syria. It was a house that came into Christian possession and was remodeled in the 240s. Two rooms were combined to form the assembly room, and another room became a baptistery—the only room decorated with pictures. Dura was destroyed by the Sassanian Persians in 256, so the house's use as a church was short-lived.
The church's house at Dura represents an intermediate stage between meeting in members' houses or other suitable places, and constructing buildings specifically for church meetings. There are literary references to separate church buildings from the end of the second century and through the third century, but it is uncertain whether these were existing structures remodeled for church use, like the house at Dura, or new constructions. We have archaeological evidence of halls being built for church meetings at the end of the third and beginning of the fourth century. The great era of church buildings began with Constantine's patronage of the church in the fourth century. He commissioned basilicas to signal his support of the new religion and to advertise his reign.
Why did early Christians remodel or build separate structures for worship instead of continuing to use private houses or public spaces? Probably for the same reasons we do today. As the church grew, it needed to accommodate a joint assembly. Special functions, such as daily Bible teaching, baptisms, and the distribution of gifts to the poor, required readily available facilities. Special buildings also gave the church a visible sign of permanence.
Everett Ferguson is professor of church history emeritus at Abilene Christian University and a member of the Christian History advisory board.
For further reading:
L. Michael White, Building God's House in the Roman World (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990). H. W. Turner, From Temple to Meetinghouse: The Phenomenology and Theology of Places of Worship (Mouton, 1979)
The earliest identified Christian church was a house church founded between 233 and 256. During the 11th through 14th centuries, a wave of building of cathedrals and smaller parish churches occurred across Western Europe. A cathedral is a church, usually Roman Catholic, Anglican, Oriental Orthodox or Eastern Orthodox, housing the seat of a bishop.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_church
House church or home church is a label used to describe an independent assembly of Christians who gather for worship in a private home. Sometimes these groups meet because the membership is small, and a home is the most appropriate place to assemble, as in the beginning phase of the British New Church Movement. Sometimes this meeting style is advantageous because the group is a member of an underground Christian movement which is otherwise banned from meeting as is the case in China.
Some recent Christian writers have supported the view that the Christian Church should meet in houses, and have based the operation of their communities around multiple small home meetings. Other Christian groups choose to meet in houses when they are in the early phases of church growth because a house is the most affordable option for the small group to meet until the number of people attending the group is sufficient to warrant moving to a commercial location such as a church building.
-- Edited by Admin on Wednesday 23rd of September 2015 02:02:56 PM
During the first two centuries of Christianity, the cross may have been rare in Christian iconography, as it depicts a purposely painful and gruesome method of public executionand Christians were reluctant to use it.
The Earlist depiction of the Christian Cross may be the Herculaneum Cross which was found in the city of Herculaneum, which was entombed in pyroclastic material along with Pompeii during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.
Cross Found in the ancient city of Herculaneum preserved in volcanic ash since 79 AD
Another one of the earliest depictions of the cross as a Christian symbol may be as early as 200 AD when it was used to mock the faith in the Alexamenos graffito.
However, the cross symbol was already associated with Christians in the 2nd century, as is indicated in the anti-Christian arguments cited in the Octavius[9] of Minucius Felix, chapters IX and XXIX, written at the end of that century or the beginning of the next
-- Edited by Admin on Wednesday 23rd of September 2015 02:05:54 PM
When did the cross supplant the ichthus (fish) as a symbol of the Christian faith?
Answered by Everett Ferguson | posted 2/26/2009 11:38AM
1 of 1
ADVERTISEMENT
Early Christians used a wide variety of symbols to express their faith. The second-century Christian teacher Clement of Alexandria identified a dove, a fish, a ship, a lyre, and an anchor as suitable images to be engraved on Christians' signet-rings (or seals). Archaeologists have discovered a gold finger-ring from the third or fourth century that depicts an anchor, cross, lamb, shepherd, dove, and the abbreviation for Christ.
One of the best known early Christian symbols, because of its modern revival, is the fish. Some early Christians made the Greek word for fish, ichthus, into an acronym for "Jesus Christ, God's Son, Savior." (See "The Original Christian Bumper Sticker" by Collin Hansen.) Tertullian, a theologian writing at beginning of the third century, interpreted this practice as a symbol of baptism: "But we small fishes, named after our great ICHTHUS, Jesus Christ, are born in water and only by remaining in water can we live."
The symbol of the anchor, with its crossbar, resembles a cross. An anchor and two fish (probably from the third century) occur together on a grave slab in the catacomb of Domitilla in Rome. (Read more about the anchor as a Christian symbol here.)
Writings from the early church show how central the cross was to Christian preaching and confession. Moreover, Justin Martyr, a Christian apologist writing in the 150s–160s, argued that God had providentially put the shape of the cross in everyday objects, such as the masts of ships, tools like the plough and the axe, and the standards of Roman legions. Christians would often pray standing up with their arms stretched out in the form of a cross. As early as the 200s, Christians were making the sign of the cross with their hands. The cross was so important that pagans charged Christians with worshipping the cross.
Early Christians took two abbreviations that occurred in non-Christian writings and gave them special meaning. The Greek letter tau (which looks like a plus sign or a T-shaped cross), with the vertical bar curled at the top to represent the letter rho (which looks like a P), was an abbreviation for words beginning tr. The tau-rho occurs in Christian writings dated 175 to 225 in the spelling of the Greek words for "cross" (stauros) and "crucify" (stauroo). Since Christians saw the tau as symbolizing a cross, the superimposed rhomay have suggested the head of Christ, making the tau-rho the first visual representation of the crucifixion by Christians.
The second abbreviation Christians used was the chi-rho monogram, composed of the Greek letter chi (which has the shape of an X) intersected by the letter rho. It appears in Christian writings as an abbreviation for Christ (Christos). In 312, according to the early Christian writer Lactantius, Emperor Constantine had the chi-rho marked on his soldiers' shields as they marched on Rome; according to Eusebius, he had the emblem put on a military standard. (See "Constantine's Famous Emblem" by David F. Wright.) After Constantine's victory, the chi-rho cross, often combined with the letters alpha andomega, became the ubiquitous symbol of Christianity.
Christians did not make explicit pictures of the crucifixion for about 400 years after Christ's death. There are various possible explanations for this. A theological reason may be that the early Christians emphasized the resurrection as well as the crucifixion. (The Romans crucified many people, but only one was resurrected. Allusions to the resurrection in early Christian art were also relatively rare but earlier than depictions of the crucifixion.) A more practical reason may be that Constantine's influence so established the chi-rho that no alternative symbol was necessary. It functioned very much like a bare cross does today as an identifying marker of Christianity.
Everett Ferguson is professor of church history emeritus at Abilene Christian University and a member of the Christian History advisory board.