Elements of Church History Before the Dark Ages (incl. video)

In writing of a history of the Christian church in the ancient era after the end of the apostolic era and before the start of the Middle Ages one ought to determine where the word church arose and what it meant. Because of the 3^rd Goth invasions of Asia Minor at the end of the classical era of history associated with the fall of the Western Roman Empire many Greek words were brought into Germanic languages including. In Greek the original term for Christian assemblies was ἐκκλησία or ekklēsia and ecclesia. Arising from the Greek word referring to city-state assemblies that only citizens could participate in ecclesia was also used by Christians to refer to their own assemblies.

Cirice is the proximal Old English forerunner of the English word church via a Greek into German etymlogical path. A congregation of the Lord was ἐκκλησία κυριακή ekklēsia kuriakē. That made it into  West German as kirika from κυριακή kuriakē. The word for Lord was κύριος-kurios. Old English derived cirice from  from kirika and thus church emerged. An assembly of people who are believers that Jesus Christ is Lord is the church.

The development of social organization around Jesus to spread the good news followed his instruction in Mark 16:15 “And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.” This leaves open the possibility of preaching the gospel one day to extra-terrestrials I suppose.

Development of the Christian church in many respects occurs within a contemporary historical tapestry of change and social development. Empires arise and civilizations fall. The proliferation of Christian faith and the establishment of churches in communities transcend borders and governments. In fact the establishment of the church itself creates a form of government itself in the evolution of the episkopos or bishops and the ekklesia or assembly that becomes a church structure prevalently within an Episcopal organizational patrimony. Even before the end of the first century Clement of Rome wrote epistles to other churches as an authority. One asks why the egalitarianism of early Christianity changed during the second century largely to an Episcopal structure as the apostolic era faded away. The answer is twofold. One, there was a need to establish a catholic or standard doctrine amidst the diverse assemblies and secondly human social organization tend to organize hierarchically to reflect authority.

The churches of North Africa, the Near East and Asia Minor developed regional authorities or Bishops with some more influential than others. Initially the churches of Antioch, Jerusalem and Rome were regarded more or less equally as centers of authority. Later Constantinople arrived to be considered an equal Christian center of authority, yet the development of Church authority in equal proportional measure with population and political power resembles in some ways the kind of proportional government found in the U.S. House of Representatives with those from populous states collectively having more representation. In the church history that evolved into Rome being the seat of authority in Western Europe especially after the fall of the Western Roman Empire and in the East Constantinople emerged as the center of Christian authority with much respect for Rome until the second schism.

One might say that the post-Apostolic increase of early Christianity was a process of missions, increase in the numbers of the faithful and ossification of hierarchical church structure under the authority of a bishop, and the bishops increased in number eventually recognizing particular metropolitan bishops as Bishops of Bishops or prime ministers under the authority of Christ. Church doctrine developed such that the opinions of the bishops were regarded as if they were themselves spokesmen for the Lord. Of course in the era before electronic communications perhaps they were approximately right. Keeping orthodoxy of faith and disseminating the true gospel without error such as Monophysitism and Arianism required a certain standardized coordination in the entire Christian world that was roughly the same area as that of the Roman Empire.

Institutional methods for distinguishing Christians from heretical votaries were developed conforming to standardized catechetical instruction and pubic baptism to symbolize admission of righteous faith.  Peter’s confession in Matthew 16:16 was the forerunner of creeds of faith and Matthew 28-19 of Trinitarian baptismal expressions.