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 3rd 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment