About the First Church Buildings
Q: If Christians didn’t have church buildings in the first century, when and why did Christians start building them?
TRW: The Martyrdom of Justin, a Christian document dated around 165 AD, talked specifically about the places of Christian meetings in Rome. The writing includes an exchange between a government official, Rusticus, and Justin, a Christian.
Rusticus the prefect said, “Where do you assemble?” Justin said, “Where each one chooses and can: for do you fancy that we all meet in the very same place? Not so; because the God of the Christians is not circumscribed by place …” Rusticus the prefect said, “Tell me where you assemble, or into what place do you collect your followers?” Justin said, “I live above one Martinus, at the Timiotinian Bath … I am unaware of any other meeting than his.” (Martyrdom of Justin, 2; see also Clementine Recognitions 10:71)
The exchange reveals much about the attitude of Christians toward their meeting places.
Rusticus doesn’t ask, “Where do you worship?” That kind of language would have applied to going to a temple, but it apparently didn’t apply to the Christian gatherings.
Justin doesn’t say, “I am unaware of any other worship service.” Rather, he says, “I am unaware of any other meeting.”
Justin doesn’t view these meeting places as sacred. They simply met “where each one chooses and can.”
Justin has a solid theological reason for these casual meeting places: “Because the God of the Christians is not circumscribed by place.” The Christians seem to be quite satisfied with their theology about “place.”
No Temples, No Altars, No Images
Around the end of the second century, Clement, the bishop of Alexandria in north Africa, also took a negative view of Christians building sacred structures for their meetings. He said, “The Word, prohibiting all sacrifices and the building of temples, indicates that the Almighty is not contained in anything.” (Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 5.11) This anti-temple theology was rather prevalent throughout the Christian world of that time.
Even into the third century, several Christian writers repeated the common refrain that Christians have “no temples, no altars, no images.” Origen, the famous bishop of Alexandria, even affirmed that Christians “object to building altars, statues, and temples.” (Against Celsus 8.20) Origen also said that Christians “cannot allow … altars, or temples, or images.” (Against Celsus 7.64). He objected to these “lifeless temples” because he viewed the Christian’s body as a better receptacle for the Almighty God.
Minucius Felix, another Christian writing around AD 210, made a similar comment about Christians having “no temples and altars.” (The Octavius 32, cf. The Octavius 10) Even as late as about AD 300, the Christian writer Arnobius affirmed, “We do not rear temples for the ceremonies of worship, do not set up statues and images of any god, do not build altars …” (Against the Heathen, 6.1)
Earliest Christian Opposition to Temples
The Christians’ opposition to sacred buildings likely emerged at the very beginning of Christianity. Remember how Jesus predicted the total destruction of the temple (Mark 13; Matthew 24)? Jesus considered its destruction to be “days of punishment, so that all things which have been written will be fulfilled” (Luke 21:22).
The earliest Christians took note of these shocking statements. In Acts 6, Stephen was accused of “speaking against this holy place” (the temple) because he was heard to say “that this Nazarene, Jesus, will destroy this place” (6:13-14). Then, in Acts 7, Stephen openly declared that “the Most High does not dwell in houses made by human hands” (7:48-50).
Paul made a similar statement to the Athenians in Acts 17: “The God who made the world and everything that is in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made by hands; nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything” (17:24-25).
So, this opposition to temples clearly continued into the ensuing centuries.
Archaeological Evidence
It is noteworthy that archaeology has not found evidence of any Christian buildings that were erected for the purpose of Christian gatherings up until the mid-third century, more than 200 years after the time of Jesus.
The oldest-known building used for Christian gatherings, found in Dura-Europos in Syria, dates from about AD 240. But this building was clearly a residence that was later renovated for use as a Christian gathering place. Ramsay MacMullen calls the Dura-Europos site “the only clear and uncontested example of what are sometimes called ‘house churches’ resulting from the adaptation of some certain space … within private or commercial premises.” (Ramsay MacMullen, The Second Church: Popular Christianity A.D. 200-400 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009), 3.)
By the early years of the fourth century, during the persecutions of Diocletian, Galerius, Maximinus, and Licinius, Christian buildings were prevalent enough to be the focus of the imperial terror. Lactantius and Eusebius were two Christian writers who were familiar with the details of the persecutions, and they wrote about the attacks on these buildings.
The First “Church”
Eusebius, writing around AD 320, spoke of the persecution several years earlier at Amana and other cities of Pontus, saying, “There some of the churches of God (τῶν ἐκκλησιῶν τοῦ θεοῦ) were razed to the ground.” (Church History 10.8.15) This statement is significant because it may be the first time the word ‘church’ (ἐκκλησία) was ever used to refer to a building instead of an assembly.
Later, when Eusebius spoke of these buildings, he paused to clarify that “they are called churches (or houses of the Lord).” (The Oration of Eusebius 17.4) This note seems to indicate that calling these buildings “churches” was relatively new terminology.
But after Constantine legalized Christianity in AD 313, he soon began a massive campaign to erect these “churches,” using massive imperial support and funding, including personal funding from Constantine. As Peter Leithart says, “After Constantine, church building became the most characteristic of the emperor’s building projects, a signal of the changed status of the Christian religion.” (Peter J. Leithart, Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2010), 124.)
Resurrecting the Temple
These magnificent Constantinian structures, spread throughout the empire, were such emperor-quality edifices that many of them are still major tourist attractions today, 1,700 years later. These “churches” include the famous St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and the Church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople.
Eusebius’s narrative revealed another important shift in Christian terminology. He described these glorious new buildings as “temples” that received “a splendor far exceeding those that had been formerly destroyed.” (Church History 10.2.1)
This text is likely the first reference in Christian history where a church building is called a “temple.” Eusebius continued to use this term many times in reference to the Constantinian church buildings, often comparing their glory to the great Jewish temple in Jerusalem, which had been destroyed 250 years earlier.
In a lengthy address given to dedicate one of these grand edifices, Eusebius described it a “new and holy temple of God.” (Church History 10.4.2) So, in only about 20 years, Christians went from Arnobius’s declaration that they “do not rear temples” and “do not build altars,” to Eusebius’s declaration that they now have “holy temple(s) of God.”
Today’s Temples
From that day forward, Christians have commonly been viewing their buildings as sacred spaces, as “houses of God,” with altars, sacred furniture, priests, sacrifices, statues, and sanctuaries.
So, for the first 250 years, Christians met in homes. They even aggressively opposed the building of sacred meeting places. But when blessed with the emperor’s support and the emperor’s funding, the building of “churches” and “holy places” became common. If we are wise, we do well to ask, “How has this dependence on sacred buildings affected our thinking about the life of the Christian?”
For more on this topic, see my video “Worship #6: How the Later Church Developed ‘Worship Services’” or my paper on “The Shift: How the Early Church Evolved from House Meetings to Temple Worship.”