The Early Church

The Church was born small: a few dozen frightened disciples in an upstairs room in Jerusalem. Within three centuries it had spread across the Roman Empire, survived repeated persecution, and won legal freedom. This article follows that story from Pentecost to the Emperor Constantine, and lets the earliest Christian writers speak about what they believed, quoting them carefully and without claiming more than they say.

Pentecost and the mission of the apostles

The Acts of the Apostles opens with the risen Jesus sending his disciples to be his witnesses "to the end of the earth" (Acts 1:8). At Pentecost the Holy Spirit came upon them, Peter preached, and about three thousand were baptised (Acts 2:1–41). The first community devoted itself to the apostles' teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers (Acts 2:42), a description the Church still recognises as its own.

The Gospel soon moved beyond Jerusalem: to Samaria, to Antioch, where the disciples were first called Christians (Acts 11:26), and through Paul's journeys to Asia Minor and Greece.

The Council of Jerusalem

The first great question was whether Gentile converts had to keep the whole Law of Moses, including circumcision. Around AD 49 the apostles and elders met in Jerusalem to decide (Acts 15). Peter spoke, James gave judgment, and the council wrote to the Gentile churches that "it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us" (Acts 15:28): Gentiles were not to be burdened with circumcision. Later councils of the Church would follow the same pattern.

Peter and Paul in Rome

Both Peter and Paul ended their lives in Rome. Clement of Rome already recalls their martyrdom, and by the late second century writers state plainly what the Church has always held: that both died in Rome under the Emperor Nero, in the mid-60s, after the great fire of AD 64 for which Nero blamed the Christians. Peter, by tradition, was crucified; Paul, a Roman citizen, was beheaded. The church of Rome, founded on the witness of these two apostles, was honoured from early on as the church that "presides in charity", in a phrase of Ignatius of Antioch (CCC 834).

The Apostolic Fathers

The writers of the generation after the apostles are called the Apostolic Fathers.

• Clement of Rome, writing to the church in Corinth around AD 96, rebukes the Corinthians for removing their leaders, and explains that the apostles appointed leaders and made provision for others to succeed them. It is an early witness to apostolic succession (CCC 861).
• Ignatius of Antioch, taken to Rome to be thrown to the beasts around AD 107, wrote seven letters on the way. He urges unity around the bishop, with the presbyters (priests) and deacons. In his letter to the Smyrnaeans he writes that wherever the bishop appears, there the people should be, just as where Jesus Christ is, there is the catholic Church. This is the first known use of the phrase "the catholic Church", meaning the whole, universal Church (CCC 830). In the same letter he criticises those who stay away from the Eucharist because they do not confess it to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ.
• Polycarp of Smyrna, a disciple of the apostle John according to tradition, corresponded with Ignatius and was martyred as an old man, probably in the mid-150s.

Justin Martyr and Sunday worship

Around AD 155, Justin, a philosopher turned Christian, wrote a defence of the faith to the Emperor describing what Christians do. Those who believe are washed in water for rebirth in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. On the day called Sunday, Christians from town and country gather; the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read; the one presiding preaches; all pray; bread, and wine mixed with water, are brought; the presider gives thanks at length and the people answer "Amen"; and deacons carry the Eucharist to those who are absent. Justin adds that this food is not received as common bread and drink, but as the flesh and blood of the incarnate Jesus.

The Catechism quotes this passage as the basic shape of the Mass, unchanged in its essentials to this day (CCC 1345).

Persecution and the martyrs

For nearly three centuries, being a Christian could cost one's life, though persecution came in waves, with long quiet periods. But the martyrs, from Stephen (Acts 7) to Perpetua and Felicity in Carthage (203) and countless others, became the Church's heroes. The last and most severe wave, the Great Persecution under Diocletian and his colleagues, began in 303; an edict of toleration in 311 formally ended it in most of the empire, though some persecution continued in the East.

Then the situation reversed. In 313 the emperors Constantine and Licinius agreed, in what is called the Edict of Milan, to grant Christians and all others freedom of worship and to restore confiscated Church property.

What the sources show, and what they do not

The earliest writers show a Church that baptised in the name of the Trinity, gathered on Sunday for the Eucharist, believed it received the body and blood of Christ, and looked to bishops who stood in succession from the apostles. They do not give us a fully worked-out theology of any of these; that developed over centuries, especially through the councils. Historians also debate how quickly the pattern of a single bishop in each city, so clear in Ignatius, became universal. What is clear is continuity: the Church of these documents is recognisably the Church that still gathers each Sunday.

Going deeper

• The Councils: how the Church settled the great questions that followed.
• The Three Themes of the Mass: the Mass's deep roots in Scripture.
• The Church: one, holy, catholic and apostolic.
• Read next in the Catechism: CCC 857–865 on the apostolic Church, and CCC 1345 on Justin's description.