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The Church of the Catacombs
An introduction to the surging life of the early church from the apostles to A.D. 250 based on firsthand accounts.
131 pages, Paperback
First published January 28, 1964
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May 21, 2017
I found Walter Oetting’s Church of the Catacombs: The Early Church from the Apostles to A.D. 250 both interesting and informative. One of the pluses of this book is that it avoids being a polemic. He states in the Introduction that he has “limited value judgements and applications to the minimum. This is something the reader must do for himself…” The book is arranged topically rather than chronologically. Among the areas covered are worship, organization, and the church’s relationship to both society and the state.
The early church was not always in agreement. This is illustrated as to how “lapsed” Christians should be brought back into the fold. The term “lapsed” refers to those who under torture or the threat of death denied Christ and proclaimed, “Caesar is Lord.” Sometimes a lapse occurred more than once. At one extreme were those who regarded such denial as a sin against the Holy Spirit and unforgiveable. At the other end were those who took the denial rather lightly saying denial of the mouth is not the same as denial of the heart. In the end the Church took a middle ground fearing that leniency would lead to not taking such lapses seriously.
In the ancient world slavery was considered a “fact of life.” Although the Church did not fight for the abolition of slavery, it did encourage manumission. “Congregations set aside funds to purchase the freedom of slaves (Ignatius, to Polycarp, 4). There was a special ceremony for manumission in Christian communities…One individual freed some 1,250 slaves on the day of his baptism, and this is not the only recorded incident of this kind.” An ex-slave, Calistis, even became the bishop of Rome (c. 220).
The early church was not always in agreement. This is illustrated as to how “lapsed” Christians should be brought back into the fold. The term “lapsed” refers to those who under torture or the threat of death denied Christ and proclaimed, “Caesar is Lord.” Sometimes a lapse occurred more than once. At one extreme were those who regarded such denial as a sin against the Holy Spirit and unforgiveable. At the other end were those who took the denial rather lightly saying denial of the mouth is not the same as denial of the heart. In the end the Church took a middle ground fearing that leniency would lead to not taking such lapses seriously.
In the ancient world slavery was considered a “fact of life.” Although the Church did not fight for the abolition of slavery, it did encourage manumission. “Congregations set aside funds to purchase the freedom of slaves (Ignatius, to Polycarp, 4). There was a special ceremony for manumission in Christian communities…One individual freed some 1,250 slaves on the day of his baptism, and this is not the only recorded incident of this kind.” An ex-slave, Calistis, even became the bishop of Rome (c. 220).
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