In the days of Jesus, the Jewish people believed in a form of incarnation. They did not believe that God could become a man, but that heaven and earth connected at the Temple in Jerusalem. God, for the Jewish person, dwelled in some sense in the temple. The temple was seen as the central incarnational symbol of Jewish life.

The Incarnation of the Temple

This is one of the primary reasons that the teachings and actions of Jesus were so controversial. In many different ways and at many different times, Jesus indicated that He was the new temple; that in Him people could receive forgiveness from sins, access to God, and restoration from exile. When people believe that God is in the temple, imagine what a shock it would have been for Jesus to announce that the Temple would be destroyed (John 2:19-21).

But as shocking as it was to predict the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, John indicates that Jesus was actually talking about His own body! We tend to think that this would soften the blow of such words for Jewish people at the time, but the opposite is actually true.

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How did the church go from no land or property at the resurrection of Jesus, to one of the wealthiest land-owners in the entire world today? As we have summarized previously here and here), a lot of it had to do with the rise to prominence from a persecuted religion in the Roman Empire, to the time when Emperor Theodosius declared Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire in 380 AD.

In a culture where there was no distinction between religion and politics, such a declaration had far-reaching effects. People as far away as Germania (Germany) and Britannia (Great Britain), who knew next to nothing about Christianity, were told that the Empire was now Christian, and it would be prudent for them to convert.
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The early church had few buildings. When they did construct them, they were often patterned after the Jewish Synagogues, since Christianity was originally an offshoot of Judaism. But due to intense persecution from Jewish leaders and the influx of Gentile believers, the early Christians generally owned few church buildings or places for gathering.

Over the next couple hundred years, the Roman Empire began persecuting Christians as well. Christians were viewed as bad citizens of Rome because they did not swear loyalty to the Emperor or participate in pagan temple rituals. In a culture where there is no distinction between religion and politics, those who do not follow the religion of the Empire are political threats to the Empire. This is crucial for understanding the importance of what happened in the fourth century under three different Emperors.

Emperor Constantine

In 312 A.D., as Emperor Constantine was preparing his troops for the Battle at Milvian Bridge, he saw a vision in the sky of a cross of light and the words, “In this sign, conquer!” So he had all the soldiers paint a Christian symbol (the Greek Chi-Rho) on their shields, after which time, they soundly defeated their enemy. After this, Constantine had himself baptized as a Christian and in 313 A.D., issued the Edict of Milan which essentially ceased all persecution against Christians and named himself as the patron of Christianity. Christianity became a “legal” religion in the Empire.
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Churches often identify themselves with their buildings, even though Scripture does not. How did this happen?

A full-length book is needed to fully explain the cultural and theological history about how the church began to identify itself with buildings.   I will try to summarize it in a few blog posts. If you want to read more, I highly recommend The Subversion of Christianity by Jacques Ellul, and Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna.

This post summarizes the first 100 years or so of church history, much of which you can read about in Acts and the Epistles.

When considering the history of church buildings, it is crucial to remember that almost all of the first followers of Jesus were Jewish. There were a few Samaritans (cf. John 4) and an isolated Gentile or two (Matt 8:5-10; 15:21-28), but for the most part, the masses that followed Jesus were Jewish. Even after the birth of the church in Acts 2, the vast majority of the early Christians were Jewish, and most of the Gentiles who converted were “God fearers” which means that they knew and respected the teachings of Judaism, and even followed many of the Jewish traditions and practices (cf. Acts 10:2).

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