Post-Apostolic Christian Practices

First, review what New- Testament-era church services were like

By C. Beavers

Fill in the Blank

First-century Christian church services occurred on which day?

Multiple Choice

First-century Christian worship services TYPICALLY occurred where?

• large basilica-Roman cathedral type megachurches

• outside in the open air forums

• underground catacombs, in total secret

• single-family homes

Drag and Drop

Most of the early church members seemed to be ​

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and probably could not ​

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, so sometimes this would last a ​

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Drag these tiles and drop them in the correct blank above

poorer

read

long time

short time

high literacy rate

Match

Match the following

• the communal meal eaten during first-century Christian worship services

• probably the part of the Christian worship service that would take the most time on the clock

• the works considered sacred/canonical by first-century believers

• the "most important" part of the first-century worship service, which might have been its own separate event or might have been combined with the Love Feast

• often modeled after the Psalms or were new Christian hymns written by early believers (some found in Paul's letters, possibly)

Agape Feast

teaching the Word

Old Testament and writings of apostles

Eucharist

praise songs

• Agape Feast

• teaching the Word

• Old Testament and writings of apostles

• Eucharist

• praise songs

Fill in the Blank

The word "Eucharist" comes from the Greek eu (good) and charis (grace/favor/thanks).

Literally, Eucharist means "good thanks" or "thanksgiving"

This is the part of the church service during the first-century that we call in modern church services ________

Multiple Choice

This excerpt (in the photo) is from the Didache. The Didache was:

• An early Christian text providing instructions on ethics and rituals.
• A historical account of early Christian martyrs.
• A philosophical treatise on the nature of the Trinity.

• A collection of ancient Greek myths and legends.

Multiple Choice

This section of the Didache is giving instructions to Christians in the post-apostolic era on what topic?

• Baptismal rites
• apostolic succession

• The Eucharist (Thanksgiving)

Multiple Choice

The Didache tells us in this passage something that the New Testament does not teach, at least not specifically/literally.

What specific requirement does the Didache tell us should be met before a person partakes in the Eucharist?

• must be a baptized believer

• must give a certain amount of money to the church

• must have been persecuted for the faith

What worship practices did the post-apostolic churches follow?

The following readings are from: The Story of Christianity: Volume 1
by Justo Gonzalez

Multiple Choice

There was a pagan critic of Christianity during the first two centuries of the Early Church era. According to this passage, what was that critic's name?

• Julius Caesar

• Celsus
• Origen

Multiple Choice

Which Early Church era Christian apologist argued against Celsus?

• Marcus Aurelius

• Tacitus

• Origen

Fill in the Blank

What was the name of Origen's book that defended Christianity against the criticism of Celsus?

Multiple Choice

This excerpt shows that Christians, in the first two hundred years of the Church, were most often a part of which economic class?

• Upper

• Middle

• Lower

Drag and Drop

The complaint of the pagan writer Celsus was quoted earlier: Christians were ​

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folk whose teaching took place, not in ​

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nor in open forums, but in ​

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.

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ignorant

schools

kitchens, shops, and tanneries

Multiple Choice

The quote from the previous slide about "kitchens, shops, and tanneries" instead of "schools" being where Christian teaching took place, shows us that early Christians were more likely to:

• try to take control of the elite academies in order to gain a monopoly on what was taught to the wealthy

• teach common people about the love of Jesus, doing so in common places

Multiple Choice

What Celsus correct, in that early Christian churches seemed to represent the lower classes more often than the upper classes?

• according to sociological studies from the modern day, yes

• no, if a person does not believe in Jesus, they are always wrong in their opinion!!!

Dropdown

According to the witness of the Gospels, Jesus spent most of his time with ​

Select answer

people. Paul, who belonged to a ​

Select answer

social class than most of the earliest disciples, does say that the majority of Christians in Corinth were ignorant, ​

Select answer

. The same is generally true during the first ​

Select answer

of the life of the church.

Multiple Choice

In this excerpt, Professor Gonzalez talks about some of the early Christian writings that we discussed in class. Here he says that there are "Apocryphal Gospels" and that some of these stories talk about Jesus' childhood.

What did Mr. Beavers call these "gospels"?

• Gnostic gospels

• Infancy gospels

Multiple Select

The examples from the Apocryphal/Infancy Gospels given in this excerpt include (choose 2):

• young Jesus breaking water jars and then miraculously fixing them

• young Jesus miraculously making a tree bend so that He can get to the top

• young Jesus writing letters to Caesar

• young Jesus asking if Joseph was His real father

Multiple Choice

The overall point that Professor Gonzalez is making in this part of his book is that many of these apocryphal stories come from:

• wealthy Christians of the Early Church

• middle class Christians of the Early Church

• poorer Christians of the Early Church

Multiple Choice

According to this excerpt, Early Church worship services were generally considered to be:

• solemn events centered on penance and reflection
• solemn occasions forcing believers to realize how sinful they were

• formal ceremonies emphasizing ritual and tradition
• happy occasions focused on celebrating the resurrection of Jesus

Multiple Choice

According to this excerpt, Early Church worship services were generally considered to be:

• focused on the Resurrection of Jesus (Easter Sunday)

• focused on the death of Jesus on the cross (Good Friday)

Multiple Choice

According to Gonzalez, Early Church worship services had ___________ as its highest act of worship.

• preaching of the Word

• communion/Eucharist

Multiple Choice

According to Gonzalez, communion/the Eucharist was the high point of the Christian church service until:

• Emperor Constantine came to power

• the Reformation (1500s)

Multiple Choice

According to Gonzalez, what have Protestants considered to be the "main part of the worship service" since the Reformation?

• the Eucharist/communion

• preaching

Reorder

Reorder the following, from first (on the left) to last (on the right).

According to this quotation from Justin Martyr, what was a typical order of the service in Early Church gatherings?

• Read from the memoirs of the apostles, or writings of one of the prophets

• verbal exhortation (preaching) by one presiding officer

• stand as one and raise up prayers to God

• bread, wine, and water offered for Communion and the Love Feast (deacons take Communion elements to the sick at their homes)

• Offering, collection of money to be given to those in need (orphans, widows)

1

2

3

4

5

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5

Multiple Choice

According to Gonzalez, no one who was not baptized was permitted to be in the Christian worship services...NOT EVER!

• True

• False

Multiple Choice

According to Gonzalez, which part were non-baptized persons allowed to join?

• the first part, the reading of Scripture and preaching/teaching

• the second part, which included communion

Multiple Choice

According to Gonzalez, which part were non-baptized persons NOT allowed to join?

• the first part, the reading of Scripture and preaching/teaching

• the second part, which included communion

Fill in the Blank

According to Gonzalez, which event began the second part of the worship service, after the un-baptized were dismissed?

Multiple Choice

A post-apostolic Early Church custom was to gather for communion at the:

• Roman Colosseum

• tombs/burial locations of believers who had died already

Fill in the Blank

Some of these burial places would be out in the wilderness, outside of cities. Others would be, like in Rome, beneath city streets in sewers or underground caves. These were called the _________

Multiple Choice

According to Gonzalez, Christians always had to gather there in secret, in places where the authorities did not know existed

• True

• False

Multiple Choice

Did early Christians ever use the catacombs as places to hide from authorities?

• Yes

• No

Multiple Choice

According to Gonzalez, were churches in the Roman Empire during the first two hundred years after Jesus considered fully legal entities that could own their own property?

• Yes

• No

Fill in the Blank

According to Gonzalez, what type of societies WERE legal to be formed by Christians, societies that could meet in the catacombs in order to worship and pray?

Multiple Choice

According to Gonzalez, what was another reason, besides owning cemetery property, that led Christians to gather near tombs?

• they wanted to honor the dead heroes of the faith

• to celebrate Christmas

Multiple Choice

According to Gonzalez, when would these early Christians gather in cemeteries?

• on Christmas

• on the anniversary of the death of the believer that was buried/entombed

Multiple Choice

According to Gonzalez, this practice of the Early Church of the second and third centuries led to the creation of?

• Christmas and Easter celebrations

• saints days/festivals

Drag and Drop

This passage also shows us the beginnings of another Christian practice that developed in the Early Church era.

(The custom of gathering ​

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of martyrs seems to have begun fairly early. In the mid-second century, the ​

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tells us that Polycarp’s ​

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“would have been more precious to us than pearls.”)

Drag these tiles and drop them in the correct blank above

relics

Martyrdom of Polycarp

bones

Fill in the Blank

What term is this?

an antique or souvenir that came from either the possessions of a saint (like his/her cloak, sandals, scrolls) or actual remains of the saint's dead physical body

the word is found in this excerpt, use the singular

Dropdown

Homes during the third century began to be used not as "homes that also served a church gatherings" but primarily as church gathering places.

Read the excerpt:

Later, as congregations ​

Select answer

, some houses were ​

Select answer

devoted to divine worship. Thus, the ​

Select answer

, found in the excavations of ​

Select answer

and built before 256, seems to have been a private dwelling that was ​

Select answer

.

Multiple Choice

This means that by the 250s, Christians throughout the Roman Empire were beginning to have buildings that were devoted full-time to church usage. The church building did not necessarily any more function primarily as a residential home first.

• Mostly true

• 100% false

Multiple Choice

This also means that by the 250s, the number of Christian believers in the Roman Empire was growing profoundly.

• True

• False

Multiple Choice

As the number of Christians grew, into the third century AD, it was almost impossible for all the Christians of any particular city to meet in a single building.

• True

• False

Multiple Choice

The practice of using a fragmentum grew as a way to demonstrate symbolic unity amongst all the churches of a given city.

• True

• False

Fill in the Blank

a piece of the communion bread taken from the church where the bishop of the city attended and then was sent to other churches in the same city

Multiple Choice

The word "diptych" has a root of "di" in it.

Di was Greek for"

• 1

• 2

• 3

• 4

Fill in the Blank

So we know that whatever a "diptych" was, it had ___ parts

Multiple Choice

The diptych of the Early Church (by the third century) was basically a list of:

• all the names of all the Christians of a city

• a list of the bishops of other churches, both near and far

• a list of heretics

Multiple Choice

If a bishop's name was delete from the diptych, that was most likely an indication that:

• he had been raised to the office of Pope

• he was considered either a heretic or had abandoned the faith (excommunicated)

Match

Match the best pairs.

• a list of bishops that churches could pray for; watch out if your name is taken off this list! :)

• not always a secret lair for clandestine Christian activity, but a routine place of Christian gathering and worship; in Rome, it was underground beneath the city streets

• churches were not fully legal entities, so Christians could form these legal entities in order to be able to purchase cemetery property

• pieces of the communion bread from the church of a city bishop, shared with other churches, as an act of unity

• the bones of or some other object related to a dead Christian saint, kept by later believers as an act of honor/respect

diptych

catacomb

funeral society

fragmentum

relics

• diptych

• catacomb

• funeral society

• fragmentum

• relics

Match

Match the following, as a review of concepts

• since Christian churches were not fully legal entities, Christians would instead form these groups that WERE legal in the Empire and use them to purchase cemetery property

• souvenirs collected from a dead saint’s possessions or even a piece of bone from the dead saint’s body, kept by later Christians to honor the departed hero of the faith

• not always secret lairs where clandestine churches could conduct their foul business (note the tone of levity in this clue), but instead a place for entombing the dead where Christians often met to worship God and pay their respects to the saints; in the city of Rome, these were located in underground caverns

•  pieces of bread taken from the communion at a city bishop’s church and sent to other churches throughout the city as an act of unity

• a list of bishops that the churches could pray for; having your name taken off these lists basically meant you were in trouble, bubba!  🙂

  (I'm looking at you, Arius!)

Funeral societies

Relics

Catacombs

Fragmentum

Diptych

• Funeral societies

• Relics

• Catacombs

• Fragmentum

• Diptych

The Christian Calendar (study this for the next question!!!

At the beginning, the Christian calendar was rather simple and was basically a weekly calendar. Every Sunday was a sort of Easter, and a day of joy; and every Friday was a day of penance, fasting, and sorrow. Rather early, for reasons that are not altogether clear, Wednesday also became a day of fasting. There was a very special Sunday, once a year, the day of resurrection, the greatest of Christian celebrations. Unfortunately, Christians were not in agreement as to when the great day was to be celebrated, for some thought it should be set in accordance with the Jewish Passover, while others believed that it should always be celebrated on a Sunday. By the second century there were bitter debates about the matter. To this day, although for other reasons, not all churches agree on the manner in which the date of Easter Sunday is to be determined.

Match

Match the following, after having studied the previous slide. These are Christian practices regarding the weekly calendar that had developed by the third century.

• like a miniature Easter celebration

• a day of fasting, penance, and sorrow, sort of like a miniature Good Friday

• for some reason that is not clear, this became a mid-week day of fasting (and Protestants have had mid-week services on this day, some even still today)

• the single day that the churches celebrated the anniversary of the Resurrection

• some thought Resurrection Sunday should be tied to this Old Testament celebration each year

Sunday of every week

Friday of every week

Wednesday of each week

a yearly special Sunday

Jewish Passover

• Sunday of every week

• Friday of every week

• Wednesday of each week

• a yearly special Sunday

• Jewish Passover

Multiple Choice

This excerpt tells us that by the third century, Christians were still baptized on the same day as their conversion to Christianity.

• True

• False

Multiple Choice

So, if new Christians were not baptized immediately upon conversion in the third century, when were they baptized?

• the day after they had been converted

• the following Easter Sunday after they had been converted

Drag and Drop

Baptism was, besides ​

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, the other great event of Christian worship. As has already been said, in order to ​

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one ​

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.

Drag these tiles and drop them in the correct blank above

communion

partake of communion

had to be baptized

Multiple Choice

This means, essentially, that Christian believers of the Roman Empire, by the third century, had made ______ the requirement for being permitted to participate in communion.

• baptism

• death

• the Eucharist

Multiple Choice

In the Acts of the Apostles, believers had been baptized:

• only once per year, during Easter services, IF the new believer proved his/her faith

• as soon as they converted to Christianity

Multiple Choice

In the Acts of the Apostles, believers had been baptized as soon as they were converted.

This was feasible (able to easily be done), because:

• Jewish people who converted to Christianity had the background knowledge to understand the kind of life they were going to devote themselves to

• those early believers paid a lot of money to get baptized quick, kind of like a speed pass at Wahoo

​Read this carefully, ya heard?

Multiple Choice

The Church basically had to adapt baptism methods/practices, though, as Gentiles became converted.

Gentiles did not know as much about the Judeo-Christian ethic, so the Early Church believed that they needed:

• to pay more money if they wanted to be baptized sooner

• a period of time to prepare, be instructed, and to prove that their faith was genuine, that they would adhere to the Christian ethic

• to become perfect human beings first, because you cannot be a Christian unless you are perfect first

Fill in the Blank

that period of time where the new believer would have a period of "preparation, trial, and instruction" before they were baptized has become known as the "___________"

Fill in the Blank

if you were undergoing that period of catechumenate, you were called a:

(it's in the plural form in the reading, but use the singular here so it makes grammatical sense)

Drag and Drop

As the date approached for their baptism, they were taught the meaning of the ​

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or ​

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that they would be asked to ​

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at their baptism. Finally, shortly before being baptized, they were ​

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and added to the ​

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of those to be baptized.

Drag these tiles and drop them in the correct blank above

creed

baptismal formula

affirm

examined

list

Multiple Choice

Baptism in this early period was administered how many times per year?

• 1

• 2

• 12 (once per month)

• every time someone accepted Christ

Multiple Choice

On what day would this baptism ceremony take place in an Early Church?

• Christmas

• Easter Sunday

• every time someone received Christ as their savior

Match

On what day would this baptism ceremony take place in an Early Church?

• days for the catechumens to fast and pray

• the time and day that catechumens would be baptized

• the amount of clothing that the catechumen would wear during the baptism

• the clothing given to a catechumen when they emerged from the baptismal waters

• what happened after the catechumen received their white robes

Friday and Saturday of Easter week

Easter Sunday morning

none

white robes

anointed (with oil)

• Friday and Saturday of Easter week

• Easter Sunday morning

• none

• white robes

• anointed (with oil)

Drag and Drop

After all the candidates were baptized, they went in procession to the meeting place, where the neophytes joined the rest of the congregation and partook of ​

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for the first time. The newly baptized were then given ​

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to drink, as a sign that they were thoroughly ​

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, both ​

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. And they were also given ​

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, as a sign of the Promised Land into which they were now entering.

Drag these tiles and drop them in the correct blank above

communion

water

outside and inside

milk and honey

cleansed

Drag and Drop

Baptism was normally performed by ​

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or with the neophyte ​

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in the water, and then having water ​

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. The ​

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or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, a document of uncertain date, prefers that it be done in ​

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. But where water was scarce it could be administered by pouring water three times over the head, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Drag these tiles and drop them in the correct blank above

immersion

kneeling

poured over the head

Didache

“living”—that is, running—water

Open Ended

1. If you have been baptized (if you haven't, no pressure, no judgment), how were you baptized?
   Immersion?

   Sprinkling?

   Water poured over your head?

2. Do you remember your emotions on that day? What were they?

Open Ended

Do you believe in infant baptism? Should the Church allow or forbid infant baptism?

(note, Mr. Beavers did NOT say infant "dedication"...he wrote "baptism")

Multiple Choice

Is there clear evidence that the Early Church of the first three centuries baptized infants?

• Yes

• No

"In preparation for these events" means "in preparation for the Easter season

Multiple Choice

To prepare for Easter, the churches of the third century had a time of fasting and penance. Today we call the 40 Days Before Easter:

• Lent
• Epiphany
• Ascension
• Advent

Multiple Choice

This is not in the text here, but it seems to Mr. Beavers that early Christians would have celebrated Pentecost less as a Jewish holiday and more as remembering:

• the day Jesus was born

• the day Jesus was Resurrected

• the day that the Holy Spirit filled the disciples in the Upper Room

Multiple Choice

The earliest day that had a feast/party in celebration of the birth of Jesus was:

• December 25
• March 25
• April 1
• January 6

Fill in the Blank

The earliest day that had a feast/party in celebration of the birth of Jesus was:

Fill in the Blank

This day was called ________, and it was considered the day Jesus was "manifested" or brought gifts by the Wise Men and recognized as King

Multiple Choice

Later, in the Western part of the Roman Empire, the traditional date to celebrate the birth of Christ changed to:

• January 1
• March 25
• November 1
• December 25

Multiple Choice

That day, December 25, was actually a _______, a festival for Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun) and happened to coincide with the Winter Solstice

• the date of Easter

• pagan festival

• the original Halloween

Multiple Choice

After the time of which Roman Emperor did December 25 get celebrated more as a Christian holiday than a pagan holiday?

• Nero

• Marcus Aurelius

• Constantine

Open Ended

1. What was your favorite new thing to learn in this Quizizz?

2. What was one thing you already knew?

3. Did this help you learn in general? Or do you prefer lectures?