A Quote on Church Buildings

I found it here:

WICKED SHEPHERDS : Where are the Churches?
http://www.wickedshepherds.com/WhereAreTheChurches.html

"Church buildings were unknown amongst the Christians of the New Testament. They had no permanent edifice around which to build their activities and programs. They had no building to go to in order for them to listen to one hour monologues once a week."

One thing is certain : there were no one hour monologues in the early Church.

Sermons are not liturgy, they are an extra to the liturgy.

Imagine everyone understands both the Epistle and the Gospel, no need for a sermon. Just creed and on to matters even more momentuous than the Gospel and the Creed. On to the Sacrifice according to the order of Melchisedec.

Sermons are a secondary thing, one version is people are encouraged to ask questions after the reading or after Holy Mass and the priest answers them. Another one is, when the pronunciation of the Gospel became hieratic to exclusion of unlearned comprehension (sth which happened when Alcuin bettered Latin pronunciation in Tours to Classic or near Classic standards preserved in England) you add an explanatory sermon in the normal pronunciation (Council of Tours 813, about a decade after Alcuin's arrival, 14 years, I think).

So, either way, a sermon was not likely to be a one hour long monologue. That thing came with the abhominations of the Reformation.

But is the quote wrong on anything too?

Well, the fact is, the Church as "body of believers" was an institution (since they had bishops, priests, deacons, since there was a teaching authority, on which you measured not so much "spirituality" as orthodoxy.

But they also had buildings.

Acts 1:12-15 [12] Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount that is called Olivet, which is nigh Jerusalem, within a sabbath day's journey. [13] And when they were come in, they went up into an upper room, where abode Peter and John, James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James of Alpheus, and Simon Zelotes, and Jude the brother of James. [14] All these were persevering with one mind in prayer with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren. [15] In those days Peter rising up in the midst of the brethren, said: (now the number of persons together was about an hundred and twenty:)

• 1) a building is mentioned, sure, "upper room" does not signify all of the building, only part of it, but it involves the architectonic fact of a building.
• 2) if 120 persons were present when St Peter spoke up, obviously, the building was known among the disciples of Christ.
• 3) Nowhere in the NT does it say the Christians lost this building before year 70 AD.
• 4) there is even another indication they had a building in next chapter:

Acts 2:44-46 [44] And all they that believed, were together, and had all things common. [45] Their possessions and goods they sold, and divided them to all, according as every one had need. [46] And continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they took their meat with gladness and simplicity of heart;

• 4a) If everyone sold the possessions, this means that the house Churches here mentioned were common property of the Church, and therefore Church buildings.
• 4b) Obviously, practically arranging the division of goods is much facilitated by the existence of a building.

Therefore, buildings are part of the New Testament plan of the Church. Bethlehem involves a building, even if it was a cave : the stable.

However, best wishes to avoiding one hour long monologues!

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St. Osmund of Salisbury
4.XII.2018

The same site is giving a truncated quote from St. Justin Martyr as evidence Church buildings were unknown in the early Church. Here is chapter two of St Justin's martyrdom:

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; but being invisible, fills heaven and earth, and everywhere is worshipped and glorified by the faithful." 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; and during the whole time (and I am now living in Rome for the second time) I am unaware of any other meeting than his. And if any one wished to come to me, I communicated to him the doctrines of truth." Rusticus said, "Are you not, then, a Christian?" Justin said, "Yes, I am a Christian."

from: The Martyrdom of Justin
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0133.htm

Obviously, the meeting of Martinus at the Timiotinian Bath was already discovered by Rusticus, so St. Justin was not betraying a Church, this one being already "busted"./HGL