Ekklesia: Bride of Christ or Whore of Babylon – Judy Gale with David Goa

Ekklesia: Bride of Christ or Whore of Babylon – Judy Gale with David Goa

JUDY GALE – THE CHURCH IN TRANSITION

According to church historians, biblical scholars, and historical liturgists, the transition from informal house gatherings to formal liturgical services was not an overnight event, but a gradual evolution occurring across the 1st through 6th centuries CE.

However, scholars pinpoint one pivotal watershed moment: the conversion of Emperor Constantine and the Edict of Milan in 313 CE.

Below is the historical trajectory and breakdown of how scholars divide this transition into distinct stages.

1. Early 1st Century: House Gatherings (Oikos)

• • Primary Model: Small, relational, and organic gatherings in private residences or courtyard spaces.
  • Structure: Worship centered around shared meals (the Agape feast or “love feast”), communal prayer, spontaneous charismatic participation, and teaching.
  • Leadership: Leadership was fluid, functional, and relational, utilizing home hosts, traveling apostles, and local elders rather than a distinct, dressed clergy class.

2. Late 2nd to 3rd Century: Adapted House Churches (Domus Ecclesiae)

Even before legalization, growing church size and increasing formalization began altering how Christians met:

• • Architectural Modifications: As congregations outgrew standard living rooms, wealthy members dedicated entire homes exclusively to Christian use. Internal walls were knocked down to create larger assembly halls, and dedicated rooms were converted into baptisteries.
    • Archaeological Example: The Dura-Europos house church in Syria (dated c. 230 CE) is the oldest surviving example of a converted residence used exclusively as a church building.
  • Early Liturgical Standardization: During this period (evidenced in texts like the Didache and Justin Martyr’s First Apology, c. 155 CE), the Eucharist was separated from the full communal dinner (Agape meal) and began taking on a more structured order of service (readings, homily, common prayer, eucharistic bread and wine).

3. The 4th Century Watershed: Imperial Legalization and the Basilica Era

The decade between 313 CE (Edict of Milan) and 380 CE (Edict of Thessalonica, which made Christianity the official state religion) completely revolutionized Christian worship.

Key Factors of the Transformation:

1. Shift to the Basilica:

Christians avoided adapting pagan temple designs (which were built as small houses for a deity’s idol rather than large human assemblies). Instead, Constantine sponsored the adoption of the Roman civic basilica—a large rectangular hall traditionally used for imperial law courts and public assemblies.

1. • Notable examples built under Constantine include Old St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.
2. Adoption of Imperial Court Rituals:

As worship moved into massive public spaces sponsored by the Roman state, Christian liturgy absorbed elements of imperial Roman court etiquette:

1. • Processions: Entrance processions with incense, cross-bearers, and candles mirrored Roman magistrate entrances.
   • Vestments: Bishops and priests began wearing formal garments derived from Roman civic officials’ attire.
   • Physical Separation: The altar was elevated and placed in the apse (where the Roman judge formerly sat), creating a clear spatial division between the clergy (sanctuary) and the laity (nave).
2. Demographic Explosion:

Mass conversions followed imperial favor. The intimate, conversational fellowship of 20–40 people in a private home was functionally impossible for congregations numbering in the hundreds or thousands, necessitating fixed, solemn, and highly structured worship liturgies.

4. 5th to 6th Centuries: Codification into Catholic and Orthodox Rites

By the late 5th and 6th centuries (culminating in events like Emperor Justinian’s construction of the Hagia Sophia in 537 CE), the transition was complete:

• • In the East (Byzantine/Eastern Orthodox): Liturgies became heavily mystical, featuring ornate iconography, majestic choral chants, and the use of the iconostasis (a wall of icons separating the altar from the congregation to emphasize the mystery of the Eucharist).
  • In the West (Roman Catholic): Liturgies became standardized into the solemn, structured Latin Mass with fixed responses, liturgical calendars, dynamic cathedral architecture (evolving into Romanesque and later Gothic styles), and centralized episcopal control.

Summary Timeline

Era	Primary Location	Primary Style & Atmosphere
c. 30–150 CE	Private Homes (Oikos)	Participatory, intimate, shared meals, fluid structure.
c. 150–313 CE	Dedicated House Churches (Domus Ecclesiae)	Semi-formal, early liturgical orders emerging, distinct baptismal spaces.
c. 313–400 CE	Public Civic Basilicas	Imperial court-style ritualism, large public assemblies, elevated clergy.
c. 500+ CE	Cathedrals & Grand Sanctuaries	Fully codified Latin Mass (West) and Divine Liturgy (East) with formal vestments, solemn chants, and majestic architecture.

DAVID GOA – How the Church thinks of Herself. Who is the Ekklesia

What you have provided above maps a movement in the development of church structures. That is fine.

A parallel question comes to mind when we consider how the tradition of the church thinks about herself: who is she, the Ekklesia?  Who does she say she is? It is a naught and knotty matter full of twists and turns.

There is a golden strand in the theology of the church about how the Ekklesia thinks of herself as the Bride of Christ. Simply said the central matter is how we, who think of ourselves as part of the Church respond to the question: “Who do you say I am?” Since Jesus Christ asked this question of his disciples and of Pilate and does so of us as well, and since his is the fullest expression we have been given of both all we know of God and the fullness of the human nature, Christology is our anthropology. Christ asks the question and shows forth a response as he unveils the human nature in his way of being throughout the Gospels.

When the institution of the church provides a scaffold for cultivating in the faithful a respond to this question and midwifes the disciplines helping us move toward a habit of Christ-like response, it participates in the presence of the kingdom (commonwealth) of God. In such moments the Ekklesia, like Christ, is the lover of the world. When it does so it is the bride of Christ. When it does not do this, it is the whore of Babylon, a kind of servant of anti-Christ.

What is the habit of mind the spiritual disciplines the Church seek to cultivate? Simply, to draw near to God and neighbour (including presumed enemies as we read in the parable of the Good Samaritan) draw near to communion in all that comes to greet us in life. In all times and places when a human being is move toward sorrow, forgiveness, compassion and mercy, wonder and delight, and joy, in all such movement, the mind and heart, consciously or not, recognize the image of God in the other, and the wonder and glory of creation. Then, and only then, the Ekklesia breaks out as the Holy Spirit breaks in. In such moments the simple response of the soul opens and restores the beauty of creation. When this occurs, we witness the soul (psyche) restored to the image of God, the lover of the world. When this does not occur, the soul is clouded by the suffering of an inner passion projecting and presuming about the other, self, and the world, and thus turns creation into a matter of our own making. The disciplines of the Church intend to heal the soul of presumption and projection, flee alienation, so we may live in communion with the wonder and mystery of all that is addressing us. It is a lovely matter to behold and “it is everywhere present and fills all things”, as the evoking of the Holy Spirit in the ancient prayer of the Church proclaims.  This is the work, the vocation, of the Ekklesia.

Just as this disposition arises in strange and odd and ordinary places it sometimes also arises within the institution of the church much to my joy. The grace of God holds the world together tenderly. That is why a life of communing love is not the preserve of the church but its garden to cultivate. Anytime the institutional church is not anchored in its vocation it is an ideological society, a fraternity of presumed self-interest looking inward. When the Ekklesia scaffold’s the spiritual disciplines toward communing love for God’s world it is the Bride of Christ.

Churches always oscillated between being the whore of Babylon and the Bride of Christ just as each of our souls oscillates between them.

From the time of the “people of the way” and the early configuration of the Church in house gatherings, Oikos, to adapted house churches, Domus Ecclesiae, culminating in imperial legalization and the Basilica era following Constantine; down to the Protestant Reformation and the development of denominations, and, for the last few centuries, into prayer homes and fraternities of the righteous, from mission churches, properly “squared” Gospel churches, and brethren fellowships including apocalyptic cults; in each and all of them the whore of Babylon’s hegemony has been ubiquitous and the Bride of Christ has also moved quietly when the faithful have responded to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. It is ever so.

In the liturgical life of Orthodox and Roman Catholic tradition, elaborate forms from the ancient temple practice of Jews in Jerusalem and imperial court ritual, both East and West, were adopted and “baptize.” They were seen as elegant forms gesturing toward the glory of God and the presence of the commonwealth of God holding up the glory of creation and human well-being. Not surprisingly, as so often with that which shows forth beauty, both in ancient times and now, they are misunderstood and misappropriated and corrupted and become the garments of the whore of Babylon, self-aggrandizing postures of authority and privilege.

All our institutional forms are earthen vessels. Each of us is an earthen vessel. Each of us bears the image of God in our being as human. When grace abounds we move toward the presence of the commonwealth of God, an unfolding mystery coming to greet us. All institutions, including the Ekklesia are shaped and formed by fragile human beings. How do we respond together to the question, “Who do you say I am? When grace unfolds as presence in communion, we are the Bride of Christ. When we shape churches around fraternities of self-righteousness and presumed self-interest the “Ekklesia” is clothed as the whore of Babylon.

There is something comforting in knowing that at times both stand before us and we choose and we have chosen one sometimes and sometimes welcomed the other. Our solidarity as sinners, when recognized, offers an opportunity for humility. When we awaken to the realization that we have received God’s grace beyond our measure, the solidarity of grace unfolds. Humility and wonder open toward a world made new. It is a great relief.

Scholia

1. When Martin Luther was summed to give an account of his teaching before the papal nuncio, Karl von Miltitz, in January 1519, if my memory serves me, the nuncio agreed that the pope was and represented “the whore of Babylon.” We all know that brother Martin and Erasmus has written about it much better than you or me. If you are successful in your movement, we will not only have a pope in Rome, but you will also have created a pope in every human heart.
2. In the mid 1960s I was an interloper at a gathering on the Westside of Chicago for black pastors and black community organizers. Ivan Illich (1926-2002), Catholic priest, Jesuit, and one of the finest thinkers about our form of modernity whose work I loved, spent the day unwrapping how institutions and ideologies work. His final remark, given as he kneeled on a table in front of some fifty black activists who so wanted institutions, religious and public, to work for justice: “I am the son of a bitch, the son of a whore, a son of the Roman Catholic Church, the son of the whore of Babylon. God help me if I become a motherfucker.” We live in and through, but not confined by, institutions. All institutions are earthen vessels and never and cannot ever express the fullness of the commonwealth of God. In this sense we are all sons and daughters of institutions that are bitches. If we image, or so I understood him that afternoon, that we can inseminate them with our pure righteousness, remake them in our own image, and give birth to something ideal and perfect, we become what he suggested in the latter part of his comment.