Primary Authors & Sources
From the apostolic age through persecution and the church under Rome to the first great ecclesiastical history, students read how the gospel took root in the empire. Philip Schaff’s History of the Christian Church, Volume I: Apostolic Christianity maps the New Testament period as church history—mission, worship, and doctrine before the fathers’ libraries. August Neander’s History of the Planting and Training of the Christian Church by the Apostles narrates how apostolic communities were founded and formed. William Mitchell Ramsay’s The Church in the Roman Empire before A.D. 170 places the gospel in cities, roads, and imperial law with a classicist’s eye for Acts and the second century. Herbert B. Workman’s Persecution in the Early Church treats suffering and renunciation as historical fact, not romantic legend. Eusebius of Caesarea’s Ecclesiastical History remains the primary narrative bridge from the apostles to Constantine. Together they serve house-church ministry that knows its first centuries.
What You Will Study
Students study the expansion of primitive Christianity from Pentecost through the apostolic era, examining Acts, New Testament epistles, and early second-century sources on church growth under Roman rule. The course covers missionary expansion, Gentile inclusion, persecution, organizational development, and the transition from apostolic to post-apostolic leadership. Readings include primary patristic witnesses alongside scholarly histories that contextualize house churches, urban congregations, and the spread of the gospel across the Mediterranean. Students analyze how doctrine, worship, and discipline took shape in communities founded by apostles and their immediate successors. Particular attention falls on parallels between first-century house fellowship and contemporary Reformed house church practice in the Florida Keys.
Course Objectives
Objectives include narrating the geographic and ethnic expansion of the early church, identifying major figures and controversies in Acts and the Pauline mission, explaining how Roman political and religious structures affected Christian witness, and comparing primitive church patterns with modern ecclesial forms. Students will evaluate claims about early Christian communism, egalitarianism, and episcopal development with historical care. The course cultivates appreciation for the Spirit's work through ordinary believers in house gatherings and public proclamation. Written work requires essays on persecution, martyrdom, and the transition to institutional forms without romanticizing or despising either era. Students will articulate lessons for contemporary mission and church planting.
Ministry & Life Application
Understanding primitive Christianity encourages modern believers to hold lightly to cultural accretions while fiercely guarding apostolic faith and practice. House church leaders in the Keys find historical warrant and practical wisdom in studying how the earliest Christians worshipped, shared goods, endured suffering, and proclaimed resurrection hope. Pastoral ministry gains perspective when shepherds see their congregations as heirs of a movement that began in upper rooms and spread through faithful witness. This course inspires evangelistic courage and ecclesial simplicity rooted in Scripture rather than novelty. The church today is strengthened by knowing its origins in the Spirit-empowered community that turned the Roman world upside down.