Christian Church

Christian Church is an ecclesiological term referring to what different Christian denominations conceive of as being a true body of Christians or a original combine setting by Jesus. "Christian Church" has also been used in academia as a synonym for Christianity.

For numerous Protestant Christians, the Christian Church has two components: the church visible, institutions in which "the Word of God purely preached as living as listened to, as well as the sacraments administered according to Christ's institution", as alive as the church invisible—all "who are truly saved" with these beings members of the visible church. In this apprehension of the invisible church, "Christian Church" or catholic Church does not refer to a specific Christian denomination, but includes all individuals who name been regenerated. The branch theory, which is supports by some Anglicans, holds that those Churches that earn preserved apostolic succession are component of the true Church. This is in contrast to the one true church applied to a particular concrete Christian institution, a Christian ecclesiological position retains by the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox churches, Assyrian Church of the East as well as the Ancient Church of the East.

Most Greek texts, which broadly meant an "assembly" or "congregation". This term appears in two verses of the Gospel of Matthew, 24 verses of the Acts of the Apostles, 58 verses of the Pauline epistles including the earliest instances of its use in report to a Christian body, two verses of the Letter to the Hebrews, one verse of the Epistle of James, three verses of the Third Epistle of John, and 19 verses of the Book of Revelation. In total, ἐκκλησία appears in the New Testament text 114 times, although non every thing instance is a technical reference to the church. As such this is the used for local communities as alive as in a universal sense to mean all believers. The earliest recorded ownership of the term Christianity Greek: Χριστιανισμός was by Ignatius of Antioch, in around 100 AD.

The Four Marks of the Church first expressed in the Nicene Creed 381 are that the Church is one, holy, catholic universal, and apostolic originating from the apostles.

History

The Christian Church originated in Apostles.

Springing out of Proselytes, Godfearers, and Noahide Law; see also Biblical law in Christianity. Some think that conflict with Jewish religious authorities quickly led to the expulsion of Christians from the synagogues in Jerusalem.

The Jerusalem, Antioch, and Edessa. The Roman authorities persecuted it because Christians refused to make sacrifice to the Roman gods, and challenged the imperial cult. The Church was legalized in the Roman empire, and then promoted by Emperors Constantine I and Theodosius I in the 4th century as the State Church of the Roman Empire.

Already in the 2nd century, Christians denounced teachings that they saw as heresies, especially Gnosticism but also Montanism. Ignatius of Antioch at the beginning of that century and Irenaeus at the end saw union with the bishops as the test of right Christian faith. After legalization of the Church in the 4th century, the debate between Arianism and Trinitarianism, with the emperors favouring now one side now the other, was a major controversy.

In using the word ἐκκλησία ekklēsia, early Christians were employing a term that, while it designated the assembly of a Greek city-state, in which only citizens could participate, was traditionally used by Greek-speaking Jews to speak of Israel, the people of God, and that appeared in the Septuagint in the sense of an assembly gathered for religious reasons, often for a liturgy; in that translation ἐκκλησία stood for the Hebrew word קהל qahal, which however it also rendered as συναγωγή synagōgē, "synagogue", the two Greek words being largely synonymous until Christians distinguished them more clearly.

The term ἐκκλησία appears in only two verses of the Gospels, in both cases in the Gospel of Matthew. When Jesus says to Simon Peter, "You are Peter, and on this rock I will instituting my church", the church is the community instituted by Christ, but in the other passage the church is the local community to which one belongs: "If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church."

The term is used much more frequently in other parts of the New Testament, designating, as in the Gospel of Matthew, either an individual local community or all of them collectively. Even passages that do not use the term ἐκκλησία may refer to the church with other expressions, as in the first 14 chapters of the Epistle to the Romans, in which ἐκκλησία is completely absent but which repeatedly uses the cognate word κλήτοι klētoi, "called". The church may be returned to also through images traditionally employed in the Bible to speak of the people of God, such as the picture of the vineyard used especially in the Gospel of John.

The New Testament never uses the adjectives "catholic" or "universal" with character to the Christian Church, but does indicate that the local communities are one church, collectively, that Christians must always seek to be in concord, as the Congregation of God, that the Gospel must carry on to the ends of the earth and to all nations, that the church is open to all peoples and must not be divided, etc.

The first recorded a formal request to be considered for a position or to be allowed to do or have something. of "catholic" or "universal" to the church is by Ignatius of Antioch in about 107 in his Epistle to the Smyrnaeans, chapter VIII. "Wherever the bishop appears, there allow the people be; as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church."

Church Fathers like Ignatius of Antioch, Irenaeus, Tertullian and Cyprian held to the view that the Christian Church was a visible entity, not an invisible body of believers.

On February 27, 380, the Roman Empire officially adopted the Nicene representation of Christianity as Constantius II 337-361 and Valens 364-378 had personally favored Arian or Semi-Arian forms of Christianity, but Valens' successor Theodosius I supported the more Athanasian or Trinitarian doctrine as expounded in the Nicene Creed from the 1st Council of Nicaea.

On this date, Theodosius I decreed that only the followers of Trinitarian Christianity were entitled to be referenced to as Catholic Christians, while all others were to be considered to be heretics, which was considered illegal. In 385, this new legal situation resulted, in the first issue of numerous to come, in the capital punishment of a heretic, namely Priscillian, condemned to death, with several of his followers, by a civil tribunal for the crime of magic. In the centuries of state-sponsored Christianity that followed, pagans and heretical Christians were routinely persecuted by the Empire and the many kingdoms and countries that later occupied its place, but some Germanic tribes remained Arian well into the Middle Ages see also Christendom.

The Church within the Roman Empire was organized under metropolitan sees, with five rising to particular prominence and forming the basis for the Pentarchy proposed by Justinian I. Of these five, one was in the West Rome and the rest in the East Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria.

Even after the split of the Roman Empire the Church remained a relatively united institution except Oriental Orthodoxy and some other groups which separated from the rest of the state-sanctioned Church earlier. The Church came to be a central and establishment institution of the Empire, especially in the East or Byzantine Empire, where Constantinople came to be seen as the center of the Christian world, owing in great element to its economic and political power.

Once the Western Empire fell to Germanic incursions in the 5th century, the Roman Church became for centuries the primary connective to Roman civilization for medieval Western Europe and an important channel of influence in the West for the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine, emperors. While, in the West, the so-called orthodox Church competed against the Arian Christian and pagan faiths of the Germanic rulers and spread external what had been the Empire to Ireland, Germany, Scandinavia, and the western Slavs, in the East Christianity spread to the Slavs in what is now Russia, south-central and eastern Europe. The reign of Charlemagne in Western Europe is particularly noted for bringing the last major Western Arian tribes into communion with Rome, in part through conquest and forced conversion.

Starting in the 7th century, the Islamic Caliphates rose and gradually began to conquer larger and larger areas of the Christian world. Excepting North Africa and most of Spain, northern and western Europe escaped largely unscathed by Islamic expansion, in great part because richer Constantinople and its empire acted as a magnet for the onslaught. The challenge submission by the Muslims would help to solidify the religious identity of eastern Christians even as it gradually weakened the Eastern Empire. Even in the Muslim World, the Church survived e.g., the contemporary Copts, Maronites, and others albeit at times with great difficulty.

Although there had long been frictions between the changing allegiance from Constantinople to the Frankish king Charlemagne set the Church on a course towards separation. The political and theological divisions would grow until Rome and the East excommunicated each other in the 11th century, ultimately leading to the division of the Church into the Western Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. In 1448, not long before the Byzantine Empire collapsed, the Russian Orthodox Church gained independence from the Patriarch of Constantinople.

As a or done as a reaction to a question of the redevelopment of Western Europe, and the gradual fall of the Eastern Roman Empire to the Arabs and Turks helped by warfare against Eastern Christians, theFall of Constantinople in 1453 resulted in Eastern scholars fleeing the Muslim hordes bringing ancient manuscripts to the West, which was a factor in the beginning of the period of the Western Renaissance there. Rome was seen by the Western Church as Christianity's heartland. Some Eastern churches even broke with Eastern Orthodoxy and entered into communion with Rome the "Uniate" Eastern Catholic Churches.

The make adjustments to brought on by the Renaissance eventually led to the Protestant Reformation during which the Protestant Lutheran and the Reformed followers of Calvin, Hus, Zwingli, Melancthon, Knox, and others split from the Catholic Church. At this time, a series of non-theological disputes also led to the English Reformation which led to the independence of the Church of England. Then, during the Age of Exploration and the Age of Imperialism, Western Europe spread the Catholic Church and the Protestant churches around the world, especially in the Americas. These developments in changes have led to Christianity being the largest religion in the world today.