Review of The Earliest Christian Meeting Places

Adams, Edward. The Earliest Christian Meeting Places: Almost Exclusively Houses? Rev. ed. LNTS 450. London, T&T Clark: 2016.

I have been a part of house churches for many years. When I lived in Chicago I was first introduced to the idea of intentional community, where we prioritized time together, smaller intimate gatherings, and de-emphasized rote programs most prevalent in larger church structures. I continued to find myself in house church communities as I moved to Kentucky. In Scotland, while I am not a part of a house church, I am part of an intentional community that holds many of the same values. In any case, I have personally been shaped by my ecclesial experiences and much of thoughts and writings are directly indebted to my personal experience in these settings. Even my early PhD research was focused on the early Church.

One of the strengths of being embedded within these communities is to see that often, our commitments to certain structures and programs are artifacts of recent history or tradition and not biblically situated. In other words, they tend to be preferences that a church has incorporated into its worship, yet defended as if integral to one's faith. Deconstructing assumptions about church practice and identity have been going on in my life and in others committed to this expression of faith for years. But with this vantage point comes a potential weakness or blind spot among those in the house church movement. That is that we can hold implicitly or explicitly the idea that meeting in a house is inherently better than meeting in a building. The historical basis for this resides in the belief that the early Christians met exclusively in homes.

This brings us to Edward Adams book, The Earliest Christian Meeting Places. He argues against the idea that early Christians met almost exclusively in houses (AEH). Rather, he evaluates the New Testament, other literature, and archaeological findings to conclude that they met in a diverse set of locations. The early Christian experience was more complex than what we might think, and encourages us to grapple with this information. His book has two main goals, one is to argue that the evidence for meeting in houses is not as prominent as typically thought, and that they met in a variety of settings (p. 10).

Adams does not dispute that they met in homes and affirms that this was a dominant feature of early Christians. Some of the most illuminating sections are those where he enumerates a list of texts unambiguously referring to house gatherings (pp. 52–55; In Acts: 2:46; 5:42; 10:24–48; 12:12–17; 16:40; 20:7–12; 20:18–35; 28:17–28). But he offers a few caveats to some other well-known passages in Acts that we might assume constitute direct evidence for house church gatherings, such as the meeting to choose Judas’s successor in Acts 1:15–26, the location of the Holy Spirit gathering at Pentecost in 2:1–4, and in 8:3 where Saul is going ‘house to house’ and taking Jesus followers into custody. In 1:15–26, this meeting is typically mistaken to be in the same place as in Acts 1:13 in the upper room. But the transition ‘in those days,’ and the change in the number of people from a smaller group to about 120 in 1:15, pushes back against understanding them to be the same place. He therefore argues that the Pentecost prayer meeting is also not in the same location as the upper room in 1:13 (pp. 56–57). The proximity to outsiders listening in on this group in 2:6 and the even larger gathering of people, the 3000 who were present (2:42), show that this is more likely out in a public space and not in a smaller residence. This event most likely took place somewhere connected to the temple, like in one of the temple precincts, which might make sense of the 'the house' language in 2:2. In Acts, house (οἶκος) can also refer to the Temple (Acts 7:47 and 49). In the case of Saul in 8:3, this could simply be a house-to-house search as opposed to targeting places where he knew they worshipped (p. 58). The text does not unambiguously clarify Saul’s method of search which should cause us to temper our definitive conclusions. The implications of Adam's work is apparent: what we sometimes use as direct evidence, might not be so clear under scrutiny.

In the literary data, there is a fascinating example of Christian’s attempting to secure a property for their own use (pp. 83–84). In the Historia Augusta, a collection of Roman biographies, describes such a situation during the reign of Alexander Severus (222–235 CE). The dispute was between two groups wanting to repurpose this building. These groups included Christians who desired to repurpose it as a place of worship, while the others were restaurant owners, wanting to use it as a restaurant. The emperor in this case, sided with the Christians. Along with other references to this building, there seems to be evidence that this was not an adapted house, but rather, a spacious public hall. The point is that there was a legal dispute for a larger building to be used for Christian gatherings. Thus, expanding what we know about Christian gathering places pre-Constantine.

Along with this literary evidence, he evaluates the archaeological landscape, filling in needed gaps in what we typically understand to be Christian’s meeting places. He assesses possible locations like the hall at a Roman army camp at Megiddo; Roman shops and workplaces; warehouses; burial grounds; urban open spaces; inns and hotels; dining halls; and even bathhouses. As he reconstructs these possibilities, he cites plausible reasons why Christians might have met in these locations, such as availability, analogous usage, adequacy, and advantageousness. For example, like in the case of a bathhouse, they were readily accessible, Christians did not have issues visiting them for the first two centuries, they could host large gatherings after hours, and they offered baptismal waters (pp. 176–79). Although there is no direct evidence until the early 5th century that they met in bathhouses, there is enough to suggest that it was plausible that this was the case before (pp. 171–73). These sorts of considerations are helpful as Edward’s sifts through all of the possible places of gathering which give us a more full picture of the early Christian experience.

All in all, Adam’s work is carefully researched and a helpful reminder that the early Christian experience was more diverse and complex than what we might realize. His argument requires us, especially those in the house church movement, to carefully consider the implications of our language and assumptions about what is means for early believers to utilize a wide array of spaces for worship, meals, and community. This book is important for those wanting to read more about the early Christian social formation as well as for those interested about the variety of locations they might have met. For those in the house church movement, this book offers an important corrective to our sometimes uncritically held opinion that house gatherings exclusively reflect the early Christian experience, and more dangerously, that these meetings are inherently superior to others.