Cliff Notes: The First Urban Christians

Internal structures of power quickly became important for the early Christians, as they would for any young communities. Aside from the communal meals, which soon became subject to dispute and arbitration- rich Christians could not hold a private, choice meal apart from the others- early urban Christians sought in other ways to establish a limited social space for consensus.

First, Paul and his lieutenants set about energetically establishing a new reality: a shared vision of the world created by combining existing symbols -again such as the body, the burial meal, the Roman family- in exciting and transformed ways. Thus, while the early Christians continued to go about their ordinary, everyday lives, they did so as part of an alternate vision of those lives.

Thus, Christians effectively lived double lives, in a community that was both closed and open. Thus, Paul relegates sexual purity as an internal affair-if someone were called a brother and a pornos, do not eat with him- but do this and similar things for the way in which Christians would be perceived by outsiders. Christians were encourage to behave according to the standards of outsiders, as well as with the standards of God.

Early Christians believed in the unity of mankind- hence the stance of obedience toward authorities, the equality of Jew and Gentile and the equal status of women. The cosmic baptism of humanity by Christ had a great deal to do with these beliefs, yet they were the only people who had the true meaning of their symbols. This was the great tension of early Christianity- strong internal cohesion opposed to normal relations with the outside world, including proselytism.

Of course, not all tensions are negative, and this likely drove the Christians to become a worldwide people: intimate local communities united within a broader organization. It was not named after the disestablished ecclesia- the local town gatherings of Roman males all across the empire- for nothing.

The supralocal community worked quite well, with established rituals of the obvious kiss between believers and the full expectation of hospitality for traveling brothers and sisters. These were all reminders of a much broader fellowship- as was the gathering for the church in Jerusalem.