The Early Ministry and the Household: A House-Church Trajectory
The Social Setting of the Ministry from Jerusalem outwards.37 Bauer assumed a similar early diversity when he argued that "orthodoxy" and monarchical episcopacy were minority positions in the second century; he argued that it is more appropriate to speak of "ministries" and "churches" and "developments" in this period than to refer to them in the singular.38 Since the discovery of the Nag Hammadi corpus in 1945, scholars have again addressed the question of what constituted normative
Christianity in this period of origins.
The "orthodox" second-century church Father is cross-examined,40 the "heretic's" position freed from the detractor's interpretations.41 A view which sees early Christianity as constituted by relatively independent and dynamic "trajectories,"42 rather than an unchanging
"Wesen des Christentums" handed down from above, dominates much of contemporary scholarship.
The Early Ministry and the Household:
A House-Church Trajectory By referring to the role of house-church patrons as hosts of the worshipping community, the development of leadership structures in the churches addressed by Hermas, Clement, and Ignatius will be explicated. We shall argue that the church meeting in households provides the social setting of the development of leadership structures in these early churches. It is presented as a "trajectory "
We are not attempting to provide a universal explanation: patterns and influences in Alexandria, Palestine, and Syria may have been different. The trajectory we are here arguing for begins before or with Paul and extends to Rome,
Corinth, and the Asia Minor communities addressed by Ignatius (it may also extend to Philippi at the time of Polycarp but the evidence here is inconclusive).
These were all communities or areas where Paul was active and although we cannot say that these were "Pauline" churches, there is a prima facie case for arguing that similar patterns of meeting were present in other communities associated with his activities. In the case of Asia Minor (especially Ephesus) we may also have to do with communities associated with Johannine patterns. We shall argue that the typical leaders of the communities here analysed were patresfamilias with houses large enough to accommodate meetings in their homes.
They were the wealthier members of the church, and their social position is an important factor to be taken into account in any attempt to understand the problems to which these selected documents testify and the efforts of their writers to solve them. It will be argued that not enough attention has been paid to social factors by those using other methodologies to provide an explanation of the development of ministerial structures in certain early churches.43 We are not attempting to supplant theological explanations altogether by suggesting that social structures are the only significant factors, but rather to argue that ideas in and of themselves are not sufficient to explain how the ministry evolved.44 At best they provide a two-dimensional picture which gains depth only when it is realized that the people who formulated them were motivated by a number of social concerns. We are aiming at an "interactionist" account between ideas and social structures.45
A recognition that the early church met in houses is not new. In 1696, Vit-