The Lord’s Supper. Part Three: The Early Church, 4th-5th Century

I previously wrote on the summary of Christian views on the Lord’s Supper dating from the 1st to the 3rd century. I couched this from the outset with the choice offered by the Anglican prelate James Ussher to consider whether the fathers not only taught that bread becomes Christ to us or that we might …

Christianity and Relics. Part Three: Spiritual Guides

Introduction In my initial entry on this series I had a look at the burial practices of the early church. Showing that up until the 4th century the normative practice was to bury the dead, this included the martyrs. In my second entry I chart how the martyrs themselves had come to be understood as …