Historical Background On The Use Of Altars In The Roman Catholic Church

• Discussion:
  

          -Roman Catholic Churches contain stone altars in which the sacrifice of the Mass is conducted by the parish priest. It is maintained that the communion elements are miraculously changed into the body and blood of Jesus Christ at the words of consecration. The altar is considered the central aspect of the assembly. It is the point of focus for worshipers. The altar is said to be made holy in the presence of Christ as the bread and wine becomes Him.

         The earliest Christians did not use altars or temples. It remained that way for at least three centuries. Afterwards, the table at which the communion celebration was held came to be known as an altar. The Catholic Encyclopedia says the following, "According to Radulphus of Oxford (Prop. 25), St. Sixtus II (257-259) was the first to prescribe that Mass should be celebrated on an altar, and the rubric of the missal (XX) is merely a new promulgation of the law."

          Wayne Meeks, in his essay titled Social and Ecclesial Life of the Earliest Christians, notes:

          "Christians had no shrines, temples, cult statues or sacrifices; they staged no public festivals, musical performances or pilgrimages. As far as we know, they set up no identifiable inscriptions. On the other hand, initiation into their cult had social consequences that were more far-reaching than initiation into the cults of familiar gods. It entailed incorporation into a tightly knit community, a resocialisation that demanded (and in many cases actually received) an allegiance replacing bonds of natural kinship, and a submission to one God and one Lord excluding participation in any other cult."

          Christians have no need for altars in their places of worship because they do not perform sacrifices as did the Levitical priests of old. This order of things found its ultimate fulfillment in the atonement sacrifice of Jesus Christ. In contrast with the sacrificial system of Judaism, communion is based on spiritual sustenance and remembering Christ. The earliest Christians, being Jewish converts, would have understood these things. They also would have objected to transubstantiation on the grounds that the Old Testament forbade the consumption of blood, cannibalism, and knew a human body can be located at only one place at a time.

          The earliest Christians did not believe in the doctrine of the real presence in a corporeal sense. They did not view their offerings as making atonement for sin. The mode of receiving Christ was faith as opposed to physically eating Him. The communion elements were not treated as though they were no longer physically bread and wine, but the incarnate Christ Himself. Nevertheless, there is no question that patristic authors took the business of communion very seriously. Hippolytus of Rome, a bishop of the 2nd century, writes these instructions in The Apostolic Tradition: 

          “But let each of the faithful be zealous, before he eats anything else, to receive the eucharist…let each one take care that no unbeliever taste the eucharist, nor a mouse nor any other animal, and that nothing of it fall or be lost; for the body of Christ is to be eaten by believers and must not be despised. The cup, when thou hast given thanks in the name of the Lord, thou hast accepted as the image of the blood of Christ. Therefore let none of it be spilled, so that no strange spirit may lick it up, as if thou didst despise it; thou shalt be guilty of the blood, as if thou didst scorn the price with which thou hast been bought.”

          The author was very much concerned with the purity of worship offered to God. He believed the bread and wine given at communion to be special and worthy of protection, but described the former in terms of being an "image" of Christ's blood. The communion elements communicate to us the reality of Christ's broken body and shed blood on the cross for the forgiveness of sin. The statement of Hippolytus is representative of the general attitude of Christians toward the communion ritual at that time.

          Early Christian practices did not include the use of fixed altars. They worshiped in homes or catacombs using simple tables. For example, the Dura-Europos church in Syria and the Catacombs of Rome used basic tables rather than fixed altars. Early writings, such as Justin Martyr's "First Apology" and the "Didache," describe the eucharistic celebration without mention of altars. This suggests that the incorporation of altars into Christian worship was a later development, contrasting with the simpler practices of the earliest Christians.

          

          Roman Catholic Scholar Peter J. Riga made this remark about the origin of the altar in Judaism:

          "...They [the Jews] inherited the fundamental notion of the altar as being the meeting place, the "high place," the "sacred heights," from their pagan background. We have already mentioned how much the Jews depended on the common traditions of the Near East, which take us back to the very dawn of recorded history."

          He then goes on to posit this theory as to how such a development began:

          "But these pagan traditions were not accepted as such by the chosen people. Under the divine guidance of divine inspiration they slowly purified their notion of sacrifice and altar."

          The problem with this kind of an explanation is that God Himself nowhere sanctioned the use of pagan objects to worship Him. If the Old Testament gives us any details at all, it would be that He commanded the Jews to destroy altars belonging to outsiders who worshiped foreign gods (Numbers 33:52; Deuteronomy 12:1-3; Judges 2:2). That in and of itself makes it unlikely God would purify or redeem pagan traditions for His own sake. Jewish altars were unique in character. They were associated with monotheistic worship. They conveyed Jewish morals that other groups would not have shared. Whatever altars the Jews erected for themselves, were reflective of their own religious experiences.

          Just because the Jews had altars in which animals were sacrificed before God, does not mean Christians today need the same in regard to the spiritual sacrifices that they offer to Him. Later Christian converts came not from a Jewish, but pagan, background. Their understanding of the Old Testament was further removed from its original context. The communion meal evolved over time into a system of sacrifices that mimicked the Jewish system of ongoing bloody animal offerings. The introduction of altars into the Christian church laid the foundation for the development of the unbiblical idea of transubstantiation.