So I had always assumed the words Church or Kirk were related to the name Christ etymologically, but apparently this is not the case. In Afrikaans we have Kerk and Kersten, and along with the historic hard C in Latin, this seemed readily apparent. But no, they aren't related.
Church and the other Germanic equivalents are actually derived from Kirika, a word diffused through the Germanic languages from old Gothic. This had been adopted from a little used eastern Greek term Kyriakon Doma at some point in the 4th century AD. This means 'The Lord's House'. Ekklesia and Basilike were the more common names, even in the west as Ecclesia and Basilica, leading to our terms like Ecclesiastical.
What we actually have is fossilised linguistic evidence of the first Germanic Christians - and that they weren't orthodox. For when Christ first came to the Germanic peoples, it came via Arianism, denying the Trinity. All the first Barbarian tribes that overran the Western Empire, had been Arian; up until Clovis of the Franks bucked the trend, and slowly the Germanic peoples were won to Orthodoxy. Wulfilas and his Gothic Bible was an important part of this, and though people claim they adopted Arianism due to the reign of the Arian emperor Valens, this is hard to justify.
Why did the Germans cling to Arianism so long after the rest put it aside? Some argue the Arian subordinate Christ better fit the Chieftain and retainer hierarchy of Germanic culture, others the influence of Wulfilas' established Arian Gothic group and the separation from the orthodox Roman population politically expedient (though the latter is debatable and perhaps a catch 22).
A better argument goes back to Language. For the word 'like' and 'alike' ultimately goes back to the proto-Germanic 'galeika' meaning having the same body. The latter part survive in Afrikaans lyk for corpse, or in archaic English lich or old names such as lichfield related to corpses and bodies.
While less clear to us today, the English 'like' still doesn't imply being exactly similar. So when homoousion preachers translated to Germanic tongues, the words perhaps implied homoiousion values to the speakers. To these old peoples, it sounded as if they said Jesus had the same body as the Father, but was a different being that just seems similar. This whole centuries survival of Germanic Arianism maybe ultimately goes back to something being lost in translation.
Ultimately though, the Germanic languages came to prefer the Gothic Kirika instead of the Basilica or Ecclesia, as the latter were intimately bound up in a separate Ecclesial hierarchy that their understanding differed from. By the time they became orthodox, the Church was here to stay, though it brought the Ecclesiastical with it in the end.
Church and the other Germanic equivalents are actually derived from Kirika, a word diffused through the Germanic languages from old Gothic. This had been adopted from a little used eastern Greek term Kyriakon Doma at some point in the 4th century AD. This means 'The Lord's House'. Ekklesia and Basilike were the more common names, even in the west as Ecclesia and Basilica, leading to our terms like Ecclesiastical.
What we actually have is fossilised linguistic evidence of the first Germanic Christians - and that they weren't orthodox. For when Christ first came to the Germanic peoples, it came via Arianism, denying the Trinity. All the first Barbarian tribes that overran the Western Empire, had been Arian; up until Clovis of the Franks bucked the trend, and slowly the Germanic peoples were won to Orthodoxy. Wulfilas and his Gothic Bible was an important part of this, and though people claim they adopted Arianism due to the reign of the Arian emperor Valens, this is hard to justify.
Why did the Germans cling to Arianism so long after the rest put it aside? Some argue the Arian subordinate Christ better fit the Chieftain and retainer hierarchy of Germanic culture, others the influence of Wulfilas' established Arian Gothic group and the separation from the orthodox Roman population politically expedient (though the latter is debatable and perhaps a catch 22).
A better argument goes back to Language. For the word 'like' and 'alike' ultimately goes back to the proto-Germanic 'galeika' meaning having the same body. The latter part survive in Afrikaans lyk for corpse, or in archaic English lich or old names such as lichfield related to corpses and bodies.
While less clear to us today, the English 'like' still doesn't imply being exactly similar. So when homoousion preachers translated to Germanic tongues, the words perhaps implied homoiousion values to the speakers. To these old peoples, it sounded as if they said Jesus had the same body as the Father, but was a different being that just seems similar. This whole centuries survival of Germanic Arianism maybe ultimately goes back to something being lost in translation.
Ultimately though, the Germanic languages came to prefer the Gothic Kirika instead of the Basilica or Ecclesia, as the latter were intimately bound up in a separate Ecclesial hierarchy that their understanding differed from. By the time they became orthodox, the Church was here to stay, though it brought the Ecclesiastical with it in the end.
Last edited: