Abstract
The current state of historical research on the term ecclesia domestica is considerably incomplete, for insufficient attention was paid to the heuristics of the sources. The present study seeks to deepen the state of knowledge by bringing more evidence for individual eras since patristics to the seventeenth century.
Authors of 3rd-6th centuries interpreted Paul's term domestic church as a household whose members were exceptionally pious, serving Christ and the faithful and the Middle Ages consolidated the belief that ecclesia domestica can be equated with familia christiana. Early modern Catholic theologians had no doubt that Paul named the family a church deliberately and investigated the relationship between the terms ecclesia domestica or privata, ecclesia particularis and ecclesia universalis or catholica, which is the intrinsic subject of the faith and simultaneously even analogatum princeps from which the reality of particular churches, including domestic churches, is derived as well as their designation.
This context includes the Catechism of Trent (1566). In Protestant theology, starting with the Lutheran confession, the subject is connected with a more systematic ecclesiological concept for the first time.
Reformation ideas found support in the expression ecclesia domestica or Hauskirche, for such a way of experiencing faith laid much emphasis on the family. In Puritanism families were also considered as little or family churches.