Why and how did the christian church become more organized in the second and third centuries?

Answer 1

Honestly, the true Church (Bride of Christ) was pretty organized to begin with. Devout followers of Christ held meetings (or Church services) in their homes and these home Churches were usually no bigger than about 100 people per meeting group. In these small settings the people were close to each other and walked in the supernatural consistently- even under persicution. It was persicution however that grew the Church and lead her to be organized in the sense you are most likely thinking of. After about 300 years of persicution, a Roman Emperor, Constantine, supposedly saw a vision in the sky of a cross with the inscription "Conquer by this sign" (or a phrase very similar to that), converted to Christianity, and set up a sort of state church that very soon after it's establishment, was found dead to love and passion for Christ and supernatural acts that Christians should be pursuing through and only through the Holy Spirit. This could have been a political move or it could have been sincere, one who has not been able to look into another person's heart (in the spiritual or even Disney sense of the term- not the actual cardiovascular muscle) cannot truly know. It is possible however that it was a political move for the following reasons:

1) The Roman Empire needed reform badly and Christians are good at that.

2) There were ALOT of Christians running all over the place having secret meetings and spreading their faith all over the then known world even though it was illegal and punishable by torture and humiliating deaths. They were unstoppable. It would have made perfect sense for a more laid-back Caesar to just legalize them and set up a controled envirorment for them to be lulled to sleep in and be done with the revolutionary head-ache.

3) He would be able to claim divine authority to rull the Roman empire and thus gain alot of respect and a whole lot of Christian favor (remember there were alot of us back then)

4) This is just a thought based on Acts 8:9-25, he may have even just wanted the supernatural power that the Christians had so he could conquer.

On the other hand,

he could have sincerely wanted to know Jesus and have his sins washed away and walk in the supernatural in order to live as Christ did, but set up his church or denomination or whatever you want to call it, way to close to the government. This was not too bad of a thing at first, but no separation of Church and State (meaning the state leaves the Church alone- not visa-versa) always ends poorly.

Either way, the Roman Catholic Church was born out of this, and though I am not sure whether that denomitaion is in right standing with God today, the Roman Catholic Church was simply the remnent of the Roman empire during the Middle Ages and was a rather cruel mistress to so many people who were just trying to find God. After several hundred years, a few different thinkers, who actually were more intrested in finding God than living up to superstition and tradition (aka religion) started speaking out during the Renaissance and the Reformation was born out of that. This is where we get several of today's denominations from, e.g. Luthurans, Calvinist's, Potestants, etc.

I hope this infrmation was helpful, have a nice day.