ABSTRACT
The peculiar religious object which gave birth to the church was the risen and glorified Christ but the faith in the religious object was still only the mental and spiritual necessary condition for the birth of a new religion. For Christianity the development of its doctrine into a system of ideas expressing its religious object so as to ensure its independence with respect to other groups was particularly urgent. Early Christianity was in the latter plight up to the time of Constantine. The history of early Christianity is dominated by the fact that it not only developed on Jewish soil where it was born, but it also underwent a parallel development in the environment to which it was very soon transplanted. Only a few facts of Christian history can be dated by their synchronisation with general history. But early catholicism is a general form of Christianity catholic in the true sense of the word.
