Love Feast (3)

Aaron Erhardt

Oct 13, 2026

Two weeks ago, we began a study of the “Agape” or love feast. This was a meal eaten when the church assembled as an expression of their mutual devotion as Christians and it culminated in the Lord’s Supper. Now we conclude our study.

In addition to the Scriptures, there is overwhelming extra-biblical evidence to suggest that churches continued to have love feasts for several centuries. Here are some examples:

• The Didache, which was a treatise of church teachings written around A.D. 100, gives instruction for a Eucharistic prayer “after you are satisfied with food” (10:1), which implies that a meal was eaten before the Lord’s Supper was observed. It also says to come together on the Lord’s day to “break bread and hold Eucharist” (14:1), apparently making a distinction between the two acts.

• Ignatius wrote to the church at Smyrna around A.D. 110 and said, “It is not lawful either to baptize, or to hold a love-feast without the consent of the bishop” (8:2).

• Pliny, in his famous description of Christians to Emperor Trajan around A.D. 112, reported that they would “come together on a fixed day before daylight and to sing responsively a song to Christ as God” and then later “assemble again to partake of a meal, common yet harmless” (10:96).

• Tertullian defended the love feast against heathen slander of excess in his Apology around A.D. 197. He wrote, “Yet about the modest supper-room of the Christians alone a great ado is made. Our feast explains itself by its name. The Greeks call it agapè, i.e., affection. Whatever it costs, our outlay in the name of piety is gain, since with the good things of the feast we benefit the needy… As it is an act of religious service, it permits no vileness or immodesty. The participants, before reclining, taste first of prayer to God. As much is eaten as satisfies the cravings of hunger; as much is drunk as befits the chaste” (ch. 39).

• Minucius Felix, in his dialogue called Octavius around A.D. 210, wrote, “Our feasts are conducted not only with modesty, but in sobriety; for we do not indulge in delicacies, or prolong conviviality with wine; but temper our gaiety with gravity, with chaste conversation” (31:5).

• Hippolytus’ Apostolic Tradition around A.D. 215, links the Lord’s Supper to a broader meal. It says, “When they dine, the faithful shall take from the hand of the bishop a small piece of bread before taking their own bread, because it is blessed. Yet it is not the eucharist, like the body of the Lord” (26:1). It also encourages Christians to “eat and drink in moderation” (28:1) and to keep some food as “leftovers of the saints, so that the one to whom it is sent may rejoice” (28:3).

• Origen rose to the defense of “love feasts” in his work Against Celsus around A.D. 248. He says, “The first point which Celsus brings forward, in his desire to throw discredit upon Christianity, is, that the Christians entered into secret associations with each other contrary to law, saying, that ‘of associations some are public, and that these are in accordance with the laws; others, again, secret, and maintained in violation of the laws.’ And his wish is to bring into disrepute what are termed the ‘love-feasts’ of the Christians, as if they had their origin in the common danger and were more binding than any oaths. Since then, he babbles about the public law, alleging that the associations of the Christians are in violation of it…” (1:1).

Love feasts were eventually outlawed by various church councils starting in the fourth century. For instance, the Council of Laodicea (A.D. 364) declared, “It is not permitted to hold love feasts, as they are called, in the Lord's Houses, or Churches, nor to eat and to spread couches in the house of God” (Canon 28). This was just one of several reasons why they gradually passed from the scene.

Just because love feasts were sometimes abused and then forbidden by man-made legislative bodies are not good reasons for the practice to be abandoned by those seeking to restore New Testament Christianity in its purest form. There is no question the early church shared a meal in their assemblies and, as William Barclay said, “It was a lovely custom; and it is to our loss that the custom has vanished” (1 Corinthians, p. 100). Amen!