Ecclesiology - Etymology

Etymology

The roots of the word ecclesiology come from the Greek ἐκκλησίᾱ, ekklēsiā (Latin ecclesia) meaning "congregation, church"; and -λογία, -logia, meaning "words", "knowledge", or "logic", a combining term used in the names of sciences or bodies of knowledge.

Its first appearance in print, as ecclesialogy, was in the quarterly journal The British Critic in 1837, in an article written by an anonymous contributor who defined it thus:

We mean, then, by Ecclesialogy, a science which may treat of the proper construction and operations of the Church, or Communion, or Society of Christians; and which may regard men as they are members of that society, whether members of the Christian Church in the widest acceptation of the term, or members of some branch or communion of that Church, located in some separate kingdom, and governed according to its internal forms of constitution and discipline.

However in volume 4 of the Cambridge Camden Society's journal The Ecclesiologist, published in January 1845 that society (the CCS) claimed that they had invented the word ecclesiology:

...as a general organ of Ecclesiology; that peculiar branch of science to which it seems scarcely too much to say, that this very magazine gave first its being and its name.

The Ecclesiologist was first published in October 1841 and dealt with the study of the building and decoration of churches. It particularly encouraged the restoration of Anglican churches back to their supposed Gothic splendour and it was at the centre of the wave of Victorian restoration that spread across England and Wales in the second half of the 19th century. Its successor Ecclesiology Today is still, as of 2011, being published by The Ecclesiological Society (successor to the CCS, now a registered charity).

The situation regarding the etymology has been summed up by Alister McGrath: "'Ecclesiology' is a term that has changed its meaning in recent theology. Formerly the science of the building and decoration of churches, promoted by the Cambridge Camden Society, the Ecclesiological Society and the journal The Ecclesiologist, ecclesiology now stands for the study of the nature of the Christian church."