Hi, I'm David Bercot, and tonight we're going to be talking about the Holy Kiss. One of our listeners submitted the question, "How did the early church practice the Holy Kiss?" In fact, it was a series of questions. And then he continued, "How do we greet one another with the Holy Kiss today, and to whom and how often should we do it?" All of these are excellent questions.
And in case you're wondering, today the Anabaptist churches and the Brethren churches, like the German Baptist Brethren, still practice the Holy Kiss. I think it's gone out of use among most Western churches outside of that. It's based on, well, there's several commandments in the New Testament. One is Romans 16:16, where Paul ended his letter to the Romans saying, "Greet one another with a holy kiss." And that's why we call it Holy Kiss from that. And there's several other verses. I'll read one more.
1 Peter 5:14, where Peter likewise closes saying, "Greet one another with a kiss of love." So sometimes it's called the kiss of love, sometimes the kiss of peace, and sometimes the Holy Kiss. Most often today, those who practice it refer to it as the Holy Kiss. So let's go through these questions. I'm going to break it up into the three questions that were asked. The first one was, how did the early church practice the Holy Kiss?
Well, it was practiced in everyday life, and we'll talk a little bit more about specifics on that. And it was also part of their communion service. So Justin Martyr, he would have been writing about the year 160. He says this, he's describing their Sunday service, and they have prayers, and he says, "Having ended the prayers, we salute one another with a kiss." Now, this is before the communion is served, or the Eucharist. So this was part of their Sunday service in the middle of the service.
Now, Justin Martyr doesn't describe a real, what should I say, carefully staged liturgy where you do this and then you do this and you say these words and all that. He doesn't give any indication that at that early date, 160, that the churches had a very set liturgy. He just gives rather the general order of how they do things. Likewise, Didache doesn't mention a real specific liturgy. It just gives a model prayer to use during it.
Okay, so he mentions that during the middle of their Sunday service, they read from the scriptures, they have a time of prayer, and then they greet one another with a kiss. Now, this would have continued as the church got a more formalized liturgy, say, around the year 200, you see that it is taken on more flesh. It's a lot more specified in the apostolic tradition of Hippolytus. And then you get into the 4th century, and then you have a very specified, drawn-out liturgy.
So I'm going to just jump to the 4th century. This is Cyril of Jerusalem, and he's writing about their liturgical service for communion that they would have had every Sunday.
And he says this, "Next, the deacon cries, 'Welcome one another, and let us kiss one another.'" And then Cyril continues, he describes what the deacon says in the service, and he says this, this is Cyril saying this as an explanation, "You must not suppose that this kiss is the kiss customarily exchanged in the streets by ordinary friends." So it was normal for people in the streets, non-Christians, apparently, as well as Christians, when they saw a friend in the street, they would greet them with a kiss.
Now, I don't know if that was the normal custom in Rome, because Cyril is writing from Jerusalem there in the Middle East. So he continues, he says, "This isn't the ordinary one that we use in greeting one another in the street." He says, "This kiss is different, affecting as it does a co-mingling of souls and mutually pledging unreserved forgiveness.
The kiss then is a sign of a true union of hearts, banishing every grudge." So the reason you do it during the communion service is to demonstrate to your brother or sister that you are at peace with them, that you have nothing you are holding against them.
And he says, "It was this that Christ had in view when he said, 'If when you are bringing your gift to the altar, you suddenly remember that your brother has a grievance against you, leave your offering by the altar, first go and make peace with your brother, and then come back and offer your gift.'" And Cyril continues, "Holy kiss." We know that's from his letter to the Romans, but Cyril is saying this not with a script in front of him, so he's ad libbing.
So it was now part of the communion liturgy, and he's saying that this is meant that you are showing you have complete peace with your brother. Now, perhaps during the communion service at that point in time, you might walk across the where the church, the auditorium of the church, where the service was being held, and yeah, if you had not been reconciled with a certain brother, maybe you would be reconciled right at that moment, forgive one another, give a kiss of peace.
Now, today, churches that do the liturgical churches, churches that do a liturgy, this is now a formality. You're going to greet the people around you, and in your heart, you may think they're horrible, that they're a hypocrite and all of that, and you do this. It does not have the same meaning that Cyril is putting on it. It's intended to, but I'm just saying it has become a formality today in the liturgical churches. Now, Tertullian also makes reference to this Holy Kiss during the service on Sunday morning.
Now, he's talking, it's in the course of discussing a different issue, but it brings out what was happening normally, okay? Tertullian saying this, "Another custom has now become prevalent. Those who are fasting withhold the kiss of peace, which is the seal of prayer after prayer made with the brethren." Okay, so remember, Justin Martyr said after the prayers, then they would greet one another with a holy kiss or kiss of peace.
And Tertullian is saying, okay, somehow a new custom has arisen where those who are fasting, they don't greet one another with a kiss. Don't ask me why, maybe a hypocritical way of announcing that you're fasting, and so I don't kiss people because I'm fasting. And Jesus said, "No, fast in secret." And Tertullian does not like this new custom that had arisen.
Tertullian continues, "But when is peace more to be concluded with brethren than at the time of some religious observance our prayer ascends with more acceptability? What prayer is complete if separated from the holy kiss?" So Tertullian is against this, and I think all of us would be. It's not an apostolic custom. It would go against Christ's teaching.
And as he says, "What would be a more appropriate time to greet your brethren than when you are secretly fasting?" Okay, so I've been to services in a number of liturgical churches, so I've witnessed what these early Christians describe about the holy kiss being practiced during the service. Or I should say a substitute happens for it during the service. So I don't know that I've observed anyone where they actually practice the holy kiss during the actual liturgy. Now, maybe one of the ancient churches does that.
I'm not saying no one does. I'm just saying I don't remember observing it, okay? One of the ones that sticks in my mind is the Church of the East, the ancient church that was established in the Persian Empire, is still around today. Their largest church in the United States is in Chicago. They have a huge church there, and I attended there one Sunday. And during the service, after some of the prayers were concluded, then we, everyone greeted one another with a holy kiss.
Now, the people there were mainly from Iraq and other countries in the Middle East, okay? It was a very ethnic-centered group of people there. It wasn't a general group of, let's say, regular American citizens from European background or South American background or anything like that. These were all people from the Middle East.
And so how they did it, now this was over 30 years ago, so I'm going by memory here, but as I remember, when it was time to give the kiss of peace, they would put their hands like this, kind of cup their hands, and then kiss their hands. All right, then you would go to the persons around you, men or women, and you would then offer the kiss using your hand like that.
You would present your folded hands to them, and then they would clap their hands around yours, or if they offered theirs to you, then you would open your hands and put it around their hands briefly. And so we did this to all of the people around us, you know, next to us, in the row in front of us, and in the row behind us, just, you know, two or three people from our seat, okay? And that's how they practiced it today in their church, okay?
Now, in the Anglican churches that I've attended here in the United States, they turn around and shake hands with one another. They don't give an actual kiss. I believe it's the same way in the Catholic Church, and I don't remember on some of the other churches like the Eastern Orthodox, the Coptic, the Oriental Orthodox. I've attended all of those churches. I've been at their Sunday services, but I don't specifically remember that aspect of it because it wasn't the main thing on my mind.
I think it would have stood out if they were actually giving a holy kiss. I think I would have remembered it, but perhaps not. Okay, so that is one way they practiced it. You might say, I wouldn't say ceremonially, but as part of the Sunday service, it was more formal. It wasn't just a casual greeting. It was a kiss of peace saying, "I am at peace with you and ready to take communion with you," okay?
Now, it was also practiced at other times, and we're going to talk about that in a minute, and that was alluded to in that one passage from Cyril of Jerusalem. Okay, the question comes up a lot. I've been asked it many times. Was the holy kiss practiced between men and women? I'm going to read to you several quotations that touch on that subject, okay? The first one is from Athenagoras. He would have been writing about the year 175, so this is quite early.
He says this, "On behalf of those then to whom we apply the names of brothers and sisters and other designations of relationship, in other words, mother or father if it was an older person, we exercise the greatest care that their bodies should remain undefiled and uncorrupted. For the Logos, that would be Christ, again says to us, 'If anyone kisses a second time because it has given him pleasure, he sins.'" Now, that's not a quotation from the Bible.
That must have been something that one of them quoted, and he doesn't say it's from scripture. He just says it's from Christ. And I don't know if it's in some writing somewhere that he thought was scripture or whether somebody claiming to be a prophet said, you know, Christ had said this. I don't know. He continues.
He also adds, "Therefore, the kiss, or rather the salutation, should be given with the greatest care, since if there are mixed with it the least defilement of thought, it excludes us from eternal life." Now, this would probably be applying there Jesus' words about having lust against somebody of the opposite sex. I assume that that's what that's referring to. Now, he does not say there, Athenagoras, that the holy kiss was being exercised between men and women, but it gives that impression.
I mean, he says we need to exercise the greatest care that a person's body would remain undefiled and uncorrupted, and you would think that then the next statement would be, "We give the holy kiss only to members of our own sex or our own gender." But he doesn't say that. He says, "Therefore, if someone kisses a second time, then he's sinning." So the implication is that they were giving it between men and women.
It doesn't mean it was on the lips, and because of his words about exercising the greatest care, I assume that it would not have been on the lips, but perhaps on the cheek, and we'll talk about that a little bit later, how that may have been exercised. That's the impression it gives. Another one, Clement of Alexandria, just maybe about 20 years later, about the year. Says, "Love is not proved by a kiss, but by a kindly feeling.
But there are those who do nothing but make the churches resound with a kiss, not having love itself within. For this very thing, the shameless use of a kiss, which should be mystical, causes foul suspicions and evil rumors. The apostle calls it the holy, or rather the apostle calls the kiss holy. When the kingdom is worthily tested, we express the affection of the soul with a chaste and closed mouth." So again, he doesn't say anything specifically there about people of the opposite sex.
He just talks about kissing with a chaste and closed mouth. So again, the implication is that men and women were exchanging kisses between each other, not necessarily again on the lips. It could be on the cheek, and he's saying it should be with a closed mouth. Okay. Now, he could have been talking about men, and the foul suspicions, evil rumors could have been talking about their being accused of being gay, but that was not one of the accusations that the pagans were making against the Christians.
They were making accusations that they were engaging in immoral relations between men and women in their services, but not that they were engaging in homosexual relations. Okay, one more, Tertullian. He says, this is written about the year 205. He says, "What unbelieving husband," he's talking now about a wife who's married to an unbelieving husband, "what unbelieving husband will permit her, that is his wife, to creep into prison to kiss a martyr's chains?" And he's obviously talking about a martyr who is a man.
Otherwise, it would have been no issue if it was a woman. And then he says, "Will he permit her to meet any of the brethren to exchange the kiss?" So again, the implication is that men did exchange it with women. And here he says, "To meet any of them, it sounds like maybe even on the street, or if not, at least in the church building." Now, in contradistinction with those three quotes, we have a much later quote from the apostolic constitutions.
These would have been compiled about the year 390, although a lot of what is in them reflects teaching that was handed down from the centuries before then. But it says this, "Then let the men give the men and the women give the women the Lord's kiss, but let no one do it with deceit as Judas betrayed the Lord with a kiss." Now, all those quotations are in the Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs.
If you look up the entry "Kiss Holy," you can find them all there, and it'll give you the reference where you can look them up in the Ante-Nicene Fathers. So it may be that early on, men and women exchanged the holy kiss among themselves, but it became a problem. It aroused a lot of suspicion. It was hard to do it with a pure heart. And so, at least by the year 390, at least in this one document, it's saying it should only be men with men and women with women. And I would say amen to that.
There would be no way I would think it would be prudent, wise, or proper for men to be kissing women and women to be kissing men today. Now, I'll tell you what I witnessed. I've already explained the Church of the East. It was men and women giving the holy kiss to each other, but they did it by kissing their hand and then handing their hand, and the other person would put their hand over your closed hands. So that was a chaste way to exchange the holy kiss.
When I visited the Ethiopian Coptic Church, they had one in Dallas, Texas, and I went there to observe their service one Sunday. Unfortunately, I missed their communion service. I don't remember if I got there too late. That may have been the problem. I may have had a misunderstanding of when their service started, or maybe they did not allow visitors to be present during communion. I just don't remember on that. But I was there for the announcements and the sermon.
And after the service was over, they were having a feast day there, and so people stayed around for several hours after the service was over. There was food, there was visitation, and there were some special activities going on, singing and things like that. I observed an older man. When I'm saying older, I mean he was past the bloom of youth. I'm guessing he was maybe about 60, and the woman maybe about 60 or maybe mid to late 30s. My recollection, again, this would have been more than 25 years ago.
This was outside the church. He greeted her with a holy kiss. And how he did it was she was facing him, let's say my hand is her face. He kissed, he got close to her, and he kissed the air on one side of her cheek, and then he went to the other side and kissed the air on the other side. They never actually touched each other, but that's how they exchanged the holy kiss as a greeting. This was not part of the communion liturgy. So I thought that was very interesting. This is an Eastern African Eastern Church.
I thought it was very interesting, their custom. Now, I did not notice any young people doing that. In fact, I asked him after they had greeted one another and spoken, I went up to him and I said, "I'm very interested in early Christianity and how different churches practice some of the teachings of the New Testament," and I mentioned the holy kiss. And so, yeah, he was talking about how he did it. He said, "You know, we don't touch." And I'm pretty certain he said, "This is only something the older people do.
We would not permit the young people to do that." So it can be done in a chaste manner between the sexes. I don't recommend it, but I'm just saying you could do it without ever actually touching, or as, you know, Clement said, you know, with your mouth closed, so you could kiss someone on the other cheek, you know, very lightly. Again, I do not think it should be done between men and women. I think there's way too much temptation involved and also an opportunity or an occasion to stumble others, okay?
So also on the question of how was it practiced, the question may have implied, did they kiss on the lips or on the cheek? It's not clear from those quotations. Now, I know from being in the Middle East and being around Middle Easterners, I've seen them greet one another. I've seen men anyway greet one another with a kiss, and it's on the cheek. I've never seen two Arab men or men from the Middle East kissing each other on the lips.
I don't think that is practiced at all among them, but they do still greet with a kiss on the cheek. Members of the same sex, again, you would not see a man greeting a woman that way for sure. Okay, so the question then was followed with, how do we greet one another with a holy kiss today? And I take the question to mean, do we still actually kiss today, or in our culture, would a hug or a handshake be the same thing of what a kiss was back then?
Well, we know back then it was an ordinary thing for people to greet one another with a kiss, at least people of the same gender. You know, there's the quote that we read earlier from Cyril of Alexandria, rather Cyril of Jerusalem, and he said, you know, the kiss we do during communion is different from when we meet one another on the street or when people meet one another on the street. So it was common then, just like it still is in the Middle East, for people to greet one another with a kiss.
Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss because that would have been an ordinary way to greet a friend, and of course, he was doing it horribly hypocritically. I'm not sure why he chose that, just to show his devious nature, I guess. There's a couple of quotes there from early Christians. I'm not going to read them because they bring out the same thing. Examples of people kissing one another. In both cases, it's a man kissing a man, showing, giving them as a kiss or showing that they have peace among themselves.
Now, today in our country here in the United States, that's not a normal thing. People don't greet a friend with a kiss. It is not part of our culture in the West, certainly not in the United States, and as far as I know, it's not in most European countries, Western European countries.
Okay, so a good argument can be made that Paul and Peter, when they're saying this, what they're focusing on isn't so much the kiss itself as greeting one another, and the way you would do it in the 21st century in the United States to show affection for somebody would be to give them a hug, or if maybe that wasn't appropriate or the degree of affection wasn't to that degree, you might greet them with a handshake.
And so a lot of churches do practice hugging, and I will do that with somebody who that would be their custom. You know, if I'm in somebody else's church and I greet someone, I will do it with a hug because I know, now I'm talking about a non-Anabaptist church, I know they're not going to expect to be greeted with a kiss, and they're going to be taken back by it. Or it might be a handshake if it's somebody I don't know real well at all, you know, if they're a total stranger.
And I think a good argument could be made that this fulfills what is being expressed in the scripture, that they're talking about the normal manner of greeting a dear person, and back then it would be with a kiss. Today it is with a hug. And I would say the same thing I would say about the holy kiss. I don't think a hug is appropriate between men and women today. A handshake, I think, is fine, but I think a hug should be reserved for men to men and women with women.
Ironically, what I see in so many churches, men will greet women with a hug and then greet men with a handshake, and there's something very, very wrong there. That, to me, is really inappropriate. So why do you greet someone of the opposite sex with a hug? I mean, women in those churches will often greet each other with a hug, but men typically with a handshake, but then they hug a woman. I don't feel that is at all appropriate. Now, I think there's an argument that could be made for retaining the holy kiss.
Our church does. Our church is an Anabaptist church where I attend, and we retain the holy kiss. Not everybody greets with a holy kiss. I normally don't greet someone unless I know, unless I know they're a member of our church, or I know that they are comfortable with being greeted with a kiss. If they're just a visitor that I don't know, I don't greet someone, not because I think it's going to defile me, but because it's going to embarrass them.
They're going to feel very uncomfortable because it's not something they're used to. So I tend to only practice it among other Christians who are used to it, who would want to be greeted that way. And a good reason for retaining it is once we start taking biblical commandments and saying, well, that's just culture, so let's not do it, you can start a slippery slope that keeps going. The next thing would be feet washing. Okay, that was customary in that culture. It is not customary today.
It doesn't serve a real purpose today, so let's not do feet washing. All right? And I think a decent argument can be made that something else should be done. The problem is, all right, what takes the place of feet washing in our culture? There really isn't anything. So then you just drop it entirely, and yet it's an express command of Jesus Christ. Well, then next is going to be the head covering. Well, it wasn't given because that was the culture.
It's easy to show that in Greek and Roman culture, that women did not necessarily or automatically cover their heads. And he was writing to the Corinthians, which was, that was Corinth was part of Greece, and we have enough statues and paintings of Greek women that we know they did not all cover their heads. So it was not a matter of culture, but the argument can be made. It was certainly more culturally normal in that time than it is today. And so then you could throw out the head covering.
Well, then what about this? It can keep going. So I think that alone is a good reason to keep the holy kiss. Just, yeah, where do you stop once you start saying we don't do this anymore because of culture? All right. The last question was, and to whom and how often should we do it? And by the way, I think men should kiss each other on the cheek, not on the lips. I think I may have mentioned that, but yeah, where it is still practiced today, like in the Middle East, they do it on the cheek, not on the lips.
And I think that's how it should be practiced by Christians today. Not saying it in criticism of churches that do it on the lips. That's their church culture. It does seem strange, though, to a stranger watching that. A stranger isn't going to think it's too unusual to greet a man on the cheek because they've probably seen that in videos, if not live, you know, people from the Middle East or other cultures. But men kissing on the lips is going to look like it's two gay people kissing. All right.
As I said, the last question was, and to whom and how often should we do it? I've already addressed that. I don't think at all we should do it between men and women. I think it should be among Christians of the same sex. Now, I would have no objection to giving a greeting, just a normal street greeting, you might say, to someone who's not a Christian if that's part of their culture. In other words, someone from the Middle East might be a Muslim.
If this was normal to show friendliness, to give a kiss, I would have no objection to doing that. It wouldn't be necessarily a holy kiss. It would just be a kiss, okay, of greeting. I don't normally, as I mentioned, greet people outside our church or outside the Anabaptist world. I should say that mainly because normally those people don't want to be greeted with a kiss. They're not expecting it, and it can be very awkward.
I know from, you know, trying to greet people that way, and they don't even know what I'm doing, and they step back. And, you know, one time I nearly fell over. I reached forward to give the person, a brother, you know, a kiss. And it was at a conference. I assumed he was Anabaptist or at least, you know, used to the culture, and he didn't know what I was doing. And he kind of stepped back, and I nearly lost my balance and fell over.
So after that, I now don't offer it unless I have pretty good reason to think the other person is wanting to be greeted that way. Many Anabaptist churches, they won't greet somebody who is outside of their own church or outside of their own conference, their church conference. And I would strongly disagree with that practice. This is supposed to be a holy kiss, a way of showing, Peter calls it a kiss of love.
And when we start having such a sectarian spirit that I can't just greet you as a brother because you don't belong to the same conference I do, or you don't attend the same church that I do, that now I can't even offer you a greeting as a brother in Christ or as a sister in Christ, I would deplore that practice. We have enough division among Christians without adding new things, new ways of dividing. And then the last part of the question was, how often should we do it?
Well, in a church that has communion every Sunday, of course, you might be doing it every Sunday if it's part of your communion service, or at least in our church on Sunday morning, I normally will greet many of the brothers with a kiss. Not everyone. Often I'm reaching over, and all I can do is shake hands with someone because they're already seated or because there's a lot of people I'm greeting.
And particularly, like I say, once they're seated, it would be almost expected to stand up if you're going to exchange kisses. So I think a handshake works well there. But usually when a brother is standing, I will greet them with a holy kiss in our church or in another church where it's customary to offer the holy kiss. And I'd say whenever it feels comfortable, I might greet a brother here at my house with a kiss. I may not.
It just depends on the situation and whether it feels comfortable or right at the moment or if a handshake seems more appropriate. I do both. I don't think we should save it just for like liturgical use. It should be something practiced as an expression of love that's now somewhat unique to us as Christians. I think it's something we can hold on to.
Wow, this is what they did in the time of Jesus, the Christians in the New Testament, and we can preserve that practice even if it's not part of our secular culture around us or our Western culture. It was part of the Christian culture. And so I think that's a wonderful opportunity to preserve part of the ancient Christian culture. All right, I think that ends our discussion of the holy kiss. I hope this has helped you, any of you listening to this with questions you may have.
And again, if you want to check those quotations, they're in the Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs, all except the quotation from Cyril of Jerusalem because he was post-Nicene. So I do not have that quote. I can't give you a citation on that one. Okay, good night.
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