sotto voce

This reply can be accounted totally trashed until and unless the post it answers it is given due respect.

mountainman

Where does the imperial army figure in all this?




The existence of some "Universal Christian monotheistic heresiology" before Nicaea is is a hypothesis in chronology that may not be true. We have very little first hand evidence if any for what actually happened during the rule of Constantine.



But for Christ's sake Constantine personally appointed hundreds of bishops. Whatever happened therefore during the rule of Constantine was quite momentous and revolutionary in the Roman Empire.




The "Sacred Colleges of the Pontifices" (the pagan priesthood of the old church) that previously provided counsel to all the Roman Emperors as Pontifex Maximus was essentially trashed by Bullneck.



Arianism cannot be approached without knowledge of Arius of Alexandria



This is what the orthodox heresiologists claimed, but do we know this for sure? I for one do not trust their story.






Of course. The battle of the books was the battle between the canonical books and the non canonical books. It was played out in scriptoria and codex manufacturing enterprizes. The dying voice of the Greek Second sophistic was being replaced by the voice of the revolutionary Christian sophists.

To the ordinary guy in the street in Alexandria, Constantine's prohibition of pagan temple practice had radically altered the traditional daily business as usual in the pagan world.

Duvduv

But I don't understand why it took a church sponsored by the State so long to eliminate their enemies with all those repeated books and councils, even books backdated to the 2nd century before the Empire allied itself with the "orthodox." Their chronology makes it appear that in fact it took from the late 2nd century all the way to the time of Justinian for the entire state apparatus to eliminate all of its enemies. It just sounds rather fishy that according to their chronology of the heresiologists it should have taken 350 years (from around 180 to 525) to eliminate them despite all of the State power at the disposal of the orthodox.....even if the real efforts only began with Theodosius I until Justinian in a period of 150 years....

mountainman

This is what Bart Ehrman writes ....


However I think the heresiologists simply lied about the heretics when they rewrote the history of the conflict.


I think Ehrman's (i.e. mainstream's) chronology is wrong, and that there is sufficient reason to hypothecize that the major and revolutionary debate did not commence until Constantine's military victory c.324 CE, and that it - at least in the major cities (which the heresiologists controlled) Rome, New Rome, Antioch, Pergamum, Alexandria - was all over and done with inside three hundred days with coordinated imperial military assistance.

Duvduv

How do you get to that calculation of 300 days when there is discussion about fighting the "heretics" for such a long time even after the elimination of the Arians. There were even still "Christians" leaning toward Jewish practices in the writings of Jerome.....

mountainman

Because I think that the battle of the heretics was a further battle that Constantine had with the Greek intellectual tradition, particularly when his forces took control of Alexandria. What I mean by 300 days is the period of time it took Constantine to secure control of the eastern empire after hist victory c.324, and this obviously includes the "Council of Nicaea".

I see the appearance of the noncanonical books as a reaction to the appearance of Constantine and the Constantine Bible in Alexandria around Nicaea. This authorship was in Greek, and a literary reaction which may have continued after the death of Constantine. Emperor Julian's writings for example.

Canonization c.367 CE (??????) marks the control of the literary reactions as opposing a specific set of so-called canonical books and the exclusion and anathema and in many cases death penalty for preservation of non canonical books.

By the time of Jerome, tutored by the thug Damasius, "the world groaned to find itself Arian". The real action was over. The Greek books of the heretics had been burnt. So had most of the Manichaean writings.

Why did Jerome say that "the world groaned to find itself Arian" when we might have expected him to say that "the world groaned to find itself Christian"?

I think he was saying that he found his world was (still) opposed to Christianity.

The heretics were still in resistance mode against the authority of the "Three Hundred and Eighteen Nicaean Fathers".

sotto voce

There were persecutions sporadically until Constantine, with torture and body mutilation common, though they tended to do more harm to the imperial cause than good, as Tertullian noted. The primary tactic had almost certainly been infiltration and creation of hierarchy, because recruiting hierarchies and paying them off to keep their own people under control was the Roman way, in Spain, Britain and indeed Judaea. What happened to those who persisted with New Testament belief, and there were surely some, is not recorded, and one would not expect it to be. It may be that, like dissidents of Pinochet, they 'disappeared'. It may be that, like Reformation English Protestants relocating to the Continent, they fled the empire. History is partial story, of course.

After Constantine's 'vision', soldiery was often there only as a threat, because the emperors were then, ostensibly, in opposition to paganism, but the court wished to persuade pagans rather than force them to become 'Christians', because they were still pagan themselves.

That's true, but what we do know is that the NT church was modelled on the synagogues, that were modelled on an Israel that could well have been the model for Greek democracy. And we know that the 'church' whom Constantine summoned was structured ideally for the purposes of Rome, unrecognisable as the NT church. It may be that there was the official church, and the real one was 'underground', still meeting in houses, though secretly.

Not for Christ's sake, that's for sure. Of course he wanted total control, and 'diocesan' bishops were his means, as they were for James I. A real bishop was one of several, if not many, all of whom had very limited jurisdiction, over only one congregation, of which they were part; and they were elected by that congregation. The Roman 'bishop', a placeman, an absentee, had nothing in common.

Yes, and no. The central fact is that the emperor or his stooge 'pope' bore the title that the very first king of Roma had carried, Pontifex Maximus, which meant that religion, which Romans never regarded as a private matter, continued to be decided by the state; or else. All sorts of local religions were adapted or, as with Judaism, tolerated. But Christianity was different. It was 'superstitious', which did not mean what it means now. It meant that it came from 'outside', and could not be accommodated. So Rome eventually decided that it would keep its old priest-centred religions, but call them Christianity. So the domestic breaking of bread, an informal, ordinary meal, of the Jerusalem church, was now to be represented by temple ritual. So, for most ordinary Roman subjects, it was a case of plus ça change... What was significant, and was doubtless seen to be significant, was that mighty Rome had been forced to change its ways by a mere carpenter from Galilee. Though the plebeians probably hardly noticed that, so ornately dressed were their grand 'bishops'.

They did? There was some confusion among emperors, who did not know which horse to back, but there was little love lost between rival clerics. From the New Testament pov, the 'orthodox' condition was as unsatisfactory as the Arian.

Yet people grew to see the 'sense' of agreeing with the imperial court.

Duvduv

Would a falsification of history by someone like Epiphanius include his description of the judaizing sects that would have had to have escaped the state apparatus for a long time, meaning they never actually existed but were invented to magnify the official church's power at eliminating heretics?

Meaning that nothing significant was going on after Constantine, and that the oppressions of Justinian 200 years later are a myth?
If so then Epiphanius was more important for the propaganda machinery then was Eusebius.

But we see that the sects of Nag Hammadi did exist. Plus the Nestorians managed to escape the long arm of the imperial church.

Huon

Constantine I (306-337) West and (324-337) West and East.
Constantine II (337-340) Britain, Gaul, and Spain. Trinitarian, friend of Athanasius of Alexandria
Constans (337-350) Italy, Africa, Illyricum, Macedonia, and Achaea
Anti-Donatist, friend of Athanasius of Alexandria and Paul of Constantinople, Council of Serdica (343), anti-arian. Herits of the territories of Constantine II in 340.
Constantius II (337-361) The east, except for Thrace, Achaea, and Macedon. Herits of the territories of Constans in 350. Sympathetic to Arianism.
Julian (361-363)
Jovian (363-364)
Valentinian I (364-375) permitted liberal religious freedom
Valens (364-378) arian (according to Basil of Caesarea), gothic wars
Gratian (367-383) Gaul, Britain, and Spain
Valentinian II (375-392) Illyricum, Africa, and Italy
Theodosius I (378-395) the first emperor for many years to strongly oppose Arianism, affirmed the legitimacy and orthodoxy of bishops and priests who supported the Nicene Creed. Under his leadership and imperial authority the Council of Constantinople (381) reaffirmed and developed the statements made by the Nicene bishops in 324.

sotto voce

Judaisers were a sensitive area for the imperial religion, because imperial religion was too similar to legalistic Judaism for comfort, and 'comparisons were odious'. Anti-semitism through the following centuries can be attributed in part to this similarity. So Epiphanius may have been right on this aspect.

Like Nestorianism, Monophytism was imv a natural reaction to the fundamental absurdity of 'theotokos'. It is quite probable that it was this heresy of 'orthodoxy' that stimulated controversy that would never have troubled people's minds without that official heresy.

Possibly. It's a thought, anyway.

Nestorians removed to Persia, surely.