gurugeorge

How about: anything that's compatible with the idea of Apostolic Succession is in, anything incompatible with, or tending away from the idea, is out, or (if it has to be kept in because it's well known and already widely used) has to be hedged around with Apostolic-Succession-friendly interpolations?

Huon

The National Catholic Weekly tries to be at the intellectual level of their readers, 10 years old.

darstec

As has been said before, it doesn't matter if you look at the glass as half empty or as half full, it is going to quench your thirst just the same. It seems difficult to imagine that if someone as exulted as Eusebius wrote a book which confirmed Orthodoxy, copyists would allow it to fall by the wayside.

However Eusebius was said to have changed his views as he approached end of life. Nothing of what he thought remains. Exactly what one would expect if those views were anti-Orthodoxy.

avi

And, some sources indicate that Eusebius was pro-Arius from an early age. Some sources even indicate that Eusebius provided shelter to Arius, post-Nicea.
Here's the quote from Wiki, referring to the Council of Nicea:

mountainman

Eusebius pitched at a considerably older audience.
His task was to document the state of the nation leading into Nicaea.
The state of the "Christian Nation" that is - the one inserted into Josephus.

darstec

Chronologically perhaps but intellectually well as it says in Mark: I think that sums up his audience well, in fact any Christian audience. Children believe in fairy tales.

mountainman

Dont forget the Christian message was spread with the sword of Constantine in the 4th century. There may have been severe penalties in those earlier days immediately following Constantine's military supremacy to not convert to the Emperor's Preferred "State Religion". Lane-Fox mentions Constantine may have ordered pagans tortured to confess the error of their ways following the Council of Antioch c.324 CE.

darstec

That wasn't torture. He was purifying their souls, just ask the Office of the Inquisition. :devil3:

mountainman

Did the Index Librorum Prohibitorum commence in the fourth century?

Most sources maintain that the "List of Forbidden Books" were published by the Papacy from the fifteenth century, however there are a number of documentary sources which themselves suggest that Constantine and Eusebius already had a catalogue of books which were "forbidden under punishment of death". We find out in the next century that some of these books had been authored by the son of the devil. These needed special treatment by the orthodoxy.