mountainman

Heresy was the key word because all the notable 4th century Christians (and most of the so-called "Early Christians" (including the Apostles etc) were practicing heresiologists.



While true this statement conceals the greater crime that the Christians divided the intellectual heresiological realm up like a country and divided and conquered it by making all other classes of people in the empire heretics. Have a look at the 80 heresies catalogued by Epiphanius, the first few of which are these:


Did the Barbarians have to be Christian to be heretics?
Did the Scythians have to be Christian to be heretics?
Did the Hellenes (i.e. the Greek civilians = "gentiles") have to be Christian to be heretics?
Did the Jews have to be Christian to be heretics?
Did the Stoics have to be Christian to be heretics?
Did the Platonists have to be Christian to be heretics?
Did the Pythagoreans have to be Christian to be heretics?


Certain death.

We may therefore be reasonable sure that Eusebius's History of the Church was not peer-reviewed.


They had to be very careful of what books they preserved in their private book collections. There were search and destroy mission run by the army to find certain prohibited books. There were certain books that the pagans knew that were to be avoided. A large price to pay for the sake of intellectual freedom.

What were these prohibited and illegal books?

They appear to have been pulp fiction books about Jesus and the Twelve Boneheads.

Chili

All self proclaimed Christians still are heretics, always have been and boast about their apostolic tradition on the anathema side of the Church right back to John 6:66. There is nothing new about that. And it does not matter how many million people write how many billions of papers, that fact will never change.

Hint, the Church is Catholic Pete.

Let me explain. Catholics are sinners and righteousness is a protestant thing. We have this thing called confession where you can unload your sins and go do some more, as the door is always facing West in their Churches and that is where they want you to go. No salvation recipes there, and in fact that word is not even part of their vocabulary. Sinners they are so that sin will abound and confession at times even becomes a tall-tale telling event, as they want you to look purple all on your own.

Now it is not their fault that Constantine made it Catholic, and that ended again 1000 years later and so now with 20.000 of you strong to make religion shopping Sunday a fun day for all you should do much better than they.

Clivedurdle

And a later religion specialises in this game, like which foot to leave a mosque with...

Chili

It's a holy pigbarn, don't you know? Nothing wrong with the people, just the religion is all screwed up, and alsways was.

Sheshbazzar

I think all the major ones have some variation of it. I recall attending a few Protestant denominations with so many cultic invented ritulistic rigamarole's that I never could get the hang of it. (In retrospect, thankfully)

Chili

They are all mimicking the Mother Church, so beautiful she is, and want to be 'look-alikes' but they even put the wrong color of candles in the Advent wreath, and as they do that they put their own foot in their mouth.

They just do not know, and let me add here that Paul knew the mystery of salvation first hand, having finished the race himself or he would not even know that it was a race to the end.

Sheshbazzar

Hmmm..... Think Apostle Paul went around diddling around with wreaths and lighting colored candles?

Bought idols, set them up in the Synagogues and genuflected to them?

Went around with the sticks of dead trees hung on a string around his neck?

Think that kind of stuff would have really went over well in the Synagogues that Paul taught in?