Iskander

Yours is a surrealist interpretation of an administrative procedure! I like it and so would have done Dali






Christianity was a religion with ‘cojones’ not the one offering the cheek

Duvduv

It still remains to be explained how gnostic Christian groups managed to produce their texts during the 4th century when they were supposedly subject to vigorous persecution by the Byzantine official church. Surely they would have been to busy hiding to spend time writing gnostic gospels and the like unless the story of persecution is highly exaggerated.

mountainman

How far is Nag Hammadi from Alexandria? The Constantinian Christians held the cities and there was a mass exodus from the cities in the early 4th century. Literally tens of thousands of people suddenly prefered the solitude of the deserts.

Duvduv

Just because Nag Hammadi were found out there doesn't mean they originated in the desert.

mountainman

AFAIK a consensus of opinion thinks that the Coptic NHC manuscripts were physically manufactured in a nearby Pachomian monastery. It is conceivable that this group of scribes and editors translated original Greek texts that had escaped the Christian censorship (of the Greek literary reaction to Nicaea) in Alexandria. Other than Coptic, the heretical works (that now survive) were also preserved in Syriac and even Manichaean, and these texts are largely found in relatively remote areas, not in the major cities.

Duvduv

I am handicapped because of my lack of knowledge of Greek and Latin. Do the Greek and Latin versions of this sentence below claimed to have been part of the original Nicene Creed of 325 imply a PHYSICAL incarnation, or do they leave room for an incarnation that looks like a man but is not actually a human?

And what is the difference between the term "was incarnate" and "was made man"? Doesn't being made a man automatically imply an incarnation?

who for us men, and for our salvation, came down and was incarnate and was made man;

mountainman

According to the WIKI article Comparison of Nicene Creeds of 325 and 381 this sentence was to become the following ....



SO at least we can see that aa5874 is on the right track.





You must also NOTE the slippage and ommission of the Nicaean DISCLAIMERS about anyone stupid enough to entertain the words of Arius. The Creed of 325 CE features this disclaimer and anathema quite prominently, but it has disappeared by the year 381 CE. The Arians had been vanquished.

The implication is that Christian orthodoxy may have been established c.325 CE by being non Arian.

Duvduv

Thanks, but I am asking specifically about the words used in that sentence in the creed of 325 in Greek.

Duvduv

We see so much discussion about Christianity that is either PRE-NICENE or POST-NICENE, which seems to set up a major fork in the road that may not be nearly as important as PRE-JUSTINIAN and POST-JUSTINIAN Christianity in the beginning of the SIXTH century, barely a century before the advent of Islam and the Quran.
Theotokos prevailed, the trinity prevailed, hypostasis prevailed over monophytism. This became Christianity as we know it today as expressed not only in Christian doctrine but in Christian culture in general.

Sheshbazzar

The Creed of 325 CE takes its importance from the fact that it laid the foundation for church 'authority' to hunt down, penalize, force into conformity, persecute, or have anyone resisting its authority or its religious decrees executed, Arians being the first target, until eventually any group or individual who was not a proclaimed 'orthodox' Christian' lived in constant in danger of being deprived of property or life.