Originally Posted by My notes

Notes

p.196

CONCLUSION


"We must not see the fact of usurpation;
law was once introduced without reason,
and has become reasonable. We must make
it regarded as authoritative, eternal, and
conceal its origin, if we do not wish that
it should soon come to an end."
~ Blaise Pascal, Pensees




p.204

Concluding statement ....

"What is certain is that, in the west,
the historical reality, that the Nicene Trinity
was imposed from above on the church,
by an emperor, disappeared from the record.

A harmonised version of what happened at the Council of Constantinople,
highlighting a consensus for which there is little historical evidence,
concealed the enforcement of the Nicene Trinity through the medium of
imperial legislation.

The aim of this book has been to reveal what has been concealed.

Arguably the year AD 381 deserves to be seen as one of the most
important moments in the history of European thought."

Originally Posted by Description

'We authorise followers of this law to assume the title of orthodox Christians; but as for the others since, in our judgement, they are foolish madmen, we decree that they shall be branded with the ignominious names of heretics.' - Emperor Theodosius.

In AD 381, Theodosius, emperor of the eastern Roman empire, issued a decree in which all his subjects were required to subscribe to a belief in the Trinity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This edict defined Christian orthodoxy and brought to an end a lively and wide-ranging debate about the nature of the Godhead; all other interpretations were now declared heretical.
Moreover, for the first time in a thousand years of Greco-Roman civilization free thought was unambiguously suppressed. Not since the attempt of the pharaoh Akhenaten to impose his god Aten on his Egyptian subjects in the fourteenth century BC had there been such a widesweeping programme of religious coercion.Yet surprisingly this political revolution, intended to bring inner cohesion to an empire under threat from the outside, has been airbrushed from the historical record. Instead, it has been claimed that the Christian Church had reached a consensus on the Trinity which was promulgated at the Council of Constantinople in AD 381. In this groundbreaking new book, acclaimed historian Charles Freeman shows that the council was in fact a shambolic affair, which only took place after Theodosius' decree had become law. In short, the Church was acquiescing in the overwhelming power of the emperor. Freeman argues that Theodosius' edict and the subsequent suppression of paganism not only brought an end to the diversity of religious and philosophical beliefs throughout the empire but created numerous theological problems for the Church, which have remained unsolved. The year AD 381, Freeman concludes, marked 'a turning point which time forgot'

Originally Posted by My notes

Notes


p.267


"When Cyril of Alexandria died in 444 CE one person suggested that
a heavy stone be placed on his grave to prevent his soul returning
to the world when it was thrown out of hell as being evil even for there."




p.340

EPILOGUE

"So the point being made here is not that the Christians did not attempt to use reason,
but they could never reach an agreed truths any more than there could be, in practice,
an agreed formulation of what is meant by Plato's conception of the Good."



"As we have seen orthodoxy had eventually to be imposed from above.

What seems to have marked the turning point is Constantine's appreciation that
the authority of the bishops could be used in support of the empire. However,
he failed to appreciate how intractable the doctrinal disputes between the
bishops had become and his hope of having the church as a united body brought
into the structure of the state by patronage, tax exemptions and toleration
soon proved to be a fancy.

"You [the bishops] do nothing but that which encourages discord and hatred
and, to speak frankly, which leads to the destruction of the human race."

he fumed. Hence his intiative in calling the Council of Nicaea to define and enforce
a common doctrine. The theological history of the 4th and 5th centuries is largely
one of the emperors, under immense pressure from invaders, attempting to achieve a
foundation of orthodoxy so that they could preserve a united society.




"Despite attempts by the Christians to use reason, it was not an appropriate way
of finding theological truths. The frustrations which followed lead to arguments
becoming personal and bitter. The texts of a Jerome or an Athanasius are marked
by invective at he expense of reasoned argument."





CLOSING PARAGRAPH


"I would reiterate the central theme of this book:
that the Greek intellectual tradition was suppressed
and did not simply fade away.

My own feeling is that this is an important moment in European cultural history
which has for all too long been neglected. Whether the explanations put forward
in this book for the suppression are accepted or not, the reasons for the
extinction of serious mathematical and scientific thinking in Europe for a
thousand years surely deserve more attention than they have received."

Originally Posted by Description

A radical and stimulating reappraisal of the impact of Constantine's adoption of Christianity on the later Roman world
and on the subsequent development both of Christianity and of Western civilisation.

Originally Posted by The Legacy of Greece

RELIGION
by W. R. Inge, Dean of St.Pauls

p.26


"Greece for our purposes means not a race, but a culture,
a language and literature, and still more an attitude
towards life, which for us begins with Homer, and persists,
with many changes but no breaks, till the closure of the
Athenian lecture rooms by Justinian.

The civilization of the Roman Empire was not Italian but Greek.

It was lost to the West for nearly a thousand years. It was recovered
at the Renaissance, and from that time to this has been a potent
element in Western civilization. The Dark Ages and the early Middle Ages
are the period in which the West was cut off from Hellenism ... These
were the ages of the Catholic theocracy; and if we choose one man as the
founder of Catholicism as a theocratic system, we should have to name
neither Augustine not St.Paul,still less Jesus Christ, but Plato, who in
the Laws sketches out with such wonderful prescience the conditions for
such a polity, and the form which it would be compelled to take."


Hellenism then is not the mind of a particular ethnic type, not of a
particular period. It was not destroyed, though it was emasculated,
by the loss of political freedom; it was neither killed nor died a
natural death.

Its religion passed into Christian theology without any real break.
The early church spoke in Greek and thought in Greek.

p.29

It is quite unnecessary to look for Asiatic influences in a school
which clung close to the Attic tradition.

It should not be necessary to remind Hellenists that "Know Thyself"
passed for the supreme word of wisdom in the classical period,
or that Heraclitus revealed his method in the words "I searched myself".

"The teachings of Plato", says Justin, "are not alien to those of Christ;
and the same is true of the Stoics." "Heraclitus and Socrates lived in'
accordance to the divine Logos" and should be recognised as Christians.
Clement says that Plato wrote "by the inspiration of God".

Augustine, much later, finds that "only a few words and phrases" need
to be changed to bring Platonism into complete accord with Christianity.

The ethics of contemporary paganism, as Harnack shows,with special reference
to Porphyry,are almost identical with those of the Christians of his day.

Catholic Christianity is historically continuous with the old civilization,
which indeed continued to live in this region after its other traditions
and customs had been shattered. There are few other examples in history
of so great a difference between appearance and reality. Outwardly, the
continuity with Judaism seems to be unbroken, that with paganism to be
broken. In reality, the opposite is the case.


p.33

Further,too much is made of the conflict between the official cults of
paganism and Christian public worship. It is forgotten how completely,
in Hellenistic times, religion and philosophy were fused. Without under-
estimating the simple piety which, especially in country districts, still
attached itself to the temples and their ritual, we may say confidently
that the vital religion of the empire was associated with mystery-religions
and with the discipline of the "philosophic life".


p.42

Their sacrifices were for the most part of the genial type, a communion
meal with the god. But even in Greece, we must remember the gloomy chthonian
rites, and the degradations of Orphism mentioned by Plato in the "Republic".

"They persuade not only individuals but whole cities
that expiations and atonements for sins may be made
by sacrifice and amusements which fill a vacant hour,
and are equally at the service of the living and the dead;
the latter sort they call mysteries, and they redeem us
from the pains of hell, but if we neglect them no one
knows what awaits us."

This exploitation of sacramentalism was common enough in Greece; but the
characteristic Caesaro-Papism of Byzantium and modern imperium was wholly
foreign to Hellenism. It was introduced by Constantine as part of the
Orientalizing of the empire begun by Diocletian. As Seely says:

"Constantine purchaced an indefensible title by a charter.
He gave certain liberties and received in return passive
obedience. He gained a sanction for the Oriental theory of
government; in return he accepted the law of the Church.
He became irresponsible to his subjects on condition of
becoming responsible to Christ."

The Greeks never had a book religion, in the sense that Judaism became, and
Islam always was, a book religion. But they were in some degree of treating
Homer and Hesiod as inspired scriptures. To us it is plain that a long
religious history lies behind Homer, and that the treatment of the gods
in Epic poetry proves that they had almost ceased to be the objects of
religious feeling. Some of them are even comic characters, like the devil
in Scottish folklore. To turn these poems into sacred literature was to
court the ridicule of the Christians. But Homer was never supposed to
contain "the faith once delivered to the saints"; no religion of authority
could be built upon him, and Greek speculation remained far more unfettered
that the thought of Christendom has been until our own day.


p.45

Nothing can be further from the truth than to call the Greeks "intellectualists"
in the disparaging sense in which the word is now often used. The object of
philosophy was to teach a man to live well, and with that object to think
rightly about God, the world and himself. This close union between metaphysics,
morals and religion has remained as a permanent possession of the modern world.


The Hellenistic combination of Patonic metaphysics with Stoic ethics is still
the dominant type of Christain religious philosophy.



Asceticism has a continuous history within Hellenism. Even Homer knows of the
priests of chilly Dodona, the Selli, whose bare feet are unwashed, and who sleeps
on the ground.

The worship of Dionysus Zagreus in Thrace was accompanied by ascetic practices
before Pythagoras. Vergetarianism, which has always played an important part in
the ascetic life, was obligatory on all Pythagoreans.

Originally Posted by Toto

The idea that Constantine imposed orthodoxy is not so radical.

The idea that Constantine invented Christianity out of whole cloth and forged, or had Eusebius forge, the entire corpus of Christian literature is a different idea ....