Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Clivedurdle · 03-15-2009, 04:30 AM

It is getting better as he develops his arguments!

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Modern people may identify with a religious tradition even when, often, they do not practice it; by contrast, traditionalist ancient men and women all practiced religion, but they did not personally identify with it. As late antique religions gradually became part of people's identities, those identities themselves began to be portable.

So if you let your religion mark you completely, then you were no longer defined by your birthplace, your family, or any other social status. You could pack up, move, and still be who you were before you moved. Social mobility was possible in the ancient world; but if you moved from Antioch on the Orontes to Rome on the Tiber, you didn't just learn a new language,: you probably also changed your religious practices. Judaism first, then Christianity, and then, especially, Islam capitalized on this emerging form of religion-based identity to enable believers to live more independent and mobile lives, and not incidentally, this had the effect of making the religions themselves more powerful, cohesive and influential.

The religiousness of America makes sense from this perspective. A new identity in a new world almost naturally includes a new religious identity - and the monolithic religions are specialists in creating total portable identities.

What is Jesus said to have said about leaving families and following him?

gdeering · 03-15-2009, 05:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gurugeorge

Nowadays, the "New Age" (to broadly include Western Buddhism, etc.), where I'd say most real religious feeling (as opposed to the function of religion as mere traditional sociological "glue" with some woo-woo beliefs about the world attached) resides in the West at the moment, is itself a return to that ancient, even archaic way of doing religion.

I think you're right and that it's an important idea. I''ve been looking into this while I've been investigating spirituality, ideas of purity and modern visual art; I keep coming back to the fact that modern spirituality is a fluid polyglot of ideas that can incorporate any system or idea it finds serviceable.

I think that we (those interested civilians like me) have a fundamental misunderstanding when we contrast Christianity / Judaism with general religious thought at the time - I'd like to read more on this, another project!

Gregg

judge · 03-18-2009, 11:23 PM

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Originally Posted by Roger Pearse

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Nestorius objected to Mary being called "Mother of God", thinking of God the Father

.
Do you have reference for this Roger?

As I understand it Nestorius having been taught by an Aramaic speaking monk saw three qnome and one god, as as a consequence of this did not see Mary as the mother of god.

Quote:

To object to calling Mary the mother of God the Son is equivalent to denying that Jesus was God.

However Nestorians, whilst denying that Mary was the mother of god do not challenge the divinity of Jesus. It seems rather to be an example of religious folk splitting hairs and then attacking each other.

Quote:

The Nestorians were condemned at the Council of Ephesus in 433 under very dubious circumstances.

The Nestorians (meaning the COE) were not condemned specifically by this council. Nestorius was condemned.
The Nestorians (meaning the COE) had no part in the council and were only asked to condemn Nestorius after Nestorius was dead. They declined to as it was then impossible for Nestorius to give a defence.

The COE were later branded Nestorians by the RCC, although they had nothing whatsoever to do with Nestorius. Nestorius was not part of their church or community.

Roger Pearse · 03-19-2009, 12:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by judge

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roger Pearse

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Nestorius objected to Mary being called "Mother of God", thinking of God the Father

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Do you have reference for this Roger?

'Fraid not -- sorry. I came to this idea while reading Cyril of Alexandria.

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However Nestorians, whilst denying that Mary was the mother of god do not challenge the divinity of Jesus. It seems rather to be an example of religious folk splitting hairs and then attacking each other.

I don't think this is a *religious* issue. This is a piece of Byzantine politics.

Quote:

The Nestorians were condemned at the Council of Ephesus in 433 under very dubious circumstances.

The Nestorians (meaning the COE) were not condemned specifically by this council. Nestorius was condemned.

The Church of the East did not exist at this date, tho. The council was understood to condemn the theological views labelled Nestorian, as a means to get rid of Nestorius himself. Then the witchhunt began for his supporters.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

mountainman · 03-19-2009, 03:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roger Pearse

Quote:

Originally Posted by judge

However Nestorians, whilst denying that Mary was the mother of god do not challenge the divinity of Jesus. It seems rather to be an example of religious folk splitting hairs and then attacking each other.

I don't think this is a *religious* issue. This is a piece of Byzantine politics.

Cyril's Disembling Politics

CYRIL, THE MOST HOLY ARCHBISHOP OF ALEXANDRIA
FIVE-BOOK CONTRADICTION OF THE BLASPHEMIES OF NESTORIUS

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Cyril of Alexandria, Five Tomes Against Nestorius. Oxford (1881)

And this I say having met with a certain book compiled by some one,
having a large collection of homilies, orderly and systematically arranged
and in no wise lacking in due appliances for the reader.

And if ought had been said by its author,
which by passing into forgetfulness should come to nought,
I would have deemed it a duty both myself to hold my peace
and to counsel others to do the same;
lest things so unmeetly and unheedfully said
should become known to many others,
and to those after us.

But since a multitude of blasphemies
has been heaped into this book
and some great accusation has been made,
baying against the doctrines of the truth,
how was it not necessary that we in turn
]should (so to say) strip for combat
and should fight in behalf of its readers,
that they may not take harm thence,
but may rather know how to repulse bravely
the damage from what is unrightly said?

For he writes again after this manner;
his discourse was made touching the Arians:

"Yet though they prate that God the Word
is junior to the greater Godhead,
these make Him second to the blessed Mary,
and over the Godhead, Creator of times,

they set a mother born in time,
yea rather they do not even allow that
she who bare Christ is mother of Christ.

For if not the nature of man but God the Word was,
as these say, that which is of her,
she that bare was no mother of that which was born.

For how will any one be mother of him
who is alien from her nature?

But if she be called mother by them,
that which is born is manhood not Godhead,
for it is the property of every mother
to bear what is consubstantial [with her].

Either then she will not be mother,
not bearing what is consubstantial with herself,
or being called mother by them,
she bare that which was in essence like to herself."

§9. How deep the matter of his cogitations!
dread and hard to escape is clearly
the compulsion resulting from the reasonings
of him who hath compiled such things!

Whence comes he having gathered into the midst unto us such fables?
or who ever sank down to this extent of unlearning
in his conceptions, as to think or say that ...

Nestorius was unfairly run out of town and then openly disparaged by the nephew of the notorious gangster Theophilus in the usual mafia type of power politics that characterised the "christian church" since at least 324 CE.

judge · 03-19-2009, 12:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roger Pearse

Quote:

Originally Posted by judge

.

The Nestorians (meaning the COE) were not condemned specifically by this council. Nestorius was condemned.

The Church of the East did not exist at this date, tho The council was understood to condemn the theological views labelled Nestorian, as a means to get rid of Nestorius himself. Then the witchhunt began for his supporters.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

The COE certainly existed at that time. Nestorian Timeline

They had held their own church councils prior to that date.

andrewcriddle · 03-19-2009, 12:52 PM

There is an interesting account of the issues raised by Nestorius' teaching in the Ecclesiastical History of Socrates

Quote:

Wherefore the controversy on the subject being taken in one spirit by some and in another by others, the discussion which ensued divided the church, and resembled the struggle of combatants in the dark, all parties uttering the most confused and contradictory assertions. Nestorius thus acquired the reputation among the masses of asserting the blasphemous dogma that the Lord is a mere man, and attempting to foist on the Church the dogmas of Paul of Samosata and Photinus; and so great a clamor was raised by the contention that it was deemed requisite to convene a general council to take cognizance of the matter in dispute. Having myself perused the writings of Nestorius, I have found him an unlearned man and shall candidly express the conviction of my own mind concerning him: and as in entire freedom from personal antipathies, I have already alluded to his faults, I shall in like manner be unbiassed by the criminations of his adversaries, to derogate from his merits. I cannot then concede that he was either a follower of Paul of Samosata or of Photinus, or that he denied the Divinity of Christ: but he seemed scared at the term Theotocos, as though it were some terrible phantom

The COE (Church of the East) became divided from the Western churches, not because of the condemnation of Nestorius, but because of the condemnation in 553 of Theodore, Theodoret and Ibas as Nestorian "fellow travellers".

Andrew Criddle

Roger Pearse · 03-20-2009, 12:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by judge

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roger Pearse

The Church of the East did not exist at this date, tho. (=433 AD)

The COE certainly existed at that time. Nestorian Timeline

They had held their own church councils prior to that date.

I seem to remember that we had this discussion before. Projecting a modern denomination back into the pre-split era (ignoring other groups such as the Syrian Orthodox who could make the same claim) is tendentious, to put it mildly.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse · 03-20-2009, 12:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by andrewcriddle

There is an interesting account of the issues raised by Nestorius' teaching in the Ecclesiastical History of Socrates

Quote:

Wherefore the controversy on the subject being taken in one spirit by some and in another by others, the discussion which ensued divided the church, and resembled the struggle of combatants in the dark, all parties uttering the most confused and contradictory assertions. Nestorius thus acquired the reputation among the masses of asserting the blasphemous dogma that the Lord is a mere man, and attempting to foist on the Church the dogmas of Paul of Samosata and Photinus; and so great a clamor was raised by the contention that it was deemed requisite to convene a general council to take cognizance of the matter in dispute. Having myself perused the writings of Nestorius, I have found him an unlearned man and shall candidly express the conviction of my own mind concerning him: and as in entire freedom from personal antipathies, I have already alluded to his faults, I shall in like manner be unbiassed by the criminations of his adversaries, to derogate from his merits. I cannot then concede that he was either a follower of Paul of Samosata or of Photinus, or that he denied the Divinity of Christ: but he seemed scared at the term Theotocos, as though it were some terrible phantom

The COE (Church of the East) became divided from the Western churches, not because of the condemnation of Nestorius, but because of the condemnation in 553 of Theodore, Theodoret and Ibas as Nestorian "fellow travellers".

Socrates' comments are interesting and tolerant.

Are you sure about the date of 553? Didn't Justinian receive a bishop from the COE for one of his theological discussions? I've always understood the separation to become effective from Ephesus on, and be reinforced by the political boundary with Persia. By 553 Nestorian bishops could act as representatives of the Shah.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

andrewcriddle · 03-20-2009, 01:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roger Pearse

Are you sure about the date of 553? Didn't Justinian receive a bishop from the COE for one of his theological discussions? I've always understood the separation to become effective from Ephesus on, and be reinforced by the political boundary with Persia. By 553 Nestorian bishops could act as representatives of the Shah.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Hi Roger

The separation of the COE took place gradually.

In 410 the Persian church unilaterally declared itself autocephalous ie independent of the authority of Antioch. But this is a matter of jurisdiction and had nothing to do with doctrinal disagreement.

The controversy over Nestorius does not appear to have led at once to a long-term overt doctrinal split. The 433 "formula of concord" appears to have preserved at least outward unity.

There is an explicit doctrinal split under the Emperor Zeno involving Persian councils in 484 and 486 and the expulsion of 'Nestorians' from Edessa by Zeno in 489. The problem here is that Zeno, (who replaced Chalcedon by the Henoticon), was, (at least by later standards), heretical, and carried out his measures against the COE while out of communion with the Pope, who shared at least some of the COE's concerns with Zeno's theology.

With the restoration of Chalcedon by Justin and Justinian there were real prospects of resolving the theological differences with the COE and discussions were carried out to this end. The posthumous condemnation of Theodore, (utterly unacceptable to the COE), meant the end of these hopes. In 585 a Persian council indignantly proclaimed the excellence and authority of Theodore and his writings and in effect excommunicated any who disagreed.

Andrew Criddle

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