mountainman

Dear Spin and Jeffrey,

The letter is a gross forgery passing off Arius as an authodox christian at the same time he was being hounded and hunted by Constantine for his bitter writings against the good and true and official Roman state religion which had just appeared on his doorstep . The Arian controversy, following precisely and with a number of variations the words of Arius as recorded as having been stated by him during the council (See the Anathema section), raged unabated for a century after this letter. Did Arius return to the fold in order to be poisoned? I dont think so.

Best wishes,

Pete

J-D

My conclusion, as you should be aware as I've mentioned it before, is that your interpretation of Arius's words is incorrect. He didn't 'return to the orthodox fold', he maintained the beliefs he'd held before, but those beliefs were not what you think they were.

J-D

You have no evidence that it was a forgery. It doesn't fit with your interpretation; so much the worse for your interpretation.

spin

Yes and no. It sounds Nicene, but he hasn't gone back on the single issue that has held him to scrutiny (as he writes to Eusebius of Nicomedia, c.318):

Before he was begotten, or created, or defined, or established, he did not exist. For he was not unbegotten. But we are persecuted because we have said the Son has a beginning but God has no beginning.

From what I've seen there aren't very many fragments of his writings. But here's a part of a letter to Alexander:

We acknowledge One God, alone unbegotten, alone everlasting, alone without beginning, alone true, alone having immortality, alone wise, alone good, alone sovereign, judge, governor, and provider of all, unalterable and unchangeable, just and good, God of the Law and the Prophets and the New Testament; who begat an only-begotten Son before time and the ages, through whom he made both the ages and all that was made; who begot Him not in appearance, but in reality; and that he made him subsist at his own will, unalterable and unchangeable, the perfect creature of God, but not as one of the creatures; offspring, but not as one of the other things begotten;

The italicized phrase seems in accord with the notion of the son being "first-born". I'm not wedded to the idea, but it seems we've now sampled 40% of the surviving testimony of Arius (if the translations are veracious).


spin

mountainman

Dear Spin,

Dominating the sample is this testimony:
Not only are these very words agreed upon by a number of the later continuators of Eusebius, but they are agreed upon by the testimony obtained in the records of many of the new official state monotheistic religion council meetings that were found necessary during the remainder of the fourth and fifth centuries. The above words of Arius spawned a huge political and social controversy - the same words echoed down the centuries.

Hitherto these words have been regarded with explicit reference to the christian status of the priest in Alexandria, Arius, and have been thus palmed off by the victors -- the new state monotheistic religion -- as having to do with the theology. The resistance failed. The Hellenes had no allies, and their civilisation went under as the new state Roman monotheistic religion persecuted the people, the priests, burnt the literature, etc, etc, etc. This is history by way of politics not history by way of theology, and although both obviously have their place, no place has yet been given to a history of the creation of the new state authodox monotheism in which there is a narrative of some resistance to Christianity. The words of Arius are therefore political. Arius revered the Logos as a pythagorean, not a christian. The east was full of hellenic temple priests who knew squat about the new state official monotheistic religion which Constantine had seen fit to thrust upon them. Arius was one of these. An ascetic to boot.

So the Boss implements a brand new state authodox monotheistic religion as soon as he arrives with his victorious army in the eastern Roman empire, kicks around and executes the priests, utterly destroys ancient and revered temples, pulls down the ancient monuments and prohibits the use of the temples by means of his army. And there is no resistance? The people of the Logos went down.

The non-christian Pachomius (who was christianised later by Jerome) saw the light in the year 324 CE and fled Alexandria like the Dalai Lama fled into India from Tibet last century. Pachomius prepared places in the wilderness for the entire class of Hellenic priests and the Nag Hammadi Codices may yet tell his story.


Best wishes,


Pete

J-D

You are simply restating your opinion, with which we are all thoroughly familiar by now, still without providing any evidence to support it. We know what you think Arius's words meant. You're wrong.

spin

I agree, but I wish you wouldn't quote mountainman's diatribes in their entirety!

He's having difficulty with the following cherry-picked notions of Arius:

There was time when He was not.
Before He was born He was not.

As Arius says: Before he was begotten, or created, or defined, or established, he did not exist.

He was made out of nothing existing.
He is/was from another subsistence/substance.

Arius says god alone is unbegotten, alone everlasting, alone without beginning so for Arius the christ cannot be the same substance as god. He also says that the christ was begotten before time and the ages, so logically there was nothing pre-existing at that stage to make the christ out of.

He is subject to alteration or change.

Arius says that god is unalterable and unchangeable. These are god's characteristics, not those of the christ.

All these cited Arian views when put back into context are in harmony with the other notions cited in the patristic record derived from Arius. There seems no reason to suspect that Arius was anything other than a christian. It's just that his views weren't in accord with the powers that were at the time.


spin

J-D

Sorry. I'll try to be more selective in future.

mountainman

Dear Toto,

Thanks for reminding me about the "other Acts of Pilate" mentioned by Eusebius in his history to prelude the "Council" of Nicaea. I wish to respond to this data here in this thread, because it provides another example of how these "Acts of Pilate" could have been authored by Arius of Alexandria:

Here we have the admission by Eusebius, probably around 324 (when the eastern empire really had to take christianity seriously for the first time) and not 311, that there was in existence a resistance by the entire population, who were governed at that time by the Hellenic priests (ie: they were not christians -- the populace was pagan). This class of people were in a position to resist the creation of the new state monotheism by authoring seditious tractates which were additional to the official "canon" which Constantine had decided to use.

This provides a real example of sedition, which is being described by Eusebius but which is being disguised and euphemised by an appeal to the authority of the new testament canon of the new state religion. It provides an example of how it is possible that the story of the origins of Constantine's (the Pontifex Maximus') new Roman state religion might be told as having been enacted out in the fourth century alone.

Mainstream theories of course fail to address any specific chronology for anything at all of the thousands of supposed relational historical events to do with the existence of those transcendental "early canonical christians". There is a very good reason IMO why nobody has been able to do so for centuries.


Best wishes,


Pete


Best wishes,


Pete

J-D

That's a pretty typical manoeuvre of yours, Pete. You make a big issue of a point which is not in dispute, as if by establishing it you somehow strengthen your case, whereas in fact it is irrelevant. In this specific instance, the fact that there was resistance to Constantine's religious policy is not in dispute, and has no bearing on whether there is any support for your personal thesis.