Freethought & Rationalism Archive

steve_bnk · 01-31-2012, 12:52 PM

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Originally Posted by sotto voce

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Originally Posted by steve_bnk

Constantine wanted a unified Chritianity as the Roman state religion.

Did he ask for the moon?

The Romans always considered state religion as a critical foundation of the state. He was pushing for unification for secular reasons.

It is no more complicated then that. The rest is what the council cane up with after secterian debate.

I doubt how it would stand up to scrutiny for meaning and consistency thousands of years later was an issue.

I doubt they were that deep.

sotto voce · 01-31-2012, 02:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by steve_bnk

Quote:

Originally Posted by sotto voce

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Originally Posted by steve_bnk

Constantine wanted a unified Chritianity as the Roman state religion.

Did he ask for the moon?

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The Romans always considered state religion as a critical foundation of the state.

What is 'state religion'?

mountainman · 01-31-2012, 05:06 PM

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Originally Posted by Doug Shaver

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Originally Posted by mountainman

It is reasonable to conclude . . . .

Can reasonable people reach a different conclusion?

Are you and I both reasonable people?

So why did Constantine call Arius a "Porphyrian"? My conclusions if any are only and always provisional, and open to new evidence.

mountainman · 01-31-2012, 05:33 PM

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Originally Posted by stephan huller

But that's exactly what I mean. These concepts are completely alien to you, Pete.

I have studied Plato and his Apostolic lineage and the history of the transmission of the Canonical Books of Plato to the 4th century CE when they commenced to be suppressed and burnt by the Christian regime, only to reappear a thousand years later. My understanding is that the Platonists agreed that in these books of Plato, and in the Enneads of Plotinus, there was preserved the concept of a supreme divinity. It was not a monotheistic divinity but a nondual divinity.

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The mental picture you give of this whole period is so two dimensional it makes Dora the Explorer seem like it is filled with rich character development.

The VICTORIOUS Nicaean Christian mental picture of the whole period is one dimensional. I am just adding the Platonists for relief perspective and apperception.

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You abuse texts.

I have provided my sources. The mystical controversy at the heart of Nicaea is characterized by the BOOK-BURNING activities of the victors in the struggle for orthodoxy.

Horatio Parker · 01-31-2012, 08:49 PM

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Originally Posted by stephan huller

In another thread I was intrigued to notice that the Greek term οὐσία can be traced back to the Hebrew word יֵשׁ through the Syriac liturgy. In a sense it is hardly surprising as both words mean 'substance.' But given the fact that the Jewish term is connected with an angel hypostasis datable to the earliest mystical texts, I started wondering about the whole creed business.

Most people who study the fourth century Church are interested in understanding how the terms in the Creed 'fit into' the orthodoxy that came to dominate Christianity. Those of us who are not Christian find the whole Creed rather bizarre - a group of people who together have no clue about what their religion is about, chanting polysyllabic words they even have less of a chance of understanding.

So why develop a creed in the first place? What prompted this oddity? Clearly the Alexandrians and the Romans had a difference of opinion about the relationship between the Father and the Son. But the way many or most people look at it this notion of 'homoousios' was essentially created to figure out some way to reconcile one God from two beings.

But given that I start with Marcionitism, I am very comfortable with the idea that Jesus might have been understood to be have been a being who wasn't the Son or the Father (assuming that both were already known to Jews). So what I have started to think is that the controversy might actually have been centered around the explicit content of the Creed - i.e. whether or not the Father's οὐσία, a personified being or hypostasis, was one and the same with the Son.

The reason I make mention of this is because in earliest Jewish mysticism יֵשׁ does have a life of his own. He is the hidden power of God. The question then which prompted the Creed wouldn't be whether the Son was the same as Father (which is idiotic because a Father has to be older than his Son by definition). But whether or not the Father's οὐσία was one and the same with Jesus.

Now you may ask how could the Alexandrian tradition have gotten around this one. I have been going through Clement's references to οὐσία and they are quite generic. When you really think about it, the idea that the Father's substance was 'in the Son' doesn't preclude the possibility of it - the yesh - being a separate being.

Consider the Jewish mystical speculation regarding yesh (substance) and ayin (nothingness). 'Nothingness' is the highest divinity. Only the creation of yesh (= οὐσία) started the ball rolling for the creation of the universe. But yesh is not the Creator.

In was wondering whether it was understood that the οὐσία was behind the creation of the universe but understood to be nevertheless separate from it. The οὐσία partook of the Son in the same way the Jesus was understood to have left the crucified victim on the Cross ('My Lord, my Lord, why hast thou forsaken me).

The heretical 'docetic' Jesus is this οὐσία. The notion that Jesus had no flesh doesn't preclude him having 'substance.' It's just a heavenly substance, the substance of the Father which essentially cuts the divide between 'Father' and 'Son' centuries before Nicaea. The orthodox were trying to nail down - not the idea that the Father was the Son - but to 'corner' the οὐσία and make it one and the same with the Son, which Arius and others rejected.

I understand "ousia", in Platonism, to mean "essence" or "being", which are related terms both denoting participation in the eternal.

The idea of the trinity made sense to me after I studied Plato. The hypostases of the trinity are different perspectives of one thing.

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Remember also that if Jesus is the οὐσία of the Father (rather than Son) we become sons in the same way that the Son partook of the οὐσία. We are not 'sons of the Son' but sons of the οὐσία or bar ithutho, a term used in the original Syriac creed.

Yes. We participate in the divine ousia, or we're capable of such participation if we train our minds.

Chili · 01-31-2012, 09:30 PM

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Originally Posted by steve_bnk

[I doubt they were that deep.

No they were not that deep, but deep enough to write book that we have been fighting over now for 2000 years, because we just do not understand much of it at all.

mountainman · 01-31-2012, 09:50 PM

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Originally Posted by stephan huller

An example of Clement's use of ousia that might identify it with Jesus the divine hypostasis ....

The term ousia or essence does not appear in the new testament. Clement is an unreliable source. The Nicaean controversy over the term ousia, considering the rise of the Platonic schools in the 3rd century is obviously a controversy between the Christians and the Platonists. It is reasonable to conjecture therefore that the term was introduced by the Platonists, and this introduction was fundamental to the controversy.

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Originally Posted by Horatio Parker

I understand "ousia", in Platonism, to mean "essence" or "being", which are related terms both denoting participation in the eternal.

The idea of the trinity made sense to me after I studied Plato.

That's precisely what the Post-Nicaean Christians surmised. The trinity does not become the subject of historical discussion until after Nicaea. The Christians simply misappropriated Platonic theology and philosophy and used it as "Christological theology and philosophy".

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Originally Posted by The Legacy of Greece - Oxford University Press (1921)

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

Augustine should know. The 4th century heresiological and orthodox monotheistic Christological theology is a scam.

Does everyone know what these "only a few words and phrases" happen to be?
It was a very bold and simple theft, and succeeded brilliantly.

Chili · 01-31-2012, 10:28 PM

del ty

Chili · 01-31-2012, 10:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Horatio Parker

[Yes. We participate in the divine ousia, or we're capable of such participation if we train our minds.

All ousia's are divine in that the primary premise is always ours by intuition. Ousia's are insights that require our participation to fill in the missing premiss by way of first hand insight into the minor or the conclusion. They so are called second or third order enthymemes, and they are enthymematic because they require our cooperation (engagement) to fill in the missing premiss to complete the argument (as if there is nothing else in life except the real life experiment).

Enthymemes are 'outside talk' (paralogism) that are a likeness such as 'like god' in Gen. 3 that is iconic and probe-able as probability. It so is not a phantasm that would send us on a 'wild goose chase' with no results and so therein is the invitation for us to probe. So if then, 'like god' is iconic it already contains the promise that we can become God, now with capital G . . . except that here now 'we' are probable to require this same insight.

In the 'ousia' we gain insight and see the essence itself, hint hint, that has an 'it-ness' about it that exists prior to the exterior that we first saw when we began our probing so that we now see the horseness of a horse, as if for the first time, the good shepherd would say. It so is now easy to see that the horseness of a horse is what made the horse 'the particular' we see, wherefore then the word einai, or soul, has no plural in the Greek language, and so there is nobody like you, or me. All easy to follow, I am sure.

The 'divine ousia' you may have in mind is the final Form or parousia wherein we are the subject of our probing that so is called a 1st Order Enthymeme because here the major as missing and the middle and conclusion are already in place.

So now we know 'what we have' and 'who we are' (or pretend to be), but with the major missing we ask ourselves 'how we came to be' since we 'do' recognize the divine component of our inspired second or third premiss that were always supplied and actually prompted our inquiry to gain these prior ousia's (insights). This here then is how the son co-exists with the father in Stephen OP, which in the end is very simple put as 'monoploid seed' of the father wherein the son has lineage with the father (with no doubt about it).

So in this final first, 'like god' is a missing major and so that we find the major now and become the God that was promised in the icon that was called: 'like god.'

Parousia then was the final Form of Plato and his Forms were simple ousia's and the final here then is where sonship with the father is made manifest.

Horatio Parker · 01-31-2012, 10:41 PM

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Originally Posted by mountainman

That's precisely what the Post-Nicaean Christians surmised. The trinity does not become the subject of historical discussion until after Nicaea. The Christians simply misappropriated Platonic theology and philosophy and used it as "Christological theology and philosophy".

It's hard to say if it was a misappropriation or not. They used the language and concepts available to them via their Greek educations. That it was a major influence is undeniable, but their intent isn't so clear. I don't see why an educated person of that time couldn't prefer Xtianity yet retain the language of Greek philosophy. How many of their hugely illiterate congregants could understand Plato?

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01-31-2012, 10:28 PM	#18
Chili Banned Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: Alberta Posts: 11,885	del ty

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