Iskander

The debate about Arius was trying to find an answer to the question: Is the divine that has appeared on earth identical with the supreme divine who rules heaven and earth or is it a lesser god.


The M/H debate is trying to find the answer to the question: Is the story of Jesus an embellishment of the life of an ordinary man or is it entirely based on imagination.

anethema

exactly my point. the equivocation over dogma didnt just start with the council but was fluid. origen castrated himself (he couldnt very well change back though) over a fluid dogma. cement head ideology is what ruins any historical discussion imho. and another thing, how is an hypothetical sentient primate both divine and a sentient primate logically? please answer that one.

No Robots

I hope you're not asking me. I'm totally on the Jewish side of this discussion.

Duvduv

WHICH Jewish side? Everybody (including us Jews) knows that where you have two Jews you have three opinions. ;-)

Duvduv

Careful about that term "historical record." There is no historical record other than what the winners say. History is written by the winners. There are no outside records remaining of what the Arians did, read or believed.

No Robots

Well, there is fairly broad consensus amongst Jewish scholars on the question. The person who presents the Jewish case in its most pointed form is Constantin Brunner. On the subject of Arianism, he writes:

How infinitely less absurd Christianity would have been if it had only listened to the Judaizing Anti-trinitarianism (which was suppressed form the 4th century on, since the Council of Nicaea); how much more it could have had of Christ! For all the work of purifying Christianity is nothing other than a de-hallowing of the Holy Spirit, a throwing out of what this pernicious pagan has brought in, a smoothing out of the Trinity, of those three dreadful creases which had been introduced into the unity of Jahve by paganism. It is a return to better things in Gnosticism, Arianism, Unitarianism, a return to the unity of Jahve, to prophetic Judaism.... If Christianity is to become what it wants to be, it must renounce the desire to know anything that pure Judaism in Christ neither knows nor wishes to know: it must renounce symbols, dogmas, articles of faith, liturgy, worship; it must want to know nothing of creation, the Fall, redemption and justification, heaven and hell, the incarnation of God, the Three Persons of the Godhead, the single Personality of God; it must not hold on to a single item of religion's superstition. If Christianity is to come about, Christ must be the Master, revealing to the heathen that they are but men (Ps. 9:21).—Brunner, Our Christ, p. 373-4.

Brunner is a hot potato for Jew and Gentile alike.

anethema

there's enough to know to know that there was mortal combat over the nature of reality.

aa5874

What you claim is not really factual.

Did the winners write this???

Against the Galileans attributed to Julian the Emperor Surely, the so-called "winners" did NOT write "Against the Galileans" and there are more examples.

It just NOT even realistic and virtually impossible that ALL actual history can be re-written by so-called "winners".

Attempts to re-write actual history will in turn EXPOSE the very history that was to be covered up.

One of the most significant writings of the so-called winners is "Church History" attributed to Eusebius.

"Church History" contains the "DNA" of the history of the winners.

In effect, we can tell what the winners wrote.

outhouse

And that I agree.

had a few more bishops leaned the other way, Constantine would have had no problem making arianism the status quo.


Its hard to grasp the concept as it stands, look in a mirror and say, YA! that must be it! and believe yourself

outhouse

Arius is far to late and removed from the real mans life to be of any use at all for understanding HJ