Duvduv

I find it extremely interesting that the Quran, which was written during the seventh century, has no problem with the issues of Jesus's nature. The Quran has no problem with Jesus being a normal human being while being the the son of the virgin Maryam (who strangely is confused with Miriam the sister of Moses and Aaron) and the Holy Spirit, which is apparently much different than being begotten of God. No problem of two or three natures that various heresies and the official church were concerned about.

There is no issue of a trinity to be concerned about either.

John the Baptist is a figure of significance (Yahya the son of Zakariyya) as something of an Elijah figure and prophet, and Jesus spoke from the crib denying that his mother was a product of an illicit relationship. He is a messianic figure but was never crucified (with all that implies theologically), and simply ascended to heaven, though the ultimate redeemer is called the Mahdi who is assisted or preceded by Jesus (Isa).

Given the fact that the Quran doesn't seem to indicate anything relating to an official church authority, and its perception of Jesus resembles the gospels only in the matters of the Baptist and the virgin birth, the kind of Christian ideas that the writer(s) of the Quran had access to were not the Roman kind, although apparently Arabian Christians were supposed to have had a relationship to the councils and synods.

Inasmuch as historical information can remain unclear unless one accepts the claims of the apologists, it would seem that there was still significant fluidity in Christian circles in the 6th or 7th centuries. Presumably the author(s) of the Quran would have been able to meet many different types of people include those Christian following "Nicene Christianity" that would have existed at that time, yet this doesn't seem to be reflected in the Quranic accounts.

No Robots

Muhammad was a pupil of a Nestorian Christian. The Nestorians were thrown out of Constantinople because of their resistance to orthodox trinitarianism.

Here's a good overview of the situation:

The theologians had simply taken on a new metaphysical ballast that was too heavy for them, as they lurched anew into the Apollinarian, Nestorian and Monophysite controversies. We can perhaps understand how easy it was for Mohammed to blow the whistle on the whole confusing game, with the simple, uncompromising assertion that God is One.—Theodosius: the empire at bay / Stephen Williams and Gerard Friell, p. 50.

Islam is basically an attempt to maintain a Judaic Christology. It is like an early Unitarianism.

sotto voce

'The official church' presumably refers to the absurd caricature of the Roman Empire, which was of course set up to supplant and destroy the real church. By the 7th century it had totally destroyed all semblance of Christianity, at least in southern Europe. It is quite likely that the authors of the Qur'an, feeling discomfort at the presence of real Christians loose outside the Roman Empire, looked west with envious eyes, and decided to set up their own version of totalitarian polity to rid themselves of these embarrassing people who put them and their primitive religions to shame. Whereas Romanism denied the divinity of Jesus subtly, denying the transforming effect (and offence) of the cross, Islam did it explicitly, and made sure of this by bluntly denying that Jesus even died on the cross. The Qur'an had to re-write and flatly contradict the Old Testament, whole-scale, so one can see why the new faith had to be imposed by coercion. It makes much of Mary, as Rome had done, and in several ways, Islam is an eastern counterpart of Romanism, so the kiss of Wojtyla on a copy of a Qur'an can have been no surprise to theologians.

In a very real sense, Romanism and Islam carved up the whole region where Christianity had flourished, and exterminated it totally, as far as the record of history is concerned, until the Renaissance and the revival of learning. Romanism was forced to modernise and is no longer founded on coercion, but Islam, that had mimicked the violent views of contemporary Europe, has yet to adapt to modern standards.

No Robots

Fascinating, sotto voce. There is much to mull over in what you say.

sotto voce

Thank you.

Duvduv

I am not sure I quite understand. Are you describing "Nicene-Constantinople Christianity" as the usurper Roman cult of a different "Christianity" that existed before the 4th century that we are not familiar with?

And are you saying that Islam was an intentional subterfuge of the earlier Christianity against Roman-Nicene Christianity ? But doesn't that ignore the entire picture of Islam as its own development as a new religion?

Duvduv

In terms of understanding the ascendancy of conventional Christianity at the expense of other sects, was it at all possible for other sects to overtake the orthodox among the Roman elite, especially while the masses were not yet firmly in the camp of the Orthodox?

I should note that much of the Quran has a direct influence from two Jewish midrashic sources: Midrash Rabba and Pirqei de Rabbi Eliezer. Where does that fit in to what seems like an ONGOING struggle of the Orthodox against other groups even as late as the 7th century??

sotto voce

It was the usurper of the New Testament church. Anything to do with Nicaea was inimical to the real church, simply because it obeyed a civil ruler. 'Roman-Nicene Christianity' is contradiction in terms.

Not a new religion, because it was a counterpart of Romanism, which was theologically close to the old pagan system of Rome. Even the highly important title Pontifex Maximus was transferred from emperors to 'popes', who controlled diocesan 'bishops', who controlled 'priests', which had been abolished by the real church. Islam had to do without a hierarchy of that sort, but still enforced slavish obedience, i.e. the same socio-political end, through a sort of bibliolatry.

Duvduv

In all the controversies with the other sects, how was it that these sects never had the ability to hold their ground, even if one can assume they were disagreeing with one another? It sounds as though you are saying that somehow the "orthodox" managed to do something that all the other competing groups felt was inimical to Christianity, the merging of a civil regime (the Roman Empire machine) with "Christianity."

Who and where were the Arian, Nestorian or Apollonian leaders, bishops, etc. which enabled them to survive for centuries? Did they have known communities, churches, etc.? Was it so easy to persecute these "heretics" (although certain ones managed to survive to the present in the East)? Did they accept all of the canonical NT texts?

If that is so, how did they manage to pull it off, and how is it that none of the other groups found a way to defeat them? And isn't in fact Islam similar to the Orthodox insofar as it managed to merge civil power with religion despite the very contradictory teachings between Orthodoxy and Islam?

No Robots

Well, there is indeed the accommodation to secular power. And there is also the constant insistence on the mangod idea, which appeals to the masses. There is also Mariolatry. The sects that lost out were the ones that resisted this. Hell hath no fury....