Toto

Michael Servetus was burned at the stake for denying Trinitarianism, which is close to dying over an iota.

Toto

There is no logical coherence in the doctrine of the Trinity. That's why it is enforced with excommunication or execution.

Toto

He would have denied it.

There is no such consensus. After the Holocaust, Christian theologians tried to purge their culture of anti-Semitism, but the concept of Jesus as the divine embodiment of God is not Jewish.

No Robots

Yeah, they're really on the hot seat. They want it Jewish, but not too Jewish. We'll see how it plays out. I would guess that most will drop the whole Jewish thing, and go mythicist. But maybe I just expect the worst from our scholarly pseudo-elite.

anethema

areyou kidding me ? read the history of the council. there were riots in the city, reportedly thousands killed. including all the arian bishops. ill look up the proper citations., but i think there covered in "the sword of constantine"

anethema

the fact that arius was proposing a different kind of jesus is a matter historical record. if the hjers want to find a real "historical" jesus look to arius. he had a very large base in the general population. the people in the intellectual elite have no interest in finding a "real" historical jesus. they only want their presuppositions confirmed. its similar to egyptology except that very few people care who was buried in tomb kv55. i do its my curse. i may never find out either one but the search is interesting.

sotto voce

Indeed. It's monotheistic polytheism, total lunacy, testament to the je ne sais quoi of the human race. But it's what the emperor ordered, so it's what the empire damn well got. Emperors were of course, as they say in Derbyshire, strong i'th arm, wayk i'th head; mostly military men, so no great profundity could be expected. Roman Catholic Joseph Goebbels' famous dictum, “If you tell a lie big enough, and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it," may well have been inspired by trinitarianism. It was also the study of Russian Orthodox Joseph Vissarionovich, aka Stalin, and his maxim "If you repeat the lie long enough, it becomes fact" may have been suggested by this teaching also.

It was, anyway. By Calvinists as well as Catholics. The first opponents to trinitarianism were murdered. But murderers can have nothing to do with Bible history, except by antithesis. Heresy and horror go together like water and wetness, if given the opportunity. Though if one looks around allegedly Christian internet forums, it is striking how much insistence is still placed on stating this heresy. It's obviously very important to some people.

But this fascinating study does not really contest the view that a person fully human and fully deity (within the limits of corporeality) is perfectly permissible in logic. The Roman Empire, like many successors, had to reluctantly concede that Jesus was indeed fully human and fully divine. It just had to resort to fundamentalism in order to reinstate polytheism, among other reinstatements that it made under a Christian banner. That the notion that supernal deity was present in the flesh on this planet two millennia ago is noted annually by people of all religions and none is surely reason to believe that there is no logical bar to it.

Despite the idiocy of trinitarianism.

Iskander

Yes, I know all that, but they felt they were fighting for a something very important and not in the least trivial. Religion is a very powerful motivator for those who are believers.


Martyrs do not die over an iota, no one would have been willing to die or kill for something utterly trivial.


You said in your OP that you are a student of early Christian history with an interest in Arius; do you have a question or comment for us?

anethema

my question or comment would be - whats the difference between the current discussion and what was taking place at the council. i have to take it for granted that eusibius etal believed in what they were arguing to a moral certainty. kind of like what repuplicans and democrats argue over. i have a certain affinity for aa's position only because he uses real historical methodology seemingly free of assumptions and presuppositions. this doesnt mean hes correct, only that his method is better than most of what i see here. please correct meif im wrong.

No Robots

You have to remember that Eusebius was briefly excommunicated for Arianism.