mountainman

Arius's. Historically, when the shit hit the fan, we are back with Arius and his so-called flock of antichristian followers.


Fat Pats this side of Nicaea had to be legally restrained from trying to jump on the Constantinan Bandwaggon.

If you posit Fat Pats the far side of Nicaea, and go with the history of Hans Eusebius Anderson, what did docetism really mean other than squabbles between two utterly small and insignificant underground minority cults.


But you paint an accurate picture of the post Nicaean Bandwaggon ... you should have been an artist sv.

sotto voce

Arius's, Big Con's, everyone agreed about the wasp under the tunic.

Roger Pearse

I happened to see this, and I'm not quite sure what is being claimed here. Is this the old legend that the First Council of Nicaea formulated the canon of the NT?

The idea that Constantine was involved in the creation of the NT canon is likewise a curious one. He ordered copies of bibles from scriptoria for his new city of Constantinople, but that's all.

The canon of the NT was not a controversial one in the 4th century, and does not appear, as far as I know, in any of the Arian debates. The Arians, indeed, were able to point out that the key term of the Nicene definition, "homousios", does not appear in the bible without anyone expressing a query about which books this might contain. While there was some fuzziness in theory at the edges of the NT canon at this period, in practice it clearly was no more of an issue than the deuterocanonical books of the OT are today.

It does atheism no favours to try to pretend that no-one knows what a Christian is or believes.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Toto

Hi Roger - I don't know who all you have on ignore, but this is what Dio's comments concerned:

Everyone knows what a Christian believes, but trying to find two people who know the same Christian doctrine can be tricky.

sotto voce

Finding two people who agree about Christian doctrine can be tricky. Most people know what Christian doctrine is, within the compass of their comprehension (which is often pretty limited). Many people don't say what they mean about Christianity. Some spend almost every waking hour trying to persuade that Christian doctrine is other than what it is.

mountainman

As the histories of the 4th century, aside from Ammianus, are largely represented by imperially connected orthodox heresiologists writing in the 5th century, this condition is to be expected. However there are quite a number of sources that state the Arians were physically preserving prohibited non canonical books. The preservation of non canonical books was highly contraversial, and attracted an immediate death penalty if discovered by concerted search and destroy missions mounted by the orthodox heresiologists and their minions, with the support of the imperial army.





If the grasping of this knowledge is tricky for people today, what might we say of the grasping of this knowledge by the people of the 4th century?

Historians learn the history of the 4th century largely via Ammianus, whose accounts no longer exists for the epoch prior to c.350 CE. Ammianus refers to the "plain and simple religion of the christians". Outside of Ammianus, examining the orthodox heresiological "church councils" of the 4th century, and looking at the anathemas that were pronounced on a wide range of public opinion, it is impossible to say what a christian was. The sources reveal the heresiologists were all hell-bent on persecuting and executing people whom they considered demonstrated any opinion whatsoever that was able to be contrued as what a christian was not.

Christians and Christian belief of the 4th century were defined by "Who is left standing after the heretics are dead?" See "Demolish Them!" (Rassias et al). As such, the preservation of Christian doctrine at that time was characterized by persecution and intolerance.

Finally to return to Bullneck, the "Holy Writ" of all Christians by definition was bound together in the Bullneck Bible. If we are to get down to the nuts and bolts, a Christian is one for whom the Bullneck Bible (less the Shepherd of Hermas, etc) is the approved and genuine "Holy Writ" of Jesus Harry Christ and his transcendental kingdom, which suddenly and unexpected became a political reality at Nicaea, because only then did his servants fight for it.

The Bullneck Bible became the high technology oracle for true Christian believers at Nicaea, and remains so to this very day.

sotto voce

Obviously, something is tricky. Maybe it's more that grasp of Christian doctrine makes people tricky. Maybe it's not that people don't understand the Bible, it's that the meaning of the Bible is plain enough. Maybe people understand more than they want to, and say they don't understand, or say that it says something that they want to believe. Maybe they've always done that, as the Bible says would occur. If everyone agreed about the Bible, if everyone had agreed about the Bible, the Bible would be wrong!

The only time that there was no significant dispute about the meaning of the Bible was when most people did not read it, and were treated with violence if they disagreed with those in a position to apply violence.

mountainman

My bet is it's the "history of christian origins".





It seems a rather transcendental history.

And may involve imaginary numbers.

sotto voce

It's a safe bet to make if you know you don't have to pay up if you lose.




I think that's the idea.

All numbers are imaginary.