Duvduv

Sorry, I don't know what you mean. Either you weren't clear in what you were arguing or I did not understand your point. I understood it to mean that texts of commentaries before 325 could not be expected to survive.

steve_bnk

You can't be serous. Nicea was the beginning of RCC dogmatism. A definition. by consensus, of what acceptable Christian theology was to be based on. All others need not apply.

Doug Shaver

You have to keep in mind that what sotto means by "the church" has little connection with what the rest of the world means by "the church."

sotto voce

Falsehood.

Doug Shaver

Let's see the evidence. Tell us exactly what you mean by "the church," and then document your claim that the rest of the world means the same thing.

sotto voce

You made a claim, you either substantiate, or it will be assumed retracted.

mountainman

The world is compelled to either follow what evidence Big E. tenders in regard to "the church" or else to invent their own private historical fiction. Dear Jesus, please help me to find a commentator on Acts before the 5th century. Perhaps these earlier commentators were executed in the centralised state church inquisitions of the 4th century?

Diogenes the Cynic

Let's put it this way, you made a claim that "the church" was "built on amity and freedom of expression." Clearly this claim cannot refer to Orthodox Christianity (i.e. the "church" of Constantine and its descendant institutions), so what church WERE you referring to?

Sheshbazzar

Hmmm...do I recall a certain recent no True™ Christians debate???

Yes.....I think I do.
Does someone wish to be caught with their pants down around their ankles? I believe we can still locate the thread.



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sotto voce

Until the 4th century, comment on any part of the Bible was risky. It's highly significant that there is not a single extra-biblical theological document extant before the Renaissance that is not heretical. Heresy survived; orthodoxy did not. The Acts of the Apostles was red hot, because it demonstrated both absence of the authoritarianism that Rome sought, and democracy of the apostolic church. A commentary on it in the 5th century is as early an occurrence as one might expect.