Radorth

AHHHH!

Facts. You gotta love 'em, like a spring rain clearing the air.

Rad

Fiach

Constantine's claim to fame was the legalisation of Christianity, and then subsequent summoning of the Council of Niecea (325AD) which among a few other fairly minor points: Declared Arianism heretical (the belief that Christ was a created being, less than God),

MINOR POINT??? He rejected the most dominant sect of Chrsitianity, Arianism, while legalising the minority trinitarian cult.

and wrote the first draft of the Nicene Creed. (It is often claimed by atheists that Constantine was at least partially responsible for the assertion of the council that Jesus was fully God)

Well, he outlawed the Arians, Ebionites, and Donatists while giving legal status to the newer sect of Trinitarianism in which Jesus was elevated to a full uncreated god. I am saying he succeeded. Or can't you take victory for an answer. Jesus supposedly said, "My God, My God, why hast THOU forsaken ME?" So even Jesus didn't think he was a god.

quote:
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What happened to all of the Gospels that the Church didn't want us to see?
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They ate them.

Well they intended to eat them but the bonfire got too hot and burned them up eh?

Seriously, they didn't think they were of value and so didn't bother to read them in churches or make copies of them.

Translation: Those books did not support the Trintarian Cult belief.

As a result many of them have perished due to lack of copying, though enough still survive today and you should be able to find books containing the Gospel of Peter and the Gospel of Thomas etc in your local library. (or on the internet) Christians pay them little attention now for the same reasons as they first did: These writings are generally 2nd to 4th+ century forgeries either containing wildly heretical stuff or a bad rehash of what's already in the Bible books.

Heretical means that they contain embarassing contradictions to the Paganised version of Trinitarian Christianity that won Constantine and the Imperial army's backing. The sword is mightier than the book.

The only one that any scholars seem to take seriously is the Gospel of Thomas which a few radicals have suggested might be as old as the 4 canonical gospels. Not that it contains anything startling: it's pretty much a very brief rehash of the canonical gospels tainted a bit with gnosticism.

Something was a problem, perhaps the part about Jesus spending the nights with a naked youth, sleeping with him and introducing him into the "mysteries of the faith." It is not conclusive but may have had some effect on the churches of Asia Minor practicing sexual perversion that Paul railed about. Can you imagine Jerry Falwell reading it and deciding that Jesus was gay?

There were some non-gospel books which aren't in the New Testament but came close and were often recommended by ancient writers as still "suitable for reading in church" despite not being in the Bible. eg Shepherd of Hermas, Epistle of Barnabas etc. Again you should be able to find a copy of those if you try.

I will look for them. I never heard of them before.

Fiach

Radorth

Funny they didn't burn that one eh? It's a great marvel what escaped the flames, given the mad censors' attention to wiping out all the competition.

"They must have"

"It wouldn't surprise me"

"It's not conclusive but"

"Something was a problem"

"Church behavior supports this hypothesis"

We don't need no proof.

And you apparently haven't read the early and numerous fathers either or you would abandon your more cynical and simplistic theories. Actually I can agree Constantine did the church no good, but for different reasons than yours. The early fathers spoke as if "the Lord Jesus" was their only guide. They elevated him to "God" status long before Constantine came to help and they were hardly in some minority cult.

Rad

Fiach

Why argue, Rad? Your guys won the conflict. Your guys managed to make their rivals extinct either by forced conversion or making them deceased? Don't reject winning.

Fiach

Tercel

I did not mean to imply the rejection of Arianism was a minor point. I was referring to the fact that the Council ruled on some other issues which were minor.

The idea that Arianism was the dominant Christian sect and trinitarianism a minority is only true in your imagination I'm afraid. The Arianism heresy, started by Arius was quickly condemned in ~320AD by a local council at Alexandria of over a hundred bishops from Libya and Egypt. After this Arius moved to Nicomedia and continued teaching. The emperor Constantine sent letters to all parties involved asking (rather naively) that they reconcile their minor differences and agree in the interests of peace. Upon realising that wasn't going to work he summoned a universal council in 325 to deal with the issue. ~318 Bishops attended from all over the Roman Empire and even some from outside it. After discussion only 5 Bishops supported Arius, which after further discussion was reduced to 2.
Dominant Christian sect? Hmm. Well if 2 > 316 then yes.

And what are you trying to imply by the use of “he”. Are you another of these “Constantine dictated new doctrine” theorists?
I find that quite funny. Let’s see, you want me to believe that despite the fact that Christians had been willing to die and dying for their beliefs up until a few years earlier, 316 of the most prominent Christian leaders (as well as the rest of the Christian world who accepted their decision) immediately accepted without any protest Constantine’s dictation of new doctrine?!?
Frankly, I’d be inclined to believe that the moon landing never happened first.

Sometime you guys are going to have to actually come up with evidence regarding all these alleged book burnings...
Or did the Christians burn that as well? (no doubt they were afraid the atheists in the 21st century would find out)
Christian Emperors later did outlaw some books and we know which ones. How do we know: Because it is recorded that they outlawed them. General unsubstantiated assertions of mass book burnings do not cut it. We also know that some of the early Christian scholars founded libraries, so obviously they weren’t that anti-books.

You have a vivid imagination. A bit of browsing of actual historical data (and here I do not include “what atheists websites I have read said”) might help to dampen it.

I was just looking to see if I could find the canons of Nicaea online and got sidetracked by this history of the council on ccel.org. It looks quite good to me, if anyone’s interested.

You’re thinking of “Secret Mark”. That seems to me to be most likely a forgery by the modern scholar Morton Smith: I find it a little too coincidental that a scholar should happen to find a manuscript which conveniently supports his own doctoral thesis and which then vanishes before any experts can examine it against possible forgery.

Radorth

Heh, actually I have one of the most complex origins theories around. Of course I admit it is only a theory, unlike fundy creationists and evolutionists.

Unlike yourself, who deals mainly in likelihoods, I like to see proof which would stand up in court before declaring something a fact.

Grins Tercel. I really must try the genteel approach one day.

"Proof? We don't nned no proof. Everybody knows how likely it is."

Rad

Radorth

Uh, yeah. If you could merge the Russians with the Indians, you'd have a majority as well. I wasn't going to answer this as you are just throwing a mish-mash of stuff togehter hoping it will look good on paper. The Mitraists and Druids weren't exactly heretical Christian cults which the Nicene council was called to feret out. Criminy.

Constantine just made Christianity fashionable. He was actually pretty tolerant of pagans, et al- much more than later Popes were. You apparently see some dark plot here which there is little evidence for. But if you're looking for a witch, you'll find one for sure. We know that from the Inquisitions.

Rad

Fiach

I think that you refuse to face the intense persecution by Trinitarians of older Christian sects, and all Pagan religions. While pagan persecution of christians was small potatoes. Christians were not exterminated. The Christian persecution of Arian Christians, Druids, Pagans, and other was so extensive it led to their virtual extermination. In Mein Kampf Hitler praises the Constantinian Church for being bold and courageous enough to squash its rivals. He admired them.

Fiach

BreezySheezy

To answer your question, I don't consider myself to be a former "Christian" or a Christian. I'm sort of a lost soul right now. Anyway, at one time when I accepted him as my savior I felt a presence there. I remember this lady was singing a song and it ministerd to my soul. I mean I just felt it, and I began to cry. Over the years I kind of lost that feeling, and when my grandmother died, it shut my emotions completely off. Now I hate hearing my family talk about how good God is, and my mother says that God loves me. Well, if he loves me so much why did hurting me right now? No one can answer my questions. That's why I say I'm a lost soul.

Radorth

(No quote we can judge for ourselves, as usual)

You're just moving the goal posts around attempting to back up your cynical assertions with even more less relevant assertions. Nobody said there wasn't any persecutions of Christians on Christians, but because there was so little, you threw in the Druids and Mithraists (out of thin air). What the hell does that have to do with Trinitarians eliminating the other Christian competition or whether Jesus was made Lord by Constantine? You're all over the map. If you want to argue a point somebody can keep track of, go ahead. So far you've shifted from the historicity of Mary, to Christianity being a copy of Mithraism, to why we should worship cultural gods, comparing a mythical god "born of a rock" to a mythical Jesus who you gratuitously assert was born in a cave, to whether Jesus was a homosexual based on one tortured verse (in a forgery apparently), to Paul's plagarism, to Constantine's motives, to the burning of your "evidence," to Trinitarianism being a tardy invention. Have you ever heard of Occam's razor or applied it to any of your theories? Your explanations have no basis at all, are basically escoteric and merely raise more questions than they answer.

We ask for evidence Constantine controlled what went into the canon. We get nothing. We ask for evidence Jesus was ahistorical, we get nothing except "they must have burned it all except what the Arabs protected" which doesn't happen to be what we're asking for of course. We ask for evidence of these book burnings and get nothing. In fact you just make another baseless assertion that they burned specific portions.

Sorry, but my own faith is limited to the information in written, detailed, extant documents I can read for myself, applying consistent and rational tests to all. And I would say all but fringe scholars and JM'ers do exactly the same thing. It is reallly laughable how much credence JM'ers will give to the most obscure bit of information, then claim everything else was burned.

Same old bull. (Yawn)

Rad