Tercel

Amos,
What exactly is the point of your posting? 3000 posts by you in which I don't think I've ever seen you say a single thing which made any sense.


Why?

Do you enjoy wasting board space? Is this some sort of private joke and you are poking fun at everyone here? Or are you just very crazy?

Amos

Poking fun? I am dead serious about the things I write and I was hoping you would tell me about the iota argument.

MortalWombat

It certainly was an issue. Patriarch Michael Cerularius of Constantinople, in his criticisms of the practices of the Western Church, listed the addition of the Filioque to the Creed. In return, Cardinal Humbert, in his Bull of Excommunication written on behalf of Pope Leo IX, accused the Greek Church of "leaving out" the phrase. It may not have been an actual "reason" for the schism, it certainly didn't do anything to help prevent it.

Yellum Notnef

Here we see two very different Christains. One thinks Jesus never existed outside of the mythic realm while the other has made it his lifes duty to prove to us that Jesus was a flesh and blood man who bodily floated off to Heaven.

What I find most fascinating here is that the Christian who believes Jesus bodily floated off into Heaven actually has the gall to accuse the OTHER guy of making no sense and wasting board space.

I don`t know if I should laugh or cry.
<img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

CX

Well obviously in such a brief post I didn't cover the entire history of trinitarian belief. As I said the idea of a trinity developed over time and was only firmly codified in the 4th century. There may have been trinitarians in some form or another at the earliest stages of Xian development. My only real point was that it was not like some group of church elders got together one day and said, "Let's copy the idea of a trinity from somewhere" and added it in one go to the doctrines of orthodox Xianity. As to my original statement about the Council of Constantinople in 381 I clearly mispoke. It is a subtle point, but true enough that they only decided that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the father at that council.

Tercel

That depends on how you define 'Christian' - I would not regard Amos as one. And similarly, I've been accused several times of not being a True Christian.

I have no problem with Amos' belief that Jesus did not literally exist. What I do have a problem with is that he spouts completely incoherent irrelevant rubbish.


If God indeed exists, then presumably the miraculous is not impossible. Hence speculation on the possibility of the miraculous within a religious tradition is entirely rational. Making no sense whatsoever like Amos however, is not.

And discussing Christianity this board is hardly 'wasting board space'.

Jackalope

For those of you trying to puzzle out the various church council decrees, I suggest looking up the words "monophyte" and "theophyte." All that bit about the Holy Ghost pouring forth from _two_ sources actually has considerable bearing on the division between the monophytes (mostly those who followed the Arian heresy) and theophytes. The apostle's creed was changed several times during this period, over just exactly this issue.

_This_ page is a good place to start:
<a href="http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/byzantium/" target="_blank">http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/byzantium/</a>
Links to sources about early dogmatic disputes:
<a href="http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook1b.html#Early%20Dogmatic%20Disputes" target="_blank">http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook1b.html#Early%20Dogmatic%20Disputes</a>
Ancient History Sourcebook, Christian Origins:
<a href="http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/asbook11.html" target="_blank">http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/asbook11.html</a>

From the Catholic Encyclopedia (hate using it as a sourcce, but it's the easiest way to find summaries of certain issues):
Monophytes and Monophysitism:
<a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10489b.htm" target="_blank">http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10489b.htm</a>
West Syrian (Jacobite) Rite:
<a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14417a.htm" target="_blank">http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14417a.htm</a>

My point with these links is that most of the documents you folk are pointing at refer to disputes over Monophysitism, not the trinity.

Jackalope

More links (I had to fire up Netscape, which is my normal browser but croaks on II):

Arianism:
<a href="http://www.ntcanon.org/Arianism.shtml" target="_blank">http://www.ntcanon.org/Arianism.shtml</a>
Athansius of Alexandria (attendee at Council of Nidea and later bishop of Alexandria):
<a href="http://www.ntcanon.org/Athanasius.shtml" target="_blank">http://www.ntcanon.org/Athanasius.shtml</a>
Closing of the Cannon in the West:
<a href="http://www.ntcanon.org/closing-west.shtml" target="_blank">http://www.ntcanon.org/closing-west.shtml</a>
Closing of the Cannon in the East:
<a href="http://www.ntcanon.org/closing-east.shtml" target="_blank">http://www.ntcanon.org/closing-east.shtml</a>
Hah, finally found the specific link I was looking for:
Important Creeds of Christendom:
<a href="http://home.earthlink.net/~ronrhodes/Creeds.html" target="_blank">http://home.earthlink.net/~ronrhodes/Creeds.html</a>

The Nicene Creed covers the nature of Christ, ie, that he is of the same person as the Godhead. WHile it mentions the Trinity, it doesn't settle any of the dogma disputes about it. The Athanasian Creed is the one that covers the Trinity.

[Agnostic simply because I think the issue can't be proven one way or the other. But I haven't seen any convicing proof that there's a God or a Trinity. I simply like studying Byzantine history.]

--Lee

Fiach

It took nearly 4 centuries to invent and define the Trinity in the early church. While the Catholic Church dates to its official recognition by Constantine in 324 AD, the trinity was just barely established along with it. The Catholics or Trinitarians were just one of several Christian Sects prior to 324 AD.

There were the oldest ones, Ebionites, who were Jews accepting Jesus as the Messiah but not as a god. There were Nazarenes who strangely can be traced back to 100 BC regarded Jesus as a Messiah and one with special powers but not a god. There were Arian Christians, who actually dominated the Third century Empire. They believed that Jesus was a created god, secondary to the High God or Father. They had no Holy Ghost.

Tertullian in North Africa was a student of African antiquities especially Egyptian. He lived in the early 3rd Century. He would have been well aware of the wall murals at the Holy of Holies in the Temple at Luxor, Egypt. The murals showed the Father God Atum sending the messenger god, Kneph (called the Holy Spirit) to a virgin girl telling her that she would bear the high god's son. The next mural shows the Virgin bearing a son, Aten (or Horus), in a manger attended by Kneph, shepherds, and visited by three kings. This ancient Trinity comprised the Father (Atum), Son (Aten, the Sun), and Kneph (Holy Spirit), was proposed by Tertullian to the Christians as God the Father, God the Son (Jesus), and the Holy Spirit.

Initially the Trinitarians were a minority to the Arian Christians. What tipped the balance was that Emperor Constantine's mother was a Trinitarian (Catholic). At the Council of Nicaea, Arianism was condemned and Trinitarian Catholicism was adopted as official in a council dominated by Imperial troops of Constantine. The Arians survived for several more centuries in the converted German kingdoms north of the Roman Empire. Athanasius who incorporated Tertullian’s ideas, elevated Jesus to a full godhood, articulated the Trinitarian dogma. So his followers were sometimes called Athanasians, Trinitarians, Orthodox, or simply Catholic (universal).

So, one is in every dogmatic sense a "Catholic" while he may not accept the Papal dogma which was added later. Trinitarian Christianity with Jesus as chief god is Catholicism, including Greek Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, Maronites, Protestants, Fundamentalists, and Evangelicals.

Fiach

Fiach

The story is consistent. It is consistent with the myth of Aten (the Sun God) in the Temple wall murals at the Holy of Holies in Luxor, Egypt. They date 1600 years older than the Christian era. The first panel shows the maiden Queen or virgin, Mut-emua, and the God Taht, the Annunciator of the Gods telling her that she is to give birth to a divine son. The nest panel shows the God Kneph giving her the new life. Kneph is the Holy Spirit who causes the Immaculate Conception (Kneph is the ancient Coptic/Egyptian word for "Spirit.") The painting shows the virgin's swelling form.

Third panel shows the mother seated in the midwife's stool and the child is supported by the hands of the midwife/nurse. Fourth panel shows the "Adoration", and enthronement. Three Magi are offering gifts to the child-god. Kneph stands behind. These older scenes of Pharaonic Mythology were most likely the inspiration of the Gospel writers since it is obviously nearly identical to the Gospel accounts. The Gospels are plagiarism.

Tertullian, an early Christian theologian also educated in ancient North African antiquities, was familiar with Egyptian mythology. This is known from his other writings. When he invented the Trinity in the 2nd century, despite his later apostasy to Donatism, he created a Trinity that remained unknown until Athanasius a century later found it compelling as a way to gain godhood for Jesus while not rejecting Jehovah (the Father). Athanasius incorporated the fictional Jesus into the son’s position of Aten, or simply renamed Aten with the name Jesus. The Holy Ghost was an afterthought to make a trinity. Three has always been a magic number. Kneph was a Spirit God so Christianity acquired the Holy Spirit mainly to be the third guy on a trinity.

Constantine was the major force. He was a believer in Aten, the Sun God. But he had mutually antagonistic Christians; themselves divided into Arians, Nestorians, Donatists, Athanasians, and Ebionites/Nazarenes. Then there were over a million Mithraists. Mithra, Aten, and Jesus were all merged by Constantine personally. He called the synod at Nicaea. His troops bullied the bishops into merging all three religions into Roman Catholicism, the Empire’s legally recognized form of Christianity. We have modern Christianity because of the plagiarism of old myths and the political needs of an emperor.

Constantine made the Sabbath, Aten’s day or Sunday instead of the Jewish Saturday. He made Mithra and Aten’s birthday the Winter Solstice, December 25 in the old calendar, the birthday of Jesus or Christmas.

In summary: The trinity was plagiarised from the Egyptians of 2000 years earlier. Go to Luxor and see the Holy of Holies on the Temple Wall before the Muslims destroy it. Jesus was as composite possibly entirely fictional character who is patterned off of Yeshua ben Pandira the sorceror of 150 BCE, and a mosaic of Mithra, Horus, Aten, Osiris, Apollonius, and Lugh of Ireland who were gods fathered by virgins by the big god, died and resurrected. Jesus was just the last one of a long series of god-man resurrection myths.

Fiach