Originally Posted by /^Blackmagik^\
i find it very convenient that the church dismisses works that, if found to be truthful would shatter it's very foundation.
The ideas you promulgate were dismissed by the apostles themselves, and by the early church fathers who were taught by them. You are bringing up ideas again as if they're some new revelation.
They're not new. The ideas were defeated almost two millennia ago. Although one appreciates your wide eyed innocence, you're just not thoroughly educated on the subject. I'm sorry.
... to ride the coattails of that new sensation of the time.
That's not just unfair, it's irreverent. Constantine I (Ever August) was the Supreme Autocrator. He held the Mandate of Heaven, and did not need to ride any coat tails.
When you are acclaimed Autocrator, you are allowed the luxury of doing what is correct. There are no politics except those the Autocrator allows.
He really wanted to know what the truth was. There was a lot of arguing in the First Council, but don't pretend the dissenting bishops were imprisoned or excommunicated. To read the accounts, some of them seem to have achieved an actual revelation during the course of the proceedings.
The Monophysite controversy continued for centuries, because the Empire could not bring itself to completely stamp out an entire
ethnicity that appeared to follow this branch of Christianity which was not Orthodox.
In the 500's AD the court of Justinian (Ever August) intervened to prevent a pogrom and the descendants of the same people whom they saved later make up the Church of Armenia and the Church of Georgia, which churches, ironically, converted to Orthodoxy in the twentieth century.
So, although you're correct that the Empire needed to define what its state religion was, it did not stamp out all the alternatives. It was simply illogical to deprive the Empire of an entire ethnicity which wished to follow its own national church.
I continue to get the feeling that your impression of early Christianity and its Orthodox child is coloured by your relations and feelings about the Roman Catholic Church and other western churches that you might find offensive.
Without presuming to instruct you on the worth of those western faiths, I assure you that the early Orthodox Church that was involved in those Councils and, I think, even the current Orthodox Church
really is very different from the churches with which you are familiar.
Also, for whatever it's worth, I do understand how someone could get quite "solid" behind an idea regarding Christianity.
My personal problem is that there are few things that make me angrier than TV evangelists.
...as i said before, that is not an absolute. to put that much faith in an organization of men is simply naieve.
I understand.
In many ways, Christianity is one leap of faith after another. For example, Constantine I (Ever August) and bishops involved in those early councils and early church writings are actually saints.
I don't mean to criticise whatever your personal faith is. I think that it's entirely possible that slight differences in faith (or entirely different religions) could be perfectly valid for you as an individual or even entire societies, and that it does not necessarily negate the validity of Christianity.
One of the slight differences we tolerate is over the issue of women priests.
In Orthodoxy, there is a very powerful class of female deaconesses who will never be priests. In the Anglican and Episcopal Churches, there are many female priests.
It doesn't necessarily matter to me that the ordination of female priests is entirely valid in the Anglican Episcopal Church but not in the Orthodox Church, and I consider myself in communion with both.
Just a couple of weeks ago, we had a rather intense conversation with Prince Faisal about his Wahabi sect of Islam. I definitely came away from the conversation knowing that we were still much more alike than we were different, and I would never presume to socially anathematise his religion simply because it's valid for him, and not necessarily for me.
religions for thousands of years share one common bond and that is control of the masses. the roman empire needed control of the masses at that time....
I'm really sorry, but I don't think this is historically accurate.
There just was no "mass" of people the way people think about the "masses" of later centuries. Moreover, although the Imperial Court moved to Constantinople chiefly to be nearer the centre of power and population, one of the smaller reasons was to get away from the city of Rome, it's senate and its street mobs.
He just didn't need to worry about masses. He had firm control of his life and the Empire at that time.
...his divinity had to be decided upon by men. all men in power have an agenda, hidden or in the open.
A little semantic difficulty here.
The dual nature of Christ is what it is, it always was, it always will be, and nothing that Man says or does will change it.
For whatever divinely emotional reason, God cannot leave us behind and chooses to feel and bear sin on our behalf, and nothing Man says or does can change it, as much as we add to God's emotional load.
Perhaps individual bishops had agendas other than properly defining the Truth that they all knew. Perhaps.
The main thing they had to worry about was that the Emperor as
Pontifex Maximus and Autocrator wanted to know the definition of Orthodoxy, and that was their main agenda.
What possible political agenda could a little bishop from a little town in Cappodocia have that would over ride his Emperor's command to define the truth?
ROFL....
Yes.
I think you are, but you think I am.
one thing you need to remember in an argument such as this... there are three sides to every story....
And the right side is called Orthodoxy.