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First Council of Nicaea

en.wikipedia.org

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Re: First Council of Nicaea

#2

Post by losvedir »

I suppose this is relevant on account of it being Easter.

Growing up Catholic, we always said the Nicene Creed during Mass, which kind of enumerates the standard Catholic beliefs. I never thought much about it, but a non-Christian friend who joined me one time said thought it was creepy and cult like, us all standing there saying it in unison. I appreciated a universal, orthodox set of beliefs determined to be "correct" by experts, rather than the Wild West of Protestantism where it seemed every church was more unique and centered around its pastor.

I was pretty surprised to learn the Council of Nicaea wasn't until a few hundred years after the ostensible start of the church, and remember thinking it was strange how it was all topsy turvy right after the supposed events around Jesus, and went several generations when no one original was still around before it settled down.

The history of the early Church is pretty interesting from a political / anthropological perspective.

Re: First Council of Nicaea

#3

Post by mjburgess »

Thought the article says the council 'settled' christology, it still took hundreds of years before it was popularly resolved: for, at least, the first 500 years of christianity jesus was widely regarded as something more like a demigod.

This fairly clearly what Paul thought; with Luke likely believing just in a messianic role.

Early christianity is perhaps best seen as greeking of judaism: god the father is zeus, the angles are demigods, jesus is a half-human offspring of zeus, jesus has been sent to destroy the demonic forces and end the process of death (whereby we're sent to the underworld, etc.). Satan as something more like a peer of God (this indeed, was the original OT role: santan was an angle appointed by god to test people).

The whole thing starts to make less-and-less sense the more this greek frame is dropped: if jesus ends up being god himself, and there is no hell, etc. it becomes basically incoherent. Why would god send god to resurrect people which is something god can already do?

Re: First Council of Nicaea

#8

Post by tomrod »

losvedir wrote: post #2

I suppose this is relevant on account of it being Easter. Growing up Catholic, we always said the Nicene Creed during Mass, which kind of enumerates the standard Catholic beliefs. I never thought much about it, but a non-Christian friend who joined me one time said thought it was creepy and cult like, us all standing there saying it in unison. I appreciated a universal, orthodox set of beliefs determined to be "corre…

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