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First Council of Nicaea

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Re: First Council of Nicaea

#31

Post by RhysU »

mjburgess wrote: post #3

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…

Yahweh was originally a weather god, not unlike Zeus, well before being interwoven with El during proto-Judaism [1]. Any "Greek period" of the eventual Jewish faith, to which you refer, ended certainly by their complete adoption of monotheism. Judaism came "pre-Greeked".

That particular Council affirmed that Christianity's God is triune by expressly rejecting Arianism. God sending God to do things God could already do is heavily a consequence of the trinity [2], hence why Nicaea was a big deal theologically.

Whether a monotheistic God is unary, binary, trinary, etc has implications that seem sufficiently fundamental that no major religion will abandon its chosen view.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahweh

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity

Re: First Council of Nicaea

#32

Post by panick21_ »

mjburgess wrote: post #30
panick21_ wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no clear 'early Christianity'. By the first time we have any evidence, there are already many different interpretations.

Then you agree with me. My phrasing is for an audience who is unaware that the gospels already disagree on Christology. I was retrospectively talking about the pauline-johnian views which won and what they were like

I don't think actual Paul and 'John' would agree on much but I know what you are saying.

Re: First Council of Nicaea

#33

Post by 082349872349872 »

knightoffaith wrote: post #27
082349872349872 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "pantheism" ascribed to Spinoza (as alluded to by Einstein) is my favourite. (and Dirk Willems my favourite martyr, although I do find it highly apropos that Barbara is the patron saint of the РВСН)

Spinoza was Jewish though.

(a) if my theology be accurate, at least jews, christians, muslims, and mormons all believe they believe in the same god (their differences lying in beliefs as to which prophets had commit bits), so it's not surprising that Rome would have declared their impression of his philosophy an official heresy, eg https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-x/en/encyclicals/documen...

(b) although he said he was being misinterpreted, his congregation* also threw him out for what they saw as heresy.

* reform is XIX, and haredim are XX, so it's probably safe to say his XVII congregation was orthodox?

Re: First Council of Nicaea

#34

Post by ahazred8ta »

082349872349872 wrote: post #26
marginalia_nu wrote: post #24

Arianism is easily in my top 3 heterodoxies. (Along with Pelagianism and Lollardism, though the moment Charismatic Catholicism is officially condemned Wycliffe gets bumped to an ignoble 4). Not catholic, just an enjoyer of church history.

The "pantheism" ascribed to Spinoza (as alluded to by Einstein) is my favourite. (and Dirk Willems my favourite martyr, although I do find it highly apropos that Barbara is the patron saint of the РВСН)

It's a shame that 'Mosaic' is not an option on the census form. O:-)

Re: First Council of Nicaea

#35

Post by MerelyMortal »

tomrod wrote: post #28
pvg wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you just stop? It's really a much worse thing than whatever your problem with a wikipedia article is. There's reams of mod commentary about it. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

[flagged]

The only person here inciting a flamewar is you. Nice attempt at "concern trolling"

Your trolling in the other comments is the problem that you claim to be against. Everyone else seems to be having a rational discussion without letting their emotions influence their writing except for you.

Be a better person.

Re: First Council of Nicaea

#36

Post by 082349872349872 »

RhysU wrote: post #31
mjburgess wrote: post #3

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…

Yahweh was originally a weather god, not unlike Zeus, well before being interwoven with El during proto-Judaism [1]. Any "Greek period" of the eventual Jewish faith, to which you refer, ended certainly by their complete adoption of monotheism. Judaism came "pre-Greeked". That particular Council affirmed that Christianity's God is triune by expressly rejecting Arianism. God sending God to do things God could already d…

Unfortunately all the interpretations of Yahweh at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahweh#Periods fall under the Zeus/Cancer/Aries timeframe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38761574 ...

> Whether a monotheistic God is unary, binary, trinary, etc...

In particular, Arianism would've allowed a supernatural of characteristic zero, while trinitarianism demands characteristic two.

Re: First Council of Nicaea

#37

Post by mjburgess »

panick21_ wrote: post #32
mjburgess wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you agree with me. My phrasing is for an audience who is unaware that the gospels already disagree on Christology. I was retrospectively talking about the pauline-johnian views which won and what they were like

I don't think actual Paul and 'John' would agree on much but I know what you are saying.

Well, at least only, that both the son and the father are divine.

Re: First Council of Nicaea

#38

Post by knightoffaith »

082349872349872 wrote: post #33
knightoffaith wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spinoza was Jewish though.

(a) if my theology be accurate, at least jews, christians, muslims, and mormons all believe they believe in the same god (their differences lying in beliefs as to which prophets had commit bits), so it's not surprising that Rome would have declared their impression of his philosophy an official heresy, eg https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-x/en/encyclicals/documen... (b) although he said he was being misinterpreted,…

Well, I just meant that Spinoza was a Jewish heretic, not a Christian heretic (at least, no more than say, Mohammad), since the discussion was about Christian heresies specifically. The encyclical only discusses pantheism rather than Spinoza---I don't know that pantheism is specifically Spinoza's invention. Of course, no doubt that Spinoza wouldn't be considered a conforming Christian by any Christian church, but not just because he wrote "Deus sive Natura" (the extent to which Spinoza's thought on the relationship between God and creation is incompatible with classical theism is up for debate, it seems to me. See the interesting comments by /u/wokeupabug here - https://old.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/nar433/how_d...).

Re: First Council of Nicaea

#39

Post by tomrod »

MerelyMortal wrote: post #35
tomrod wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The only person here inciting a flamewar is you. Nice attempt at "concern trolling" Your trolling in the other comments is the problem that you claim to be against. Everyone else seems to be having a rational discussion without letting their emotions influence their writing except for you. Be a better person.

Oh please. I stated a position that isn't even controversial, noting that these sorts of discussions are not really what folks tend to want on hackernews. Responses have been from agreement to claims of trolling. Feel free to give more compassion to folks with religious trauma as you join us all in being better folks.

Re: First Council of Nicaea

#40

Post by 082349872349872 »

knightoffaith wrote: post #38
082349872349872 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(a) if my theology be accurate, at least jews, christians, muslims, and mormons all believe they believe in the same god (their differences lying in beliefs as to which prophets had commit bits), so it's not surprising that Rome would have declared their impression of his philosophy an official heresy, eg https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-x/en/encyclicals/documen... (b) although he said he was being misinterpreted,…

Well, I just meant that Spinoza was a Jewish heretic, not a Christian heretic (at least, no more than say, Mohammad), since the discussion was about Christian heresies specifically. The encyclical only discusses pantheism rather than Spinoza---I don't know that pantheism is specifically Spinoza's invention. Of course, no doubt that Spinoza wouldn't be considered a conforming Christian by any Christian church, but not…

Thanks for the wokeupabug comments; very interesting!

Now I am mediating on the contrast between "God created the best possible Creation" and "God creates all possible Creations" (Spinoza opting for the latter on omnipotence grounds; being limited to creating an element of the lattice is less potent than creating an ideal of the lattice). This seems to imply an infinite lattice* of Creations, for in a finite lattice, we could always identify the possible Creations with their principal Creation?

* yes, I haven't defined either meet or join of Creations; please bear with me on this point...

EDIT: forgot "panentheism"; IIUC:

  theism:      God & Creation = ∅
  panentheism: God & Creation = Creation
  pantheism:   God            = Creation
I don't know if theologians have a word for it, but the most general situation would be that both (God & Creation) and (God ^ Creation) may take on values other than God, Creation, and ∅.
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