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The Legacy of Nicaea

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Re: The Legacy of Nicaea

#31

Post by jswelker »

I find the Nicene Creed to be a major stumbling block as a person of Christian faith with a background in formal philosophy. Rather than accepting the inherent paradoxes in Christ's message, it attempts to shoehorn it together using the philosophical swiss army knife of the era, Neoplatonism.

As a result, now Christian orthodoxy is saddled with neoplatonic philosophical vestigial baggage in the term "consubstantial", which means Christians are wedded to and forced to defend a hard metaphysical realism. This comes out hard in Augustine and later medieval Christians. (See Anselm, Aquinas, etc)

They described the faith using the intellectual tools of their era, and now those artifacts are hard-coded into the faith. It would be like if the Nicene fathers were in the early 20th century and described the faith in terms of Theosophy and branded all non Theosophists heretics forever.

Re: The Legacy of Nicaea

#32

Post by schoen »

schoen wrote: post #3

I forgot who formulated the idea that difficult-to-understand and difficult-to-believe doctrines tend to have a unifying force for religious communities because they tend to require members of those communities to be more serious about their commitments, or a way for them to show how seriously they take them, by asserting to doctrines that are difficult. This article says that Nicene Christianity is more difficult to…

It's too late to edit my post above, but I also found William Irons and Joseph Henrich.

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2001-05917-013

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10905...

Henrich is a little more focused on the idea of actions that are demonstrations of one's commitment to the unifying beliefs of a group, but I think he may think that making public declarations that are confusing or embarrassing or unpopular from the point of view of outsiders can be one form of that.

Re: The Legacy of Nicaea

#33

Post by marcus_holmes »

undershirt wrote: post #29
marcus_holmes wrote: post #23

> “rejection of reason,” the same instrumentalized, utilitarian, and reductionist force that has pushed us to the edge of ecological collapse. This "rejection of reason" is also why we have anti-vaxxers and a host of other problems. Rejecting reason is insanity.

I think debates are interesting because it’s obvious that people are temporarily imprisoning any devastating arguments within their higher sense that something about it is wrong. The attempt to “rationalize” and discover what this higher intuition is saying might look like rejecting reason, even if temporarily. But I think it underscores what is really meant by “rejecting reason”— that understanding the true meaning…

I think logic and morality are distinct and separate.

I'm not even sure what a "higher moral directive" is, or how you'd define "evil" in the context of a logical argument.

Re: The Legacy of Nicaea

#34

Post by marcus_holmes »

CGMthrowaway wrote: post #24
marcus_holmes wrote: post #23

> “rejection of reason,” the same instrumentalized, utilitarian, and reductionist force that has pushed us to the edge of ecological collapse. This "rejection of reason" is also why we have anti-vaxxers and a host of other problems. Rejecting reason is insanity.

There are reasonable and unreasonable people on many sides of the global warming and vaccine safety debates. Do you disagree?

I think this is a different use of the word "reason". Reasonable people may not be using reason, or even reasoning.

But yes, there are definitely unreasonable people on both sides of any debate, especially when that debate is mostly conducted on social media.

Re: The Legacy of Nicaea

#35

Post by dragonwriter »

gred wrote: post #13
shtzvhdx wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Venerate: 1 to regard with reverential respect or with admiring deference 2 to honor (an icon, a relic) Merriam-Webster. What's the problem with venerating Mary? The Apostolic Church, East and Rome can over come their differences, there's little substantive difference.

Many Catholics believe that Mary was born without sin (immaculate conception), never died (assumption into heaven), can advocate to Jesus for believers (intercession) and has been crowned the Queen of Heaven. This goes well beyond "admiring" or "honoring". To complicate matters, many of these dogmas were only formalized by the Catholic church in the past 200 years. Quite a hard sell for the "sola scriptura" contingen…

> To complicate matters, many of these dogmas were only formalized by the Catholic church in the past 200 years. Quite a hard sell for the "sola scriptura" contingent.

There are only four things on that list, and only two of them are dogmas (and there are a whole two more Marian dogmas that aren’t on your list), so I am not sure where the “many of these dogmas” comes from; also, the various Protestant positions on the role of scripture (prima scriptura, sola scriptura, and nuda scriptura, in ascending order of how far they differ from the Catholic [or, for that matter, Eastern Orthodox] position) were themselves formalized not much less recently.

Re: The Legacy of Nicaea

#36

Post by dragonwriter »

CGMthrowaway wrote: post #7
dvt wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extremely unlikely, as there are a lot of theological dealbreakers: the Catholic veneration of Mary & the saints, Protestant sola scriptura & sola fide , Catholic papal infallibility, among many others.

"Dealbreakers" are the reason councils exist. I'm not saying it would be easy. Far from it. But the longer we wait to try, the harder it will be.

What do you mean, the longer we wait and try? Ecumenical councils have always been held between communities that already viewed themselves in full communion, though dissaatisfaction with the results sometimes meant a council was the end point of that belief.

There are ongoing efforts to move back to full communion between the various churches via bi- and multi-lateral dialogue, its not something that people are waiting to try.

Re: The Legacy of Nicaea

#37

Post by krapp »

7thaccount wrote: post #21
krapp wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Every religion in existence has multiple and often contradictory interpretations of doctrine and what is and isn't "canon." Why should Christianity be any different? At least Catholics recognize Protestants and Orthodox as fellow Christians and aren't burning them at the stake for heresy anymore. That's probably the best we can hope for.

A lot of evangelical christians (like the predominant factions in the southern US) are very suspicious of Catholicism and many don't view it as true Christianity.

Sure, I was raised by some.

Bigots will be bigots though and I don't believe catering to bigots is ever a good idea.

Re: The Legacy of Nicaea

#38

Post by 7thaccount »

krapp wrote: post #37
7thaccount wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of evangelical christians (like the predominant factions in the southern US) are very suspicious of Catholicism and many don't view it as true Christianity.

Sure, I was raised by some. Bigots will be bigots though and I don't believe catering to bigots is ever a good idea.

Of course. My comment was just describing a very common view in the southern United States. Not all Protestants believe that (especially Anglicans which are basically Catholic without the Pope), but it's something I heard a lot growing up.

I didn't say I agreed with it, but I think it's important to mention when some comments on here are suggesting a unification can happen. As someone extremely familiar with both groups, they may share most of the Bible in common as well as some core beliefs, but there other core beliefs that are hugely important and different between the groups that can never be reconciled. One important aspect is that Catholics (and I think Greek Orthodox) believe that the bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Jesus Christ during mass.

Re: The Legacy of Nicaea

#39

Post by throw0101a »

jswelker wrote: post #31

I find the Nicene Creed to be a major stumbling block as a person of Christian faith with a background in formal philosophy. Rather than accepting the inherent paradoxes in Christ's message, it attempts to shoehorn it together using the philosophical swiss army knife of the era, Neoplatonism. As a result, now Christian orthodoxy is saddled with neoplatonic philosophical vestigial baggage in the term "consubstantial",…

> I find the Nicene Creed to be a major stumbling block as a person of Christian faith with a background in formal philosophy.

And yet intellects like Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas did not: what do you 'know' that they did not, or vice versa?

Also, are you aware of the encyclical Fides et ratio ("Faith and Reason")?

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fides_et_ratio

> Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves (cf. Ex 33:18; Ps 27:8-9; 63:2-3; Jn 14:8; 1 Jn 3:2).

* https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/d...

Further, in your "formal philosophy" studies, how much of logic and proofs did you study?

* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35592365-five-proofs-of-...

Re: The Legacy of Nicaea

#40

Post by throw0101a »

CGMthrowaway wrote: post #4

It would be nice to have a new Council, an ecumenical one, coming to agreement to unite Catholic, Orthodox, and as many mainline protestant churches as possible. It may require the Catholic church to make some sort of concession, which is probably the biggest obstacle. There is no question that not everyone could or would want to unite. But some progress would be nice. To take a historical example the Council of Chal…

> It would be nice to have a new Council, an ecumenical one, coming to agreement to unite Catholic, Orthodox, and as many mainline protestant churches as possible. It may require the Catholic church to make some sort of concession, which is probably the biggest obstacle.

It was the Protestantism that splintered from the Catholic Church (and then splintered with-in itself), and changed doctrine(s) to what had been accepted for over a thousand years.

For example: the Real Presence. It's been accepted since the earliest times, and both Eastern (Orthodox) and Western (Catholic) Christianity profess it. Are Protestants going to accept it.

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