The council of Nicaea 325

While it may not be as exciting as this awesome conversation, I long ago just stopped trying to understand all the politics of religion. While I am a practicing Catholic and even went to parochial school, I just try and take everything in the Bible with a grain of salt and listen for the meanings of the stories of it, OT and NT, instead of whoever wrote it. Kepp this up though it's all a very interesting read and experience.

But we digress. Kali, the OP was an invitation to discuss an important historical aspect of Christianity, and you seem to be full of information. Please don't yield the floor.

[quote=madame_zora;713084]Freddie, great to see you guy!

From what I understand, it wasn't so much that individual books of the Bible were voted on, although Danny also tells me that Revelation was almost not included (and that he personally wishes it wasn't). I think it was mainly versions of the Bible were being judged as true or false, in a sense. I remember reading that somewhere around 300 versions of the Bible were presented, and all but the Pauline versions were burned.

Jana, my late father who was a theologian told me about the canon. From what he said, I would disagree with not counting the 300 versions as books. Some of "versions" were different wordings of the present books of the New Testament, but some were actually different gospels. The gnostics were a major group within Christianity. There were according to my father, two groups. The gnostics as I remember dad telling it, believed that anything material was evil, so Jesus was God, a spirit looking and appearing like a man and was not human. Jesus only looked human. One group of gnostics believed that grace or forgiveness was great to get so the more one sinned, the more one received grace, so it was virtuous to sin and sin a lot. ( Damn, wish I was raised to believe like this group.) I can't remember the details about the other groups to put out much information as accurate about the others. I do know that some groups of early Christians did not accept the divinity of Jesus.

As for Paul, some scholars don't believe that the man who was the apostle Paul wrote the epistles attributed to him, but rather one or more of his followers wrote them. Either way, the Pauline letters contain over half of the New Testament and the theology of traditional Christianity is defined by the letters of Paul, not by the gospels of Matthew Mark Luke and John. And Paul never met Jesus. Paul at first a devout Jew named Saul who was leading the efforts to kill Christians before his conversion to Christianity.

As for the Gospels. There was a disciple named Matthew. Luke was not one of the apostles. He was a Greek who converted to Christianity after Jesus' death as I recall. His writings are based on the oral traditions and perhaps an older document that others have referred to. Some theologians do believe that the Gospel of John was written by John the disciple. But most discount that John the disciple wrote Revelation.

The fundamentalists believe that John the disciple wrote both John and Revelation and that Paul wrote all the letters attributed to him. Most fundamentalists rely much more on Paul than Jesus. Some even refer to them as Pauline Christians. Fundamentalists set the dates for the writing of the books of the New Testament much earlier than other scholars. Some scholars believe that the gospels and Pauline letters were written between 40 and 100 AD. I remember reading that some scholars set the dates for later than this some time after 100 AD, but before 200 AD. As Jana mentioned, there were more than one version of the four gospels. Fundamentalists or literalists believe don't accept that. They believe in complete divine inspiration which doesn't allow for more than one version by God.

Now that we have Internet and bookmarks, I am going to start saving the documents that I read and not have to rely on my memory like I have had to in this post.

Other gospels not included in the canon of the Bible still exist. Unfortunately I don't know the names of them.

I have read ahead of this post and will bookmark all the sources and will eventually read them when I am here at home full time and not just on the weekend.

As a person of faith, what I like about Dawkin's book is that he debunks the bunk of religious belief. I don't find his reasoning to be exhaustive, but he does a really good job of smashing the stupid kind of reasoning that most people use in defense of their faith.

And he did all that using simple logic a child could understand. Dawkins encounter with Ted Haggard was hideously perfect.

I am also a devout Dawkinist when it comes to Evolution, as well as his ability to show how absolutely ludicrous Creationism and Intelligent Design is, at least as it is argued by the proponents.

It's true folks, Christians really can accept theories of Evolution. I believe Francis Collins is man of genuine faith.

Yes, that is a wonderful book. I recommend it to a lot of people who exhibit religious narrowmindedness about the Bible. You are totally taken in by his enlightened and compassionate angle on the purpose of the Bible when near the end of the book he casually talks about the fact that he is gay. I am convinced that the "timing" of that admission being near the end of the book is not accidental. It gives you time to come to love the man and love his view of the Bible and religion before he makes that admission.

And a great book for people who express their faith through liturgy (the joke about Episcopalians never carrying Bibles isn't far off the mark). Gomes perspective on how to approach reading the Bible is very encouraging--I dug out my Oxford Annotated from school and started exploring like I never had before.

Yes, at least one denomination has got it right. The UCC shows some promise, too, but they can afford it because their churches are a kind of loose federation, rather than branch offices of the main denomination. Its ok for individual UCC churches to opt out or opt in to something like marrying or ordaining practicing homosexuals.


A schism is in the making, but they are doing what is right (of course I am somewhat biased;-) And isn't it curious--for a professed born-again Evangelical, George W sure does spend a lot of time in homo-loving Episcopal churches...

I therefore have problems with anyone submitting ANY information with regard to religion as a fact, hence my difficulty with this thread. God has been defined by some as one of man's attempts to explain the unexplainable, and that religion or one's own spiritual sense is held together by faith and not fact. I have a sense of greater power that I choose to leave undefined, but it is real for me.

What I find amazing, and I mean this with all honesty, is that this thread has not devolved into yet another forum for ethnocentric faith bashing. Although I am pretty well versed in how the Council of Nicea cemented the doctrin and dogma of today's Cristianity the suggested readings and links with the Wikipedia have been invormative in the extreme.

Thanks to all!
Wrey

See, I was not attempting to prove or disprove religion, the existence of God, or the divinity of Jesus, I just wanted to talk about it. I wanted to open a discussion about history, how religion has developed, what it has meant to cultures as they've progress, and how has it defined them? What purposes has it served? That kind of stuff.

Surely there shouldn't be any need for a conversation like that not to be possible someplace like this.

Thanks for noticing, Wrey, I had no doubt.

An interesting branch off of this thread is to do some reading on some of the other early and lesser known religons. Mandeanism, Zorostarism, Mithracism, etc. The similarities between them as well as where they differ are interesting and make you stop and think. When I lived in the middle east I had many wonderful conversations with christians, muslims and jews about the similarities in the religions that are Abrahamic. The fun part is when the conversation focuses on do those three religions believe in the same god. Lots of circular logic.

Great Thread

My sense of the history of religion with either a capital or small "r" is that most spiritual thought is actually very similar across the spectrum, but it is in the small points of the controlling doctrine developed by people placed in charge of their movements about which wars were/are fought, people were/are mutilated and tortured, and the tide of much of the world's history has turned. In short, for me, the history of R(r)eligion is the history of figureheads, perhaps manipulated by powers behind the throne, who lead scared and mallible followers against, as opposed to for, the good of everyone's order. The need for people to be the ones saved on the "very last day" has been a powerful force.

I see spirituality deriving from Faith and religion deriving from Obligation and Servitude to someone's definition of a Higher Power. It the string leader who knows how to manipulate both forces and affect history's outcome.

justasking - Jesus does not make a single claim of divinity, he says he is a son of god - as any jew was able to claim.

Way back in the day when I was in college, I did an independant study comparing and contrasting Zoroastrianism with Zen Buddhism. It was an interesting topic to me and I put a lot into it. Sadly, it kind of ruined me for life in believing wholly any one doctrine of faith.

I couldn't agree more. While I find much in (R)religion that does seem to speak to things of value in the lives of men, I also find a great deal that sounds more like crowd control. My own personal search has been to determine which is which.

You do get to the point, don't you? There are so many things Jesus said in a manner that would have been unmistakable to a first century Jew, that Jesus was claiming divinity. You can find all kinds of commentary supporting and refuting that notion, but there are enough examples to make it difficult to argue confidently that he didn't claim divinity.

I am horrendously busy at the moment, but give me a few days and I will find a few examples.

If it sounds obligatory, or like hatred, it is control. If it sounds like "love your neighbor as yourself", it's about value. Simplistic, but it works for me.

Yeah, I'm pretty close to there as well.

This Gospel of Thomas is an odd bird to me though, and JustAsking brings up a valid point as well. IF this gospel is as old as some claim it to be, which would mean it predates the other gospels, then it does seem clear that Jesus proclaimed divinity. That language seems clear enough to me, unless there are some glaring problems with the translations into english. I have to assume the translations are correct, because I can't read them myself.

At the risk of pissing off everybody in the known world, is there any possibility his fame just went to his head? I'm really not asking that just to be provocative. Other than the possibility that he believed what he said, what other option could there be?

MZ, regarding the translation of Thomas, copies of it in both Greek and Coptic have been found in different locations in Egypt, 40 years apart, and by moslems. My understanding is that they agree with each other, so the age is not in doubt.
It was perfectly acceptable and usual for a creditable ancient historian to make up speeches and attribute them to their subject. Every general made long oration to their troops before battle, in perfect literary style, and which the historian could not possibly have known.

So we still have 'Thomas said Jesus said', at the earliest 50 years after his death.