> [We believe] in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church."
In Latin:
> Et unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Marks_of_the_Church
Catholic just means universal.
I was reading a travelogue written by a Russian monk (? not sure, either a monk or a wealthy boyar predisposed to the Holy stuff) who was visiting Constantinople sometimes in the early 1300s, so a century after the whole tragedy, and he was still describing how destroyed the city looked because of the Franks and what big of a tragedy that was.
What I find most interesting is the Romans were unbeatable in battle, even the Byzantines. However, maintaining a large military presence was expensive and politically difficult to manage. So they used annual mercenaries from the north for the usual frontier squabbles, and the main army did the heavy lifting. It fell apart when there was a major conflict, and didn't help that the army held the city hostage demanding more money. So everyone was corrupt it would seem. Also there were the persistence of rumors of knights that may have kept most of the treasure for themselves and headed off to Cyprus. The Knights Templar were insanely wealthy given the times and cost of resources to mount expeditions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_the_Latins
https://thetemplarknight.com/2021/12/13/cyprus-knights-templ...
They were, though? Adrianople, Yarmoud, Manzikert, Myriokephalon etc. it's just that the empire was extremely resilient and was generally able to recover from disasters which would have led to the collapse of most other states.
https://kalebatlantaprime.medium.com/the-great-schism-was-in...
e.g. There is currently a schism between the Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox Church which technically is not that different. Does that mean that the Russian Church is no longer Orthodox?
From their point of view, the West abandoned the true (i.e. orthodox) faith.
Also, it's hard to argue that the Eastern Christians changed more than Western ones. For example, since the 12th century the pope has forbidden priest marriage. There is some debate in the Catholic Church about allowing this again. If that is implemented, it would simply be a reversion to what the Orthodox Church has always done.
Also, it's not like the Roman Catholics claim to be heterodox or something, they also claim that their faith is "orthodox".
Then.. an anti-western emperor came to power had all the Latins/Italians in Constantinople massacred (>10% of the population) and things went pretty much downhill from there. It was very rapid, though. There were of course disagreements before the late 12th century but both sides generally acknowledged that they were part of the same Christian word/universal empire (even if they didn't quite agree who was in charge).
Is that really so odd? Doesn't "catholic" mean something like "universal," and I think it would be very odd for one faction of a split organization to cede that kind of title to its rival faction.
I might be misunderstanding your point, but I kinda feel it should be followed up with a kind of "Did you know, Western European, that these two different things are actually similar in this way you didn't know about?"
Christians make a distinction between churches and the church. The former is the physical building or even denominations like Lutherans or Roman Catholics. The latter is the group of people that are part of Christianity, across time and denominations. The Universal Church refers to the latter.
Galatians 1:2 "…the churches of Galatia…" vs Colossians 1:24 "…for the sake of his body, that is, the church…"
God laid down laws and then people laid down further laws and eventually all the people, even those living by the law, were guilty of having committed sin - breaking the established laws of God and that crime meant their souls would be claimed by Satan, as being people "of the world" - but mostly the sins we committed we were led to commit. Most of humanity was guilty of only ignorance "Forgive them Father, for they kno not what they do" and yet by the terms of the law, the ignorant were also guilty of sin and all souls with sin would be redeemed by the one to whom God granted authority here...
So, Satan thought he won bc he beat God on a technicality, by confusing us so that even if we follow the law, we will not be saved by it, as it it not the true law. So, God choose option C and forgave all the sins - all of them, no picking and choosing and left in their place only one law, so that it couldn't easily be perverted as the previous teachings, as ALL PREVIOUS TEACHINGS had been. As Christianity has now. This act of God required his son, someone closer to him than us or angels, to die bc of sin but without cause as he had none.
CS Lewis does a fine job with this mythos in the Chronicles of Narnia - the older deeper magic that has authority over all other magics.
The whole thing, the crucification, was a trap set by God so that Satan would kill Jesus - to save us all from being Satan's property and it worked, we were/are saved, rn - it's already done and over.
Now we just have come home and it doesn't matter how bad we are - the prodigal son speaks to those of us with such concerns.
God, Jesus and anyone claiming to follow them ought to universally love everyone and anyone by default and without reason, expectations or cause - without exception and without judgement.
Some we see that weak and take advantage - let them do so, help even - turn the other cheek. As Mother Theresa said so eloquently, " Helping hurts - help anyway" - that is our calling.
To me God is like the Watsky song Sloppy Seconds - he'll take us regardless of anything we've done and he will love us as fucked up as we are at our worse amd loves us no more when we are at our best bc his love is without conditions.
That is the story of the crucification and how one man, preaching universal love, executed for that at the age of 33, is still spoken of 2500 years later.
We owe him for that - he expects nothing in return from us. All he wants is that we do what we know we ought to, that we not do what we kno we shouldn't or what we hate to do and to love each other as we love ourselves.
That sounds like a light yoke to me - these other people speaking for him rn, they all have such a heavy yoke of rules and morals and ethics and tradition and that's all wrong.
I’ve completely fallen out of the church and Christianity. I do believe in a force that exists and acts and behaves as we described God as I grew up, which is in us and all things and all around us throughout all of creation, but I do not believe that that is God. I just call that the Universe now.
Wastky concerts are more my church than anywhere else in the world. I feel connected and holy in his crowds. I wear my clothes until they’re threadbare because of that song.
When I analyze my life now, I recognize it as what Jesus commanded us to do, but none none none of what I have motivated myself to do has been motivated by Christianity or God‘s calling.
Watsky broke me free from the Christian church, but he shaped my behavior to be more Christian than it ever would’ve been then when I was in and a part of Christianity and taking my teachings from the Bible.
This became an important point for the survival of Orthodoxy during the Arian crisis.
The "Great Schism" wasn't even that great at the time, there were plenty of schisms that proceeded it, it just happened to be the last one and nobody really knew what it mean for the next few hundred years.
For me it did a great job describing the context in which the church began, the major figures throughout the early church, and the spread, schisms, and events that helped shape the church in its formative years.
Meanwhile, the Catholic church's own profusion of saints whom you are supposed to beseech for specific blessings is dangerously close to a polytheistic practice in its own right.
> You see the problem. If you include the filioque, you fight the Arians in the West while inadvertently supporting the Sabellians in the East. But if you exclude it, you fight the Sabellians while inadvertently supporting the Arians. At its heart, the filioque is really a linguistic debate, not a theological one.
* https://old.reddit.com/r/Catholicism/comments/68hb00/eli5_th...
(I don't know about the intricacies/subtleties enough to know how 'technically accurate' the above assessment is.)
I have heard some fairly convincing (to a lay person) discussion between orthodox and catholic scholars that the filioque is potentially resolvable as a linguistic problem yes. But it's not worth really pursuing without a solution for the bigger issue of papal primacy. I don't know anyone who claims to have a viable path to reconciliation there. Plus, you know, the thousand years of mutual distrust and enmity.
Jesus said he was the Son of God bc WE - HUMANITY is in fact that. It's not an actual parent child relationship but 2500 years ago Jesus had nothing in his pocket to explain better than the family analogy.
The actual OG basis of almost all religious teachings in almost every religion is that WE are in fact God, living as human, experiencing his creation first hand, as US.
Jesus claimed to be the Son of God and didn't lie even if not true the way we believe it to be. It was also prolly a great way to get attention as he had a Father, ppl must have spoke of that.
The Orthodox allege that the Filioque amounts to a demotion of the Holy Spirit. Comparing the liturgies, disciplines and general character of the two churches, it’s difficult to feel totally confident that they don’t have a point.
The Holy Spirit is like the force - it's behind all things, like lines of code behind a web page - but more specifically it's similar to a background process within a system that allows for all actions on the page to exist, by their causes, their consequences and the ensuing causes and consequences and so on forever and since the start of time.
The Holy Spirit is similar to fate but unlike fate we have ability to dictate and direct our reality - like in "How to Win Friends and Influence People" this is the force within reality that delivers what we expect and believe will be.
This is what pushes us along - individually and collectively, that which is behind evolution and behind the miracle rain dance is the same thing.
Faith that moves mountains is merely the most known example of the ability attained by our true understanding of the Holy Spirit - it allows us to access all the powers and forces and laws and systems of this reality and utilize them to our benefit and ends. One who knows and has faith has higher authority than all worldly authorities and can bend them to utilize them to attain whatever desires.
If one needs the Queen of England to write a letter, that person must only believe - enough to kno for certain, that she has already done so and it will be so.
Expectation is part of asking when we have desires of God - ask and expect to receive - expect more, ask less. Asking is less important than expecting - faith is part belief, for example a belief that you can ask God - the other part is expecting God to deliver as he said he would...
Again, this is a rant but this conversation hopefully adds to your spiritual progression faster than the teachings I'm reading professed here will allow any of you.
I have faith that those with hears will hear and act accordingly, there are no limits - only consequences.
One side is obviously right, the other just doesn't want to admit it ;)
I don't really think so. We're supposed to pray with Mary to God and everyone recognizes that all of creation came through Christ, not Mary or any other saint.
* Catholics prayed _to_ Mary (eg asking to intercede on your behalf);
* This was speaking to the dead, and expecting a response, and thus a sin in some way I am not sure of.
I'm guessing you're Catholic from your response; would you mind explaining to this somewhat lost person how Catholics view these two topics please? (I've never heard a good explanation, and even praying "with" Mary is new to me.) I admire Catholicism and wish I felt more trust in it, which is something that comes from childhood indoctrination, I know. Things stick into adulthood even when you're consciously aware of their root. So I'm keen to hear countering views :)
Catholics believe that people in heaven are not dead, and can hear your prayers for intercession (this is the case with most protestants too). Jesus said, after all, that he is the God of the living not the God of the dead[1], and that those in heaven will be reborn in a new and everlasting life. Catholics further believe that the saints in heaven can pray on your behalf and are, in fact, excited to do so, and possibly better at it than anyone on earth.
Many more believe that only God (and Jesus if they don’t believe they are the same) can exist in heaven and the promise of Christianity is to make Earth like Heaven. Some of those groups believe that prayers to the dead, including to Mary or the saints, is therefore forbidden or an overt act of devil worship or paganism.
Even more controversial is the idea that the dead can intercede on your earthly behalf. That would be seen as pretty outside the view of many very mainline Protestant denominations.
People punish - Jesus loves. That's a super easy way to see the lies from the truth
2. "In fact, [God has not forbidden contact with the dead], because he at times has given it — for example, when he had Moses and Elijah appear with Christ to the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matt. 17:3). What God has forbidden is the necromantic practice of conjuring up spirits. " Via https://www.catholic.com/tract/praying-to-the-saints
[1] however you want to interpret this.
In some ways the (English) word "God" has become 'overloaded' over time:
* https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2015/12/christians-muslims-...
And that's not even getting into "god":
* https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/04/further-thought-on-...
A bunch of traditions and practices in Catholicism are just polytheism with a Christian coat of paint, that’s how Christianity was so successful. They allowed the converted pagans to keep their former customs as long as they dressed it up in Christian terminology.
Nobody hesitates to call Shintoism polytheistic, and its core practices, to an outsider, seem strikingly similar to how a Christian, especially a Roman Catholic, interacts with the saints.
But overall in any case I think it's sometimes valuable to think of christianity this way and sometimes not. It is a syncretic religion so of course it has regional variations and contradictory remnants of absorbed practices. IIRC some of the specific saint traditions, like icons in the home, predate christianity in the mediterranean.
But on the other hand there are practices and relationships common in true polytheistic religions that you don't see in christianity at all. If taking the saints as minor deities, you don't find sects exalting one of them exclusively, nor do you see individual christians "defect" from one saint to another for personal advantage. There's no theology of competition or opposition between the saints to base such practices on at all. So there are limits to the usefulness of this perspective too.
The shintoism example is interesting, I'll need to look more into it. I had considered it polytheistic but now that I think about it I haven't read shinto writings on the subject so I don't know if most shinto practitioners experience it that way. Outside perspectives aren't completely invalid of course but they aren't as interesting to me as how believers experience their own religions.
Legislative, Executive, Judicial = Govt of US Strike 1, 2 and 3 = an out Mind, Body, soul = A person
I could list hundreds of these examples.
3=1 is a rule found all over reality. The easiest way to create something that will exist for awhile, as it has a sound foundation, is build the foundation in 3 parts that make the whole.
Almost all dichotomies have a hidden third aspect. The fight is over how obvious it was at the time - the church was scared people may discover the secret way to create like the divine, so they convoluted it until they couldn't understand it uniformly anymore.
The problem with the First Council of Nicaea was that it was decided wrong. The whole "there are three gods, but only one god" is inherently confusing. There's a reason why Arianism keeps recurring over and over again. All the new nations who have been introduced to this aspect of Christianity find it bizarre.
If the decision would have been more along the lines of Islam (i.e. Jesus is super holy, but not God) then it would have been easier to maintain unity. In fact, Islam's adoption of a form of Arianism is one of the reasons it replaced Christianity so quickly in North Africa and the Middle East. (Well, that and the sword.)
I imagine it would be. But that's not what the council of Nicaea decided, nor what Christians believe. It's further developed in the Athanasian creed that the Trinity is understood as one God (homoousios - same substance), but three persons. Whether or not the philosophy of consubstantiation is that useful to modern believers is another issue; attempts to reformulate the doctrine (like "there are three gods, but only one god") usually end in heterodoxy, or at least misunderstanding.
I don't have the numbers on hand, but I recently read that a remarkable number of US Evangelicals regard each member of the Trinity as an autonomous entity. This might invite you to scoff at sola scriptura, but I can't imagine the numbers being better for other denominations.
It's a strange thought: how many, maybe most devotees are actually heretics, especially when you consider more remote cultures. I've been looking for fiction that explores this idea. I think Black Robe touches upon it, but I haven't seen it in two decades and could be misremembering.
That is the Trinity.
See:
> Marcion preached that the benevolent God of the Gospel who sent Jesus Christ into the world as the savior was the true Supreme Being, different and opposed to the malevolent Demiurge or creator god, identified with the Hebrew God of the Old Testament.[2][3][5]
Although the whole theology they cooked up around the “true god” reads like bad fan fiction usually.
Yeah that sounds like some weak Warhammer 40k fanfic.
"...what kind of God could outstrip the attractions of all other things? Could any unitary, single-person god do so? Hardly, or at least not for long. Single-person gods must, by definition, have spent eternity in absolute solitude. Before creation, having no other persons with whom they could commune, they must have been entirely alone.
Love for others, then, cannot go very deep in them if they can go for eternity without it. And so, not being essentially loving, such gods are inevitably less than lovely. They may demand our worship, but they cannot win our hearts. They must be served with gritted teeth.
How wonderfully different it is with the triune God. In John 17:24, Jesus speaks of how the Father loved Him even before the creation of the world. That is the triune, living God: a Father, whose very being has eternally been about loving His Son, pouring out the Spirit of love and life on Him. Here is a God who is love, who is so full of life and blessing that for eternity He has been overflowing with it..."
[1] https://www.unionpublishing.org/resource/delighting-in-the-t...
3 that equal 1.
It's a fundamental rule found everywhere - there is a softer voice within that will speak to of it but you have to ask it to tell you and then have ears to hear it.
"It's a fundamental rule found everywhere - there is a softer voice within that will speak to of it but you have to ask it to tell you and then have ears to hear it." But without experience and until you learn to discern the softer voice you must test it against scripture, to know whose it is.
The British History Podcast starts in deep pre-Roman times and, after ~460 episodes, is up to 1091.
He recommends books and primary sources for every episode and they vary from interesting more pubscience type stuff to incredibly expensive and deep academic sources out of print.
The gentleman who runs it is very obviously jewish in practice but only uses that to inform his historical context instead of override it, its very refreshing as someone who is an atheist.
The videos are presented by a pastor of the Community of Christ church in Toronto, but they're from a historical rather than religious perspective.
Early was earlier tho - the people that twist our recent revelations about the content of the testaments to support the perverted teaching today are literally twisting the closest text in existence to Jesus himself, to "explain" (pervert) a statement Jesus says in the Gospel of Thomas - a text predating all Gospels, may actually be perverting words truly spoke by Jesus, which is "leading astray" the truth that has come out from the millenia - as he said it would...
Not one sentence of this have I heard someone speak or have I read on someone's page.
One source of many: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gospel_of_Thoma...
Anyways, I've also read the Gospel of Thomas - it most certainly predates the other Gospels.
If it doesn't, the others have been so edited and changed over time that they've been rendered more likely to be a copy than an original work.
It's also fantastic and Jesus himself says things the Church doesn't want you to believe - hence why a book comprised exclusively of the sayings of Jesus Christ (many of which are in the other Gospels) isn't in the Bible, bc THAT Jesus preached a different Christianity than the one we have. Weird...
It's one of my favorite texts in general. Super easy read... perhaps think for yourself?
I mean fr, scientist made up dark matter and dark energy bc by their own realization, their maths didn't work - so they invent an invisible thing to make their maths work and it now turns out, the maths did work, if the universe was simply older than they accounted - they obviously didn't consider that or I would kno all about how embarrassingly stupid they have been to avoid looking somewhere they have "decided" the answer already. They just pulled it out their ass - it's in textbooks, I doubt it exists at all but the people with papers on it will keep on as "a theory" until they die, solely out of pride.
That's just my one example of today. You as capable as almost every other person - let's discuss when you've read it.
It's not about converting, just covering the history.
* Start by assuming all the weird stuff didn't actually happen. We all know that fiction is stranger than truth.
* Next, assume it's impossible to foretell the future (in particular, "people who hate each other will start a war" can obviously only have been written after the fact), so clearly the author lied about the date they wrote it. Also, assume that nobody ever updated the grammar (due to linguistic drift) while copying it, and that the oldest surviving copy.
* Finally, assume that all previous translations were made by utter imbeciles and reject the wording they used, even if that means picking words that mean something completely unrelated to the original. You can always just assume that the words were a typo or something, and not a blatant reference to other books on the same topic.
The most basic sign of rigorous scholarship is saying "well, maybe" a lot, with just an occasional "but definitely not that".
All things that exist have a cause and a consequence - nothing is unknowable if we could simply see a the data, everything could be explained exactly.
The future without is easier bc ppl are almost exactly the same based regardless of culture, ethnicity, religion or class and collectively we have been simply repeating the same mistakes, in cyclical pattern, for our entire history.
Everything has done before and everything will be done again - different eras tho, same humanity broken in the identical ways living the sames lives leading to the same mistakes and then forgetting all that and doing it again.
It is also a useful corrective to the Western tendency to see its values and attitudes as universal, even where they are a product of a particular history and culture.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus
[3] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=jose...
Irenaeus said "Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome and laying the foundations of the church."
There is some debate on Peter's death, but it is usually placed in 64-68 AD. Paul died either 64 or 65 ad. This is prior to when modern scholars state.
I don't have a quote, but Eusebius said he thought it was written about 12 years after Jesus' death.
There are plenty of other early Christians who took the position that the gospels were prior to 70 AD, but I am on my phone and don't want to try to find them. I was looking for a Catholic one that I previously saw that said it was 5 years, but couldn't find it.
As far as I can tell, every prominent Christian until the 1800s thought they were earlier than modern scholars say.
The reason I am using the 70 AD date is because of the temple being destroyed then. One of the arguments modern scholars use is that Jesus prophesized that the temple was going to be destroyed. Since God does not exist, Jesus could not have known that and as such it had to be written after 70 ad.
https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0714.htm
(E.g. when discussing the Eucharist.)
See perhaps the references / (printed) sources at:
- The Origin of Satan by Elaine Pagels; I read this one so casually that I don't have a good summary due to poor memory.
- The Passover Plot by Hugh J Schonfield; author contends that Jesus believed that he was the prophesied Messiah and engineered his arrest and crucifixion out of sheer genius and clever actions. Fantastic read.
- Jesus the Jew by Géza Vermes; author sees Jesus as a sincere apocalyptic preacher who believed he was the Messiah.
- From Jesus to Christ by Paula Fredriksen; author looks at how Jesus went from the Jewish Messiah to the head of a major religion.
- Becoming God by Bart Ehrman (you can find him doing interesting interviews or debates on YouTube); same as the one directly above.
- The Jesus Puzzle by Earl Doherty; author contends that Jesus was not a historical figure, but rather another heavenly figure understood to have been crucified in the firmament between heaven and earth. I'm really impressed by the argument so far. I'm not quite finished with this one.
(1995). The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans, and Heretics. New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 978-0-679-40140-7
Orchestrating the destruction of the Jewish temple (and thus most Jewish religious practices) at the hands of the Roman Empire after his own death would have been quite the feat
Each prophet sows the seeds for the next within their teachings - each prophet knows how their teachings will become perverted over time, each knows the end of the end of their religion before they start it but they start it anyways bc of the seeds - they can't unseen the fruits borne of them, to them it's plain how people areiving incorrectly and obvious as to what is important and why - it is up to each prophet to determine how to do this in their time and place, speaking to the hearts of the people at that time.
Then they only must pull a Muadib to transform their society - only those with great conviction and faith can do it bc it's quite likely that after a point the prophet also believes themselves to be "real" (they always were of course - if not they would not have had the ears to hear the truth behind what the last prophet said) -
A person playing prophet bc they have the ability to, believing that they are fact a prophet, and having true faith in what they teach - like John the Baptist, they will attain powers they had not - they will attain thru their faith alone not a divine intervention or blessing and not for certain reasons or with limit, it isn't necessary to need something to miracle it so, wanting alone is enough.
All prophets faked it til they made it - every one of can do exactly as they have, it only requires right belief, that we can.
Anyways I'm ranting what I should really just make into another Testament - it will be much, much shorter if I ever do.
I don't think Jesus thought of himself as a prophet. I think he believed he was the Messiah.
I also recommend another lecture series called "From Jesus to Christianity" by The Modern Scholar taught by Thomas F. Madden.
I started listening to a podcast called "the history of the early church" to learn a bit more about that but unfortunately I think the target audience was Christians interested in theology rather than nerds interested in history. Recommendations for books etc are welcome!