The fundamentalists most recently but even the earliest Christian’s tried to define Christian much as the confusion arises today with regards to what is a ‘woman’ is a woman. During the Olympics it was concluded that a woman was decided by a passport or judge not by chromosomes which naturally upset biologists but delighted lawyers.
The same holds with Christians. St. Paul could be said to be the first one to really try to say what a follower of Christ was. The apostles, in four separate overlapping ‘books’ declared what Jesus said and did. Asked to summarize or give the main power points, Jesus said
Matthew 22:37-39
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment . And a second is You shall love your neighbour as yourself.”
The same teaching appears in Mark and is echoed in Luke. The second is drawn from the Old Testament Leviticus and is the subject of the Good Samaritan tale.
The challenge is ‘what is Love?” And “what is ‘neighbour’. C.S. Lewis wrote of the 4 loves, storge (affection) , Phillia (friendship)_, Eros (Romatic Love) Agape (Charity/god’s love)
In the little Big Man movie everyone is excited when the chief says ‘you are a human ‘ to Dustin Hoffman. What is not considered is that ‘human’ and ‘neighbour’ are far from agreed on. The idea of a ‘slave’ was popular until the Christians in the 19th century outlawed slavery which persists today in Muslim dominated Middle East. Indeed some Islam Imans today commonly liken women to animals. In divorce courts men and women routinely are routinely dehumanized . In the west in the history of the ‘soul’ is coupled with those who are considered ‘soulless’.
Reincarnation was mainstream Christianity till Constantine’s Nicene Creed. Yahweh , God of Being, the great mystery, nameless and ineffable, YHWH. “I am who I am or (I will be what I will be) is the name Moses received at the burning bush in Exodus 3:14.
The words ‘thou shalt have no other gods before me” is the Judeo first commandment found in Exodus 20:3 and Deuteronmy 5.2.
If there were no other Gods there would be no need to say there is only one God. There is even a strong argument for the God of Israel to have been first a Husband and Wife (A history of God by Karen Armstrong) before the editors chopped up the Talmud and Torah. Optics isn’t just a recent marketing phrase. . The multiplicity of Gods was common in Greece, Rome and Israel. The idea of reincarnations was older than Jesus and the ancients accepted this as normal as Buddhists and Hindus still do to day. People in the Gospels speculated on Jesus’s identity. The suggested he might be Elijah or Jeremiah. Today there are those who say Allah is Yahveh too.
I believe there is one God, YHWH and love Phillips little book, Your God is too small.
The Nicene Creed was a foundational attempt to say what a Christian was. In Fields of Blood by Karen Armstrong there is discussion of the ‘State’ leader and the “spiritual leader’ in society. A bit like the father and the mother. Who was greatest. Well, if spiritual leaders disagreed with state leaders they died. The best historical and most discussed recently was the killing of Thomas Beckett, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1770 by the knights of English King Henry II. Historians have shown that the idea of the ‘strong man’ is limited in that there was usually a ‘strong man and a smart man or smart woman’ or a family or a ‘nest’ . The Lord of the Rings and Dune are great metaphors of the power struggles. As kids we said , My dad is bigger than your dad or your mom wears army boots’ In the story of Moses it was my God is better than your God and the priests of the Gods of the day had a war of ‘manifestations’ . Lambs blood on the door followed. Similar disputes occurred with the Muslims, Shiites, Sunnis, Sufies and the Aetheist Communists, Marxists and Maosts and the Pagan Aztecs.
The Nicene Creed was the Creed the Emperor Constantine would accept. A bit like saying that today’s definition of a woman would be what the Olympics committee suggests as what is on a passport but not limited to Chromosomes XX. Definitions are the first to go in war. Gender and sex. God and Soul. War is the failure of diplomacy. Diplomacy is an art.
Orthodoxy is the accepted, traditional or right beliefs and doctrines as opposed to heterodoxy or heresy. It’s argued that ‘reincarnation’ is a threat o the state power. The ‘status quo’ is always wanted by the ruler because if conditions change the ruler might no longer be the ruler. It also explains while politicians always argue for change and rarely deliver it.
The First Counceil of Nicea occurred in 325 AD. Emperor Constantine who was said to convert to Christianity at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312. The Edict of Milan 313 followed stopping the persecution of Christians and restoring their property. Emperor Constantine was a sun worhipper there are good arguments that he remained one.
Prior to the Council of Nicea there were many ‘heresy’s’ or ‘controversies’ in the church. I loved reading Jake Whitefields the Council of Nicea and the Development of the Nicene Creed this year. I’d read history of the Orthodox Church this year along with a very heavy slog of reading all the creeds last year. Years ago I was interested in anthropological discoveries of scrolls and texts through time. Religious Historian, Elaine Pagel’s Gnostic Gospels was a great discussion of the Red Sea Scrolls. Prior to Nicea Council there was Gnosticism Montanism, Arianism and more.
I personally liked Pelagianism because this Pelagius was a British Celtic monk who argued with African Augustine. His main sin was denying ‘original sin’ , celebrating women and children like Celts do but mostly arguing about the best hair cut for a monk. He felt children had an inherent ability to discern and believed in ‘grace’. Later the debate would continue with the Protestant Catholic division under the terms ‘Grace without Works’.
Donatism was another schism This was about the purity of the clergy and could the sacraments like baptism and ordination be acceptable if the clergy has lapsed in their faith. The Council of Aries 314 condemned this idea.
Another theological dispute was Nestorinanism. Nestorious , the Archibishiop of Constantinople in 5th century AD emphasized the distinction between the divine and human natures. He argued that Mary should be called ‘Christ bearer’ rather than ‘God Bearer’ . The Council of Ephesus in 431 AD said that Jesus Christ was one person with two natures. Nestorianism continued to be taught in the east , Persia , India and China. I was interested in this when I followed St. Thomas, the disciple, and traveled to Kerala India. I visited the St. Thomas Church there my second stay in India in 2019.
These controversies in early Christianity are just human. The Catholic Church and Orthodox Church split over the Latins wanting the Pope to be supreme while the church of Constantine and eastern or Orthodox Church held the councils as supreme. Luther split the Protestants from the Catholics over the cost to be given to the pope to get your mother out of purgatory and into heaven. Now there are Baptists, Lutherans, Mennonites, Anglicans, etc.
The Nicene Cree creates the orthoxy acceptable to Constantine and the Roman Empire and the church leaders of the day. Each line is a ‘whose in, whose out’ statement akin to King Lear talking to Cordelia about whhat he called ‘court things’. There is a saying that the devil is in the detail Love and war.
I say I play peek a boo with Jesus.. Love and Faith,
In Paradise Lost Milton makes it abundantly clear that God is all loving but that the Devil turns away from him. In T.S. Elliot’s Cocktail Party Jesus walks among the partiers inviting them to come upstairs and they would rather continue drinking and frolicking downstairs.
The Nicene Creed is Orthodoxy. I just read the book the “40 most influential Christinas by Daryl Aaron” . It’s taken me a couple of years to muddle through it. I much more enjoyed Evelyn Underhill Mystics of the Church I finished this week. Reality and psychosis is a central theme for me as a psychiatrist . I have a colleague who believes half the world are Schizophrenic whereas as the agreed number is maybe 10% at most. . The arguments of ‘whose in, or whose out’ is always central. I just learned, reading the history of oral sex that ‘sodomy’ which I’d thought referred only to anal sex referred at different times to anything but vaginal sex.
This was relevant in our time when Star asked Bill Clinton if he had sex with Monica Clinton and he said “no”. The Jesuits and many married men would have loved the man if he’d said “I didn’t commit adultery”. Adultery narrowly referred to vaginal intercourse. Not knowing that oral sex was ‘sex’ was either a ‘lie’ or so stupid as to questions whether he should be trusted with nuclear codes. However in the jails the ‘men’ who receive oral sex from other men don’t consider that ‘homosexuality’ but rather manly. Homosexuals were only those who received sex ‘like women’. I heard a Mexican policeman say he had too much sex for women just alone and considered himself a Superman. “I’m too sexy” , the song, hadn’t been written at the time.
Bishop Spong wrote a great history of Vatican Bishops asking young country priests to check on the village women sexual habits to find out if they are ‘sinning’. He read these letters from the Vatican libraries going back hundreds of years and they really have an absurdity worthy of Monty Python. The story goes that the master says to the students ask, if there is any ‘unnatural’ sex and the student asks what that means but the master doesn’t want to enlighten the student to the evil so it’s left unsaid. The village women much more aware than the priests ask the same question. It’ like going to an accountant asking for loop holes.
The division between Latin Christianity and Greek Orthodoxy revolved around the Trinity and whether God came first before the Holy Ghost or were God and Jesus Christ first together before the Holy Spirit. It’s important to scientists. I blew up a bit of a lab when I used 1.1 tsp rather than 1 tsp in the making of an explosive device in the university. Cooking in the kitchen I’m routinely using a ‘pinch of this or that. I almost missed the Hawaiian Islands when I couldn’t calculate the strength of the current before the islands with my celestial navigation.
Thomas Sowell makes a point of saying that the arts crowd at the university, philosophers etc can go along way off the rails whereas engineeers and others in science are more limited by reality. I like the Australian scientist who called the art students ‘mental wankers’ . The Aggie students are a whole other group.
My colleague a medical specialist was raised by a minister of a Christian group that had a few hundred thousand maybe a million followers around the world. As a medical specialist he realized that his church felt that their ideas and ways were the only way to get to heaven and all others were going to hell, not the hell of hebrew ‘a long time’ but a Dante infinity of pain and torture, punishment inflicted by an Old Testament God of Vengeance and Wrath. As a scientist he said that according to his father there was ‘no rainbow’ for 8 billion people and the promise to Noah or teachings of Jesus were not as important as ‘whose in whose out’.
The Nicene Creed was the first Christian ‘whose in whose out’. Frankly I like it. It’s a start. Personally I believe I’m with Jesus daily and that God is good all of the time. I know miracles. I’m just a student. A sinner. Sinner means I’m not perfect. Only God is perfect.
The Nicene Creed is found as a foundation of faith in the Catholic Church and Orthodox Church. Here I’m including the Church of England ‘version’. This is despite calls for King Charles king of England and head of the church to be declared apostate or Islamic. Thanks to the Edict and discussion of Donatism this version remains as good as the others. Presently as an Anglican I know it
I once had a book with the 6 major bible translations aligned three to a page to face each other. I’ve been reading the accepted books of the Protestsant Bible as compared to the Catholic Bible and the the Ethiopian Bible. I visited Ethiopia because the Coptic Christians and their Bible are historically more true than the King James Version. I remain most fond of NIV which I used when I studied masters level theology at universities. I still have a several Protestitant Bibles and the Ethiopian Bible but don’t know where the Catholic Bible got too. I needed different bibles for different courses. I gave my book of Q to a minister who really appreciated it. Now I’ve really enjoyed the words of Jesus in red in the NIV version.
The Nicene Creed
We believe in one God
The father, the Almighty
Maker of heaven and earth
Of all that is
Seen and unseen
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ
The only Son of God,
Eternally begotten of the Father
God from God , Light from Light.
True God from true God
Begotten not made
Of one being with the Father
Through him all things were made
For us and for our salvation he came down
From heaven
Was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the
Virgin Mary
And was made man
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius
Pilate
He suffered death and was buried
On the third day he rose again
In accordance with the scriptures
He ascended into heaven
And is seated at the right hand of the Father
He will come again in glory to judge the living
And the dead
And his kingdom will have no end
We believe in the Holy Spirit
The Lord, the giver of life
Who proceeds from the Father and the Son
Who with the Father and the Son is worshipped
And glorified
Who has spoken through the prophets
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic
Church
We acknowledge one baptism for the
Forgiveness of sins
We look for the resurrection of the dead
And the life of the world to come
AMEN.
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