Perfection
The Great Head.
Who was the most evil theologian ever?
JELEEN, I don't see much point in debating with you when you consistently use words to mean strange things that they don't normally mean. If you say that it is possible for two truths to be inconsistent, then you are quite literally speaking nonsense. If two propositions are both true then they simply cannot be inconsistent - that is a fundamental law of logic. Either you are saying something incoherent or you are using the word "truth" (or indeed the word "inconsistent") to mean something other than what it usually means - and yet you don't bother to alert anyone to this fact. So there's really no profit in discussing this stuff under those conditions.
I don't think you understand what I was trying to say. The example of the president is certainly statistical analysis. My point was that this statistical analysis can produce belief. If I believe that the next president will be a millionaire because I have done a simple statistical analysis, then I believe this claim. This is not difficult to understand. Moreover, my belief is rational. And, yes, I could also acquire the same belief by an irrational method, such as prejudice. So you are quite right to say that it's possible to reach the same conclusion by either rational or irrational means. My point is that either way, the conclusion will be a belief. The word "belief" implies neither reason or irreason (if that's a word). It refers to a certain kind of psychological state, without saying anything about how one arrives at that psychological state.
Incidentally, you seem to equate thinking rationally with thinking logically. I don't think that is right. Logic is a subset of reason, not the same thing as it. One can behave rationally without involving logic at all.
There certainly was such a pattern, but your example is wrong. The solstice is 21 December. Under the Roman calendar, it fell on 24 December.
Right - so how do you tell the difference between "mythology" and the truth? Do you really think it's as simple as all that?
Who was the most evil theologian ever?
Thanks for the in-depth reply! I had been wondering about that for quite some time. I think the focus on the resurrection of the dead has changed probably due to the preaching of charismatic evangelicals, for whom the "believe in Jesus and go to heaven" message is simpler and perhaps more readily appealing than the "believe in Jesus and die or receive a partial vision of God, before the end times in which you will be bodily resurrected and experience a new heaven and new earth!"
Also thank you for the links. Reading them makes me wonder, however, what sort of proofs were used by early theologians? How did they defend their positions. Did they claim to arrive at their dogmas through pure reasoning, extrapolation based on scriptures, inspiration of the Holy Spirit, or by talking with people who had had visions or prophecies and communicated with the divine. I know there probably weren't as rigorous standards of proof needed back then...but how would something like the Arian heresy for instance become so popular and accepted by people? If they didn't offer better proof than another idea, did they just offer better logic and reasoning?
Athanasius said:For as, when the likeness painted on a panel has been effaced by stains from without, he whose likeness it is must needs come once more to enable the portrait to be renewed on the same wood: for, for the sake of his picture, even the mere wood on which it is painted is not thrown away, but the outline is renewed upon it; in the same way also the most holy Son of the Father, being the Image of the Father, came to our region to renew man once made in His likeness, and find him, as one lost, by the remission of sins; as He says Himself in the Gospels: I came to find and to save the lost. Whence He said to the Jews also: Except a man be born again, not meaning, as they thought, birth from woman, but speaking of the soul born and created anew in the likeness of Gods image. But since wild idolatry and godlessness occupied the world, and the knowledge of God was hid, whose part was it to teach the world concerning the Father? Mans, might one say? But it was not in mans power to penetrate everywhere beneath the sun; for neither had they the physical strength to run so far, nor would they be able to claim credence in this matter, nor were they sufficient by themselves to withstand the deceit and impositions of evil spirits. For where all were smitten and confused in soul from demoniacal deceit, and the vanity of idols, how was it possible for them to win over mans soul and mans mindwhereas they cannot even see them? Or how can a man convert what he does not see? But perhaps one might say creation was enough; but if creation were enough, these great evils would never have come to pass. For creation was there already, and all the same, men were grovelling in the same error concerning God. Who, then, was needed, save the Word of God, that sees both soul and mind, and that gives movement to all things in creation, and by them makes known the Father? For He who by His own Providence and ordering of all things was teaching men concerning the Father, He it was that could renew this same teaching as well. How, then, could this have been done? Perhaps one might say, that the same means were open as before, for Him to shew forth the truth about the Father once more by means of the work of creation. But this was no longer a sure means. Quite the contrary; for men missed seeing this before, and have turned their eyes no longer upward but downward. Whence, naturally, willing to profit men, He sojourns here as man, taking to Himself a body like the others, and from things of earth, that is by the works of His body [He teaches them], so that they who would not know Him from His Providence and rule over all things, may even from the works done by His actual body know the Word of God which is in the body, and through Him the Father.
Athanasius said:These things being so, and the Resurrection of His body and the victory gained over death by the Saviour being clearly proved, come now let us put to rebuke both the disbelief of the Jews and the scoffing of the Gentiles. For these, perhaps, are the points where Jews express incredulity, while Gentiles laugh, finding fault with the unseemliness of the Cross, and of the Word of God becoming man. But our argument shall not delay to grapple with both especially as the proofs at our command against them are clear as day. For Jews in their incredulity may be refuted from the Scriptures, which even themselves read; for this text and that, and, in a word, the whole inspired Scripture, cries aloud concerning these things, as even its express words abundantly shew. For prophets proclaimed beforehand concerning the wonder of the Virgin and the birth from her, saying: Lo, the Virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a Son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which is, being interpreted, God with us. But Moses, the truly great, and whom they believe to speak truth, with reference to the Saviours becoming man, having estimated what was said as important, and assured of its truth, set it down in these words: There shall rise a star out of Jacob, and a man out of Israel, and he shall break in pieces the captains of Moab. And again: How lovely are thy habitations O Jacob, thy tabernacles O Israel, as shadowing gardens, and as parks by the rivers, and as tabernacles which the Lord hath fixed, as cedars by the waters. A man shall come forth out of his seed, and shall be Lord over many peoples. And again, Esaias: Before the Child know how to call father or mother, he shall take the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria before the king of Assyria. That a man, then, shall appear is foretold in those words. But that He that is to come is Lord of all, they predict once more as follows: Behold the Lord sitteth upon a light cloud, and shall come into Egypt, and the graven images of Egypt shall be shaken. For from thence also it is that the Father calls Him back, saying: I called My Son out of Egypt.
Some other interesting Zulu beliefs are that there is an underworld. In Shaka's time there was supposed to be an old man who was dragged away by a lion. After journeying a long way, both fell into a chasm and the old man discovered the land of the dead, which was just like the land of the living but upside down and reversed. Apparently he enjoyed his time with the dead but decided to return to the world of the living. His wife had seen him carried off and was already conducting his funeral when he got back. The old man told everyone his story, which astonished them. Naturally, he started a new career as a spirit-medium and herbalist. Shaka heard about his story, somehow corroborated it to be true, and gave him a reward. Now this story seems to fit with the pagan idea of body-soul duality, but another aspect of Zulu afterlife beliefs seems to differ from substance-body dualism. The ancestors sometimes are seen by people, as green snakes or a particular kind of lizard. These reptiles are never harmed, because they are visiting ancestors. I suppose there can still be substance duality in that belief system, and the Zulu traditionalist can believe that disembodied souls are in the underworld and can only appear in non-corporeal dreams and visions, while they can manifest corporeally as reptiles.
African people are definitely the main spreaders of Christianity among themselves. In the early days, they were so iconoclastic to traditional religions that they would have made an art historian weep. When I was studying abroad in Ghana, however, most people who practiced traditional religion were also Christians! I did my research with a priestess of a traditional god, Nana Fofie; she was a Methodist. Her son, who played the drums while his ma was possessed with Nana Fofie, was a Catholic. They both rationalized that the tradition Abosom or deities, were in fact the angels or lieutenants of the supreme being. On the whole, it seemed that the 'mainline' denominations were more friendly with traditional religions, while the more indigenous and charismatic denominations were extremely hostile to traditional religion.
The most famous of these people was the man often referred to as the Prophet Harris. His full name was William Wade Harris, and he was a Grebo one of the indigenous peoples of Liberia who had been brought up as a Methodist but converted to the Church of England. He had tried to organise a revolution to turn Liberia over to the British crown; upon its failure he had been thrown into prison. Here, every night, he had a vision of the Archangel Gabriel, who instilled in him an unshakeable faith in himself as the divinely appointed Prophet of Africa. He gained a new sense of his African identity, and gave up the European-style clothes he had worn before and his American shoes. Instead, upon his release in 1913, Harris crossed the border into Ivory Coast to preach. He was barefoot, dressed in a white cloak, he carried a six-foot cross made of bamboo, and he was accompanied by two or three of his wives.
Harris was one of the most remarkable preachers in African history. Like a latter-day John Wesley, he spoke to crowds thousands strong, imploring them to turn away from idols to God. Harris message was uncompromising, and he had no time for accommodation to traditional African religions (apart from polygamy). Instead, all fetishes were to be burned upon the great bonfires that he lit. The people responded in their hordes: some 100,000 people were converted in little more than a year. Many were baptised by Harris himself with a small bowl he carried for the purpose; many more were baptised when the clouds opened and Harris cried out the Trinitarian formula, using the rain itself as the sacrament. Whole villages were converted at a stroke and, even more remarkably, the Christian communities that were founded in this way proved surprisingly durable. Harris message was fairly simple, revolving around the need to turn to Jesus, who he believed would return imminently; he did not much mind which church people joined, provided they joined one. Church attendances swelled dramatically even the Catholic churches found huge numbers of new recruits.
In 1915, the French authorities in Ivory Coast had had enough of this extraordinary but potentially volatile phenomenon, and they expelled Harris back to Liberia. He stayed here until his death in 1929, still preaching, but never with the same impact. But his assistant, John Swatson, continued to preach in the area, with continued remarkable success.
Harris had his imitators. One was Garrick Sokari Braide, who appeared in 1915 far to the east, in the region of the Niger delta. Like Harris, he was an Anglican and a fiery preacher, who inspired people to burn the fetishes and turn to God instead. Many thousands turned to him, but James Johnson, the local bishop, was displeased. Braide claimed to be a second Elijah, and he also tolerated polygamy. He was arrested and died soon after. Elsewhere in the region one could hear the preaching of Moses Orimolade and a female visionary called Abiodun Akinsowon, and, in the 1930s, Joseph Babalola, who led a revival among the Yoruba. Yet another African prophet was Sampson Oppong, who preached to the Asante people in Ghana in the early 1920s. Like Harris, Oppong travelled simply, bearing a cross, and wore a white robe (although he changed into a khaki one for travelling and a black one for preaching). Oppong, again, won vast numbers of converts some 20,000 in a couple of years although in his case they were mostly Methodist.
And the phenomenon was not confined to West Africa. The most famous prophet in the Congo region was Simon Kimbangu, who managed, if anything, to make an even greater impact than Harris in a shorter period of time. Born at Nkamba, Kimbangu became a Baptist at a young age and taught in a mission school. In 1918 he became a lay preacher, but he was disturbed by dreams or visions in which Jesus seemed to appear to him. In 1921, he visited a family where a woman was ill. He laid hands on her, and she was healed. Immediately there was uproar. People flocked from the whole region to see this new prophet and healer, and he quickly acquired disciples, including an inner cadre of twelve apostles. Stories of healings and even resurrections spread, as Kimbangu told the people to burn their fetishes and turn to God. There were wild demonstrations of the divine power, including speaking in tongues.
Although the Baptist church in the area considered Kimbangus ministry legitimate, the Belgian authorities did not and they arrested him and his immediate followers after only a few months. Kimbangu was sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in Lubumbashi. However, his movement did not die. On the contrary, the Kimbanguists flourished and spread, though they continued to revere Nkamba as a holy place. There were periodical rumours that the Absent Prophet would return. He never did dying in prison in 1951 but the movement remained a major element of Christianity in the Congo region, despite periodic clampdowns from the government and the mainstream churches alike. Not until 1958 were the Kimbanguists officially recognised as a legitimate church, and two years later Kimbangus body was returned to Nkamba, the Kimbanguist Rome, for burial.
Even as the Kimbanguists were receiving belated recognition, another prophetic movement was beginning hundreds of miles to the south, in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). Alice Lenshina Mulenga had been brought up as a Presbyterian, but in 1953 she had an experience which she interpreted as one of death and resurrection, and she became a popular preacher. Like the other prophets, she attacked traditional religion, or as she regarded it, witchcraft; she also fiercely denounced the drinking of beer. Her message was extraordinarily successful, with whole villages joining the Lumpa Church en masse and singing the hymns that Mulenga herself wrote.
The sheer numbers of people converted through the preaching of these prophets testify to the charisma and power they must have wielded. And they made a huge impact on the churches of the area. In Harris case, he cared nothing for denominations, and so all the churches in the Ivory Coast area found unprecedented numbers of converts. Indeed, European missionaries coming to the area in the wake of Harris preaching were overwhelmed with the unexpected size of their congregations: the Catholic churches in Ivory Coast, for example, swelled from just a few hundred at the start of the century to 20,000 in 1922. The numbers kept rising, too, for many years after the prophets had left, suggesting that this was not simply a shallow fad but a major development in African Christianity. Indeed, a new denomination appeared in Ivory Coast, the Harrists, who followed roughly orthodox Protestant theology but who were proud of the African origin of their church and of its founding prophet. The Harrists were closely associated with the Ebrie people, around Abidjan.
The Kimbanguists, Harrists and others represent the first major new Christian denominations that were formed in Africa. In many ways, the teaching of these prophets and innumerable other, less well-known ones was quite orthodox from a Protestant point of view. They were not doctrinally innovative. But they all had much in common which was drawn from traditional African religion. On the one hand, the emphasis on a prophet at all, a charismatic preacher, often with great healing powers, was typically African. In the Congo region, for example, such people were called ngunza and believed to be possessed by spirits. Simon Kimbangu was, in effect, a Christian ngunza. And like traditional prophets, the Christian prophet would generally carry a staff, which represented his authority. Indeed, Kimbangu passed his staff on to his sons, who even retained the title Mvwala or Staff as leaders of his church. So William Wade Harris bamboo cross was a sign not simply of Christ but of his own power to preach and heal; for healing was central to the ministry of the prophets, just as it was important to much indigenous African religion. Africans generally expected their gods to work for the health of their followers, and to do it through these charismatic wonderworkers. Little wonder, then, that where Jesus was preached, Jesus was seen to heal. This was especially so in the years immediately following the Great War, when Africa, even more than Europe, was gripped by the terrible flu epidemic that cost millions of lives.
Most of these prophets and their followers did not see themselves as mingling Christianity and traditional religion on the contrary, a call to burn the fetishes was standard for all Christian prophets. They believed that what they taught and practised was entirely in keeping with the Bible, for the Protestant missionaries had taught their converts to believe what the Bible said. But they could never have anticipated some of the consequences of this consequences that came from reading the Bible in an African context rather than a European one. In the Bible, the African converts read of events that seemed familiar to them: dreams and visions in which God taught his people, and great apostles and prophets who did mighty works and healed the sick. They expected to see this happen now. They also expected the Biblical prophecies, especially those relating to the coming of Gods kingdom on earth, to be fulfilled in their time: thus Kimbangus village of Nkamba was hailed as the New Jerusalem, while Mulengas village of Kasomo became Zioni.
Most European missionaries had believed in the miracles described in the Bible, but they thought of them as special Biblical era events and did not expect to see them replicated. But many Africans did not distance themselves from the text in this way, and this led to quite new problems. For example, was polygamy permissible? The missionaries were emphatic that it was not, but the Africans saw that the Old Testament patriarchs apparently had many wives, just as they were accustomed to do themselves. Again, to what extent were dreams to be considered valid revelation alongside the Bible? After all, many people in the Bible received revelations from God in dreams. This was a question that no European missionary had even considered, and it was one to which they had no answer.
Reichsbishof Ludwig Müller.Who was the most evil theologian ever?
I'll disregard your supposition that I do not understand what you're saying. Two comments: I do not believe belief can be rational, although it can follow from a rational decision. Belief is not a psychological state, faith is. (But one might discern between believing a person and believing something.)
More generally speaking, if the Roman calendar counts it 24 December (and thats the one that matters as regards Christianity), that's the "birth of Christ". 25 December would be the birth of Mithras, a rival mystery religion which also used bread and wine and centered on a god dying and resurrected (popular in the army and in the administration, as it excluded women). Another major rival was the Isis cult, whose processions entailed the carrying of a statue representing the Virgin Mother.
Although Christianity won out as a state religion, recognizing the emperor - who previously also had his personal cult - as its head, all rivals were outlawed, while succesfully incorporating many of their features as "Christian" ones.
Hey, Plotinus, I've been reading about Iustinianus I and came across a reference to a Three Chapters controversy, including a comment that any attacks on Nestorianism were characterized as steps towards Monophysitism by some of the pro-Chalcedon Church hierarchy. Could you tell me what all this brouhaha over the Three Chapters was, and clear up what the Chalcedonian 'middle way' between Nestorianism and Monophysitism actually was?
Reichsbishof Ludwig Müller.
Perhaps you understand me, but I certainly don’t understand you. Can you define what you mean by the word “belief”? Because I find this use of the word, in which it cannot be rational and is not even a psychological state, totally alien.
Sometimes I wonder why I bother writing things here, given that the same old nonsense just gets trotted out again and again. One more time, then:
(1) 25 of December was not the birthday of Mithras, who as far as we know had no official birthday. It was the festival of Sol invictus. Sol invictus was (obviously) a sun god. Mithras was also a sun god, or at least closely associated with the sun (some Mithraist images seem to distinguish between Mithras and the sun). But they were distinct cults. Now Mithras was sometimes addressed as “sol invictus”. And after 25 December was made the festival of Sol invictus – which happened in the third century CE – no doubt some Mithraists used it as a day of celebration too. But it wasn’t his birthday.
(2) There is no evidence that Mithras was supposed to have died, let alone been resurrected. If you know anything about Mithraism you’ll know that its central image was the “tauroctony”, a relief carving of Mithras killing a bull – not being killed or rising again.
(3) Mithraism was indeed popular in the army, but not in the administration. Apart from Rome itself, Mithraist artifacts are known almost exclusively from border towns of the empire, which were military garrisons. It was a kind of macho boys’ club for soldiers, I suppose.
(4) Mithraism was not a major rival of Christianity. In fact they weren’t rivals at all, because they appealed to almost diametrically opposite sectors of society. One was for men, mainly soldiers (in fact it’s not certain that women were excluded, but they were certainly not important). The other mainly appealed to women. The one met in small caves, the other was a household-based movement. The one was most popular in military towns on the northern fringes of the empire, the other had its strongholds in Asia Minor, Africa, southern Gaul, and the great cities of the empire. Christians and Mithraists would not have crossed each other’s paths very often.
I know less about the cult of Isis, so I can’t say so much on that. However, I would say: (1) calling Isis “the Virgin Mother” is obviously prejudging the matter, since as far as I know such a title is unknown in the literature; (2) whether there was any influence from the cult of Isis to Christianity is almost entirely a matter of pure conjecture, since there is no evidence for it; (3) the supposed similarities between figures such as Isis and Horus on the one hand and Mary and Jesus on the other pale into insignificance compared to their differences. But I said a lot about this a couple of pages ago, so there’s no need to repeat myself now.
This is an enormous over-simplification. First, some of these rivals had pretty much disappeared by the time in question anyway. Mithraism, for example, went into a steep decline in the first half of the fourth century. But it was not until the 390s that pagan religions were outlawed, and in fact these laws were not rigorously enforced until the time of Justinian. Second, while it is certainly true that Christianity incorporated some features from earlier religions, or at least had features in common with them, most of these were not particularly significant. In the case of Mithraism, I don’t know of any good evidence that Mithraism influenced Christianity in any way whatsoever. The similarities that they did share – such as involving ritual meals – were common to pretty much all ancient religions, or indeed modern ones. Any more significant similarities that they might have had could be explained just as well by saying that Mithraism copied Christianity as vice versa. After all, Christianity emerged in the Roman empire before Mithraism did. The idea that Christianity was jam-packed full of things nicked from the Mithraists, so that they were practically the same religion with different names, and it was just a historical accident that one became the state religion and the other was outlawed, is just anti-Christian propaganda that goes back to the long-debunked theories of Cumont and survives only because the Internet has an unfortunate ability to keep rubbish circulating indefinitely.
So the idea here - that the Christians took all the best ideas from the pagans, and then turned on those very same pagans and stomped them out of existence, whilst ironically preserving much of their religion - may be terribly poignant, but it doesn't stand up to much scrutiny.
Also, I doubt that many ancient Christians or even many Byzantine ones would have agreed that the emperor was the head of the church. What do you think Ambrose of Milan would have said to that? In general, the only people who would have agreed with this whole-heartedly were the emperors themselves.
He was one of those German Christians (they actually had a separate name for themselves), a group within Protestantism in Germany that basically was the Nazi sockpuppet church. They were into the Christ-as-Aryan idea, for example, and were virulently anti-Semitic. This Müller scrub helped Hitler worm his way into German politics by having some meet-and-greets, and his quid pro quo was that he got to be the head of Hitler's 'Protestant Reich Church'. After the Third Reich bit the big one, he committed suicide.How so, exactly?
It's good to know one can always rely on you to unsimplify matters. However, some details seem inaccurate. For instance: Christianity was similar to Mithraism in many respects[21] for instance the Ecclesiastical calendar retains numerous remnants of pre-Christian festivals, notably Christmas, which blends elements including both the feast of the Saturnalia and the birthday of Mithra.[22]
Once again, your claim is a personal one, while the inference is that it is a universal one, which it is not. (Anyway, I do not find it surprising that an agnost needs belief to be rational or a psychologichal state. But I see no need to repeat what I said earlier.)
It's good to know one can always rely on you to unsimplify matters. However, some details seem inaccurate. For instance: Christianity was similar to Mithraism in many respects[21] for instance the Ecclesiastical calendar retains numerous remnants of pre-Christian festivals, notably Christmas, which blends elements including both the feast of the Saturnalia and the birthday of Mithra.[22]
I have no idea what Ambrose of Milan would have said. Perhaps you could enlighten us with a quote of the good fellow?
Ambrose of Milan said:No one ought to consider me contumacious when I affirm what your father of august memory not only replied by word of mouth, but also sanctioned by his laws, that, in a matter of faith, or any ecclesiastical ordinance, he should judge who was not unsuited by office, nor disqualified by equity, for these are the words of the rescript. That is, it was his desire that priests should judge concerning priests. Moreover, if a bishop were accused of other matters also, and a question of character was to be enquired into, it was also his will that this should be reserved for the judgment of bishops.
Who, then, has answered your Clemency contumaciously? He who desires that you should be like your father, or he that wishes you to be unlike him? Unless, perhaps, the judgment of so great an Emperor seems to any persons of small account, whose faith has been proved by the constancy of his profession, and his wisdom declared by the continual improvement of the State.
When have you heard, most gracious Emperor, that laymen gave judgment concerning a bishop in a matter of faith? Are we so prostrate through the flattery of some as to be unmindful of the rights of the priesthood, and do I think that I can entrust to others what God has given me? If a bishop is to be taught by a layman, what will follow? Let the layman argue, and the bishop listen, let the bishop learn of the layman. But undoubtedly, whether we go through the series of the holy Scriptures, or the times of old, who is there who can deny that, in a matter of faith,—in a matter I say of faith,—bishops are wont to judge of Christian emperors, not emperors of bishops.
You will, by the favour of God, attain to a riper age, and then you will judge what kind of bishop he is who subjects the rights of the priesthood to laymen. Your father, by the favour of God a man of riper age, used to say: It is not my business to judge between bishops. Your Clemency now says: I ought to judge. And he, though baptized in Christ, thought himself unequal to the burden of such a judgment, does your Clemency, who have yet to earn for yourself the sacrament of baptism, arrogate to yourself a judgment concerning the faith, though ignorant of the sacrament of that faith?
Once again, however, you return in your remarks to comments made earlier by me, which have however no bearing on the matter at hand. Your conclusions, for instance, do not follow from anything I recently posted, nor can this claim that "Mithraism influenced Christianity" be inferred from what I've posted.
I merely stated the official position taken by Constantine at the first ever official concile, which he personally oversaw and led, that the emperor was the head of the church. No bishops contradicted this view at the time, regardless of your vehement claims to the contrary.
Eusebius of Caesarea said:Standing, as he did, alone and pre-eminent among the Roman emperors as a worshiper of God; alone as the bold proclaimer to all men of the doctrine of Christ; having alone rendered honor, as none before him had ever done, to his Church; having alone abolished utterly the error of polytheism, and discountenanced idolatry in every form: so, alone among them both during life and after death, was he accounted worthy of such honors as none can say have been attained to by any other; so that no one, whether Greek or Barbarian, nay, of the ancient Romans themselves, has ever been presented to us as worthy of comparison with him.
In fact, the whole issue was redone in the West, where the Holy Roman Emperors failed to assert their authority in this matter; the pope retained authority in matters religious, whereas the emperor (and by inference all monarchs) held sway in matters politic. But that is another matter, Sir.
Wait a minute, you're quoting Wikipedia as a superior source of theological information to a professional, published theologian? I love that site to death, but using encyclopedias as definitive sources of information is wrongheaded in the first place, and using Wikipedia specifically is doubly so.
I did not say that a belief "needs" to be rational - only that it can be.
A belief is a psychological state. It is the state of holding something to be true. If, for example, I think that the sun is hot, I believe that the sun is hot. This is a psychological state - it is a state of my mind. What else could it possibly be? I may hold this belief rationally or not.
I do not recognise Wikipedia as a reliable authority, and absolutely not for subjects such as this.
Ambrose believed that the emperor had only temporal authority - as he is supposed to have put it, the emperor is "in the church", not "head of the church". Ambrose took it upon himself to criticise the emperor, which he did frequently - most famously when reprimanding Theodosius I, first for attempting to repay Jews who had their synagogue burned down, and second for massacring thousands of people at Thessalonica. Ambrose believed that the church is superior to the state, and that a lay person such as the emperor was subject to the authority of a bishop such as himself.
Well, I wonder then what your point actually was in citing these supposed parallels between the religions.
Are you talking about the council of Nicaea? This was not the first official council of the church - it was the first ecumenical council, that is, the first council of the whole church (although in fact it was mostly just eastern bishops). Constantine did not oversee or lead the council: he merely presided over its opening and closing sessions. His Greek would not have been good enough to participate in its main business. The council did not state that the emperor was the head of the church. You can read the canons of Nicaea for yourself here. As you can see, the only statement about Constantine that appears there is that he is "our most religious sovereign".
Indeed it is. But I don't think this was a matter of an old system falling into abeyance and new one being forged to replace it. There wasn't an old system at all - the new one that developed was the first one, as it were.
If you actually read what you're quoting, you'de note that I quoted sourced referenced statements.
If you actually read what you're quoting, you'de note that I quoted sourced referenced statements.
See response above. (The references are to Encarta and the Encyclopedia Brittanica respectively, not some obsure Mithras site with no references.)
Interesting, but irrelevant: the emperor summoned and presided over the Nicaean council,
...so de facto presided over the church.
(Of course he summoned mostly sicophantic bishops,
... as he wanted the Arian question settled, but this actually further confirms the emperors authority over the church. What bishops, donatists or laymen might say or write hardly matters; the facts do.)
JELEEN said:Sir, we aren't discussing random beliefs, we're talking religion here. And equating religion with beliefs is, I believe, a simplification. Now a (random) belief may be a psychological state or state of mind, religion is not.
JELEEN said:See response above. (The references are to Encarta and the Encyclopedia Brittanica respectively, not some obsure Mithras site with no references.)
Britannica said:Except for rare aberrations, such as human sacrifice, Roman religion was unspoiled by orgiastic rites and savage practices. Moreover—unlike ancient philosophy—it was neither sectarian nor exclusive. It was a tolerant religion, and it would be difficult to think of any other whose adherents committed fewer crimes and atrocities in its name.
JELEEN said:Interesting, but irrelevant: the emperor summoned and presided over the Nicaean council, so de facto presided over the church. (Ofcourse he summoned mostly sicophantic bishops, as he wanted the Arian question settled, but this actually further confirms the emperors authority over the church. What bishops, donatists or laymen might say or write hardly matters; the facts do.)
Eusebius of Caesarea said:As dissensions had arisen in various lands, he acted like a universal bishop appointed by God and convoked councils of the ministers of God. He did not disdain to be present at their meetings and to become one of the bishops.
Eusebius of Caesarea said:It was, therefore, not so absurd, when he happened to invite bishops to his table, to claim to be a bishop himself, using within our hearing approximately the following words: “You are indeed bishops in all which is internal to the church. But I have been appointed bishop by God for all outside the church.”
JELEEN said:What more evidence do you need to confirm that the emperor is sovereign? And why would any bishop state the obvious, i.e. that the emperor is sovereign in the empire? (He always was.) QED.
Dachs said:All these physes and hypostases are kind of confusing, but I get the gist of what's going on. So was the difference between Severan Monophysites and the other Monophysites that the Severans had a bit more flexibility on the definitions?