"The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands." (Psalm 19:1)
https://discussions.godandscience.org/
What is it that's made you 100% sure?melanie wrote:I am 100% sure Jesus is true and God exists.
I don't have certainty in Christianity as defined by the modern tenets of the faith. At some point the basic principle of believing in Christ and He's redemption for mankind was lost in the jargon of churchianity.
Someone, namely Constantine met with a few blokes, held a council and decided how Christianity would be defined and from that the Church positioned themselves there on.
I am a devoted follower of Jesus not a follower of religion or church hierarchy.
So I need option 4...... I'm absolutely certain Jesus is true but not so sure of the religion that's attached to Him.
I should've added that by Christianity I meant the basics of the Gospel, not necessarily all the church tradition and so on.Nicki wrote:What is it that's made you 100% sure?melanie wrote:I am 100% sure Jesus is true and God exists.
I don't have certainty in Christianity as defined by the modern tenets of the faith. At some point the basic principle of believing in Christ and He's redemption for mankind was lost in the jargon of churchianity.
Someone, namely Constantine met with a few blokes, held a council and decided how Christianity would be defined and from that the Church positioned themselves there on.
I am a devoted follower of Jesus not a follower of religion or church hierarchy.
So I need option 4...... I'm absolutely certain Jesus is true but not so sure of the religion that's attached to Him.
Mel, that view about what Constantine did ( or did not do) is so incredibly distorted...melanie wrote:I am 100% sure Jesus is true and God exists.
I don't have certainty in Christianity as defined by the modern tenets of the faith. At some point the basic principle of believing in Christ and He's redemption for mankind was lost in the jargon of churchianity.
Someone, namely Constantine met with a few blokes, held a council and decided how Christianity would be defined and from that the Church positioned themselves there on.
I am a devoted follower of Jesus not a follower of religion or church hierarchy.
So I need option 4...... I'm absolutely certain Jesus is true but not so sure of the religion that's attached to Him.
Council of Nicaea, (325), the first ecumenical council of the Christian church, meeting in ancient Nicaea (now İznik, Tur.). It was called by the emperor Constantine I, an unbaptized catechumen, or neophyte, who presided over the opening session and took part in the discussions. He hoped a general council of the church would solve the problem created in the Eastern church by Arianism, a heresy first proposed by Arius of Alexandria that affirmed that Christ is not divine but a created being. Pope Sylvester I did not attend the council but was represented by legates.
The council condemned Arius and, with reluctance on the part of some, incorporated the nonscriptural word homoousios (“of one substance”) into a creed (the Nicene Creed) to signify the absolute equality of the Son with the Father. The emperor then exiled Arius, an act that, while manifesting a solidarity of church and state, underscored the importance of secular patronage in ecclesiastical affairs.
The council also attempted but failed to establish a uniform date for Easter. But it issued decrees on many other matters, including the proper method of consecrating bishops, a condemnation of lending money at interest by clerics, and a refusal to allow bishops, priests, and deacons to move from one church to another. Socrates Scholasticus, a 5th-century Byzantine historian, said that the council intended to make a canon enforcing celibacy of the clergy, but it failed to do so when some objected. It also confirmed the primacy of Alexandria and Jerusalem over other sees in their respective areas.
Misconceptions[edit]
Biblical canon[edit]
Main article: Development of the Christian biblical canon
There is no record of any discussion of the biblical canon at the council.[73] The development of the biblical canon took centuries, and was nearly complete (with exceptions known as the Antilegomena, written texts whose authenticity or value is disputed) by the time the Muratorian fragment was written.[74]
In 331, Constantine commissioned fifty Bibles for the Church of Constantinople, but little else is known (in fact, it is not even certain whether his request was for fifty copies of the entire Old and New Testaments, only the New Testament, or merely the Gospels). Some scholars believe that this request provided motivation for canon lists. In Jerome's Prologue to Judith,[75] he claims that the Book of Judith was "found by the Nicene Council to have been counted among the number of the Sacred Scriptures", which some have suggested means the Nicene Council did discuss what documents would number among the sacred scriptures, but more likely simply means the Council used Judith in its deliberations on other matters and so it should be considered canonical.
The main source of the idea that the Bible was created at the Council of Nicea seems to be Voltaire, who popularised a story that the canon was determined by placing all the competing books on an altar during the Council and then keeping the ones that did not fall off. The original source of this "fictitious anecdote" is the Synodicon Vetus,[76] a pseudo-historical account of early Church councils from AD 887:[77]
The canonical and apocryphal books it distinguished in the following manner: in the house of God the books were placed down by the holy altar; then the council asked the Lord in prayer that the inspired works be found on top and--as in fact happened--the spurious on the bottom.[78]
Trinity[edit]
The council of Nicaea dealt primarily with the issue of the deity of Christ. Over a century earlier the term "Trinity" (Τριάς in Greek; trinitas in Latin) was used in the writings of Origen (185–254) and Tertullian (160–220), and a general notion of a "divine three", in some sense, was expressed in the second century writings of Polycarp, Ignatius, and Justin Martyr. In Nicaea, questions regarding the Holy Spirit were left largely unaddressed until after the relationship between the Father and the Son was settled around the year 362.[79] So the doctrine in a more full-fledged form was not formulated until the Council of Constantinople in 360 AD,[80] and a final form formulated in 381 AD, primarily crafted by Gregory of Nyssa.[81]
Constantine[edit]
Main article: Constantine the Great
While Constantine had sought a unified church after the council, he did not force the Homoousian view of Christ's nature on the council (see The role of Constantine).
Constantine did not commission any Bibles at the council itself. He did commission fifty Bibles in 331 for use in the churches of Constantinople, itself still a new city. No historical evidence points to involvement on his part in selecting or omitting books for inclusion in commissioned Bibles.
Despite Constantine's sympathetic interest in the Church, he was not baptized until some 11 or 12 years after the council, putting off baptism as long as he did so as to be absolved from as much sin as possible[82] in accordance with the belief that in baptism all sin is forgiven fully and completely.[83]
The above statement reflects a serious misconception of Constantine's role and what actually transpired at the 325 A.D. Council of Nicea he called - his role was merely to call the meeting of Bishops under his authority, as well as brought authority of law per any of the decisions. The canon wasn't even discussed at Constatine's called Council of Nicea!Melanie: Someone, namely Constantine met with a few blokes, held a council and decided how Christianity would be defined and from that the Church positioned themselves there on.
That's both a very easy question to answer Nicki but also quite complex when I think of how best to explain.Nicki wrote:What is it that's made you 100% sure?melanie wrote:I am 100% sure Jesus is true and God exists.
I don't have certainty in Christianity as defined by the modern tenets of the faith. At some point the basic principle of believing in Christ and He's redemption for mankind was lost in the jargon of churchianity.
Someone, namely Constantine met with a few blokes, held a council and decided how Christianity would be defined and from that the Church positioned themselves there on.
I am a devoted follower of Jesus not a follower of religion or church hierarchy.
So I need option 4...... I'm absolutely certain Jesus is true but not so sure of the religion that's attached to Him.
Thanks for thatmelanie wrote:That's both a very easy question to answer Nicki but also quite complex when I think of how best to explain...Nicki wrote:What is it that's made you 100% sure?melanie wrote:I am 100% sure Jesus is true and God exists.
I don't have certainty in Christianity as defined by the modern tenets of the faith. At some point the basic principle of believing in Christ and He's redemption for mankind was lost in the jargon of churchianity.
Someone, namely Constantine met with a few blokes, held a council and decided how Christianity would be defined and from that the Church positioned themselves there on.
I am a devoted follower of Jesus not a follower of religion or church hierarchy.
So I need option 4...... I'm absolutely certain Jesus is true but not so sure of the religion that's attached to Him.
I'd quite like to have had more personal revelation - it's inconclusive whether that which I may have had was actually genuine.