Which Religion is the One True Religion?

That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the gospels.

Frank Apisa wrote:

Boy...that was really lame!

If you cannot do better...you probably shouldn't bother to post.

cicerone imposter wrote:

"I'm impressed by your belief about Superman. Does his being unlike fictional characters make him non fictional? Can you explain your beliefs further?:"


"Boy...that was really lame!" amen.

I'll admit it was lame.

I probably did know what you intended to say, except you hadn't said it.

Then for what purpose of Eusebius' did he "heavily edit" and ""correct" the testaments, to winnow the offerings to the four accepted testaments of the current cannon, and to obliterate to the extent that they were able, all evidence of "competing" testaments." --- if such he did, (and so you assert), if it were not to conform it to his views? Do you think that he would attempt it just for fun?

Will Durant wrote:

That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the gospels.

Of course, Will Durant was Catholic.

That snotty little swipe at Catholics is so typical of the devout Protestant bible-thumper.

real life wrote:

Then for what purpose of Eusebius' did he "heavily edit" and ""correct" the testaments, to winnow the offerings to the four accepted testaments of the current cannon, and to obliterate to the extent that they were able, all evidence of "competing" testaments." --- if such he did, (and so you assert), if it were not to conform it to his views? Do you think that he would attempt it just for fun?

Whether or not he were entertained by the effort i can neither imagine, nor consider it germane. The obvious answer, to which even you should be able arrive without much effort of imagination, is to conform to the orthodoxy decreed by the Nicean Council. Feeling a little slow today, "real" life?

Setanta wrote:

real life wrote:

Then for what purpose of Eusebius' did he "heavily edit" and ""correct" the testaments, to winnow the offerings to the four accepted testaments of the current cannon, and to obliterate to the extent that they were able, all evidence of "competing" testaments." --- if such he did, (and so you assert), if it were not to conform it to his views? Do you think that he would attempt it just for fun?

Whether or not he were entertained by the effort i can neither imagine, nor consider it germane. The obvious answer, to which even you should be able arrive without much effort of imagination, is to conform to the orthodoxy decreed by the Nicean Council. Feeling a little slow today, "real" life?

Hi Hare,

Not feeling any slower than usual today.

Eusebius either did or he did not subscribe to the doctrine the Council held to be orthodox.

If he did agree with the Council and you state that he edited the New Testament to conform to those views, then he edited the NT to conform to his own views as well. But this you deny.

If he did not agree with the Council but edited the NT to conform to the Council's findings, are you suggesting that he, against his own convictions, edited the NT to say something that he believed to be error/heresy?

Or maybe, as I indicated, you vastly overstate the impact of Eusebius on the text of the New Testament that we have today.

Thanks for your kind concern as to my state of being.

Sincerely,

Tortoise

Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria, excommunicated Arius about the year 320. The Arians soon found that for all practical purposes Eusebius was on their side. He wrote to Alexander charging him with misrepresenting the teaching of the Arians and so giving them cause "to attack and misrepresent whatever they please" (see below). A portion of this letter has been preserved in the Acts of the second Council of Nicæa, where it was cited to prove that Eusebius was a heretic. He also took part in a synod of Syrian bishops who decided that Arius should be restored to his former position, but on his side he was to obey his bishop and continually entreat peace and communion with him (Soz., H. E., I, 15). According to Duchesne (Hist. de l'Eglise, II, 132), Arius, like Origen before him, found an asylum at Cæsarea. At the opening of the Council of Nicæa Eusebius occupied the first seat on the right of the emperor, and delivered the inaugural address which was "couched in a strain of thanksgiving to Almighty God on his, the emperor's behalf" (Vit. Const., III, 11; Soz., H. E., I, 19). He evidently enjoyed great prestige and may not unreasonably have expected to be able to steer the council through the via media between the Scylla and Charybdis of "Yes" and "No". But if he entertained such hopes they were soon disappointed. We have already spoken of the profession of faith which he brought forward to vindicate his own orthodoxy, or perhaps in the hope that the council might adopt it. It was, in view of the actual state of the controversy, a colourless, or what at the present day would be called a comprehensive, formula. After some delay Eusebius subscribed to the uncompromising creed drawn up by the council, making no secret, in the letter which he wrote to his own Church, of the non-natural sense in which he accepted it. Between 325 and 330 a heated controversy took place between Eusebius and Eustathius, Bishop of Antioch. Eustathius accused Eusebius of tampering with the faith of Nicæa; the latter retorted with the charge of Sabellianism. In 331 Eusebius was among the bishops who, at a synod held in Antioch, deposed Eustathius. He was offered and refused the vacant see. In 334 and 335 he took part in the campaign against St. Athanasius at the synods held in Cæsarea and Tyre respectively. From Tyre the assembly of bishops were summoned to Jerusalem by Constantine, to assist at the dedication of the basilica he had erected on the site of Calvary. After the dedication they restored Arius and his followers to communion. (emphasis added)

The culmination of this gradual revelation is the universal revelation of Christ. In Christ, God, hitherto manifest only as the Lord, appeared as the Father. The incarnation of the Logos, moreover, was necessary since otherwise he would not be intelligible to sensual man; but the indwelling of the Logos remained a mystery, which could be represented only by the analogy of his indwelling in the saints; nor could Origen fully explain it. He speaks of a "remarkable body," and in his opinion that the mortal body of Jesus was transformed by God into an ethereal and divine body, Origen approximated the Docetism that he otherwise abhorred. His concept of the soul of Jesus is likewise uncertain and wavering. He proposes the question whether it was not originally perfect with God but, emanating from him, at his command assumed a material body. As he conceived matter as merely the universal limit of created spirits, so would it be impossible to state in what form the two were combined. He dismissed the solution by referring it to the mystery of the divine governance of the universe. More logically did he declare the material nature of the world to be merely an episode in the spiritual process of development, whose end should be the annihilation of all matter and return to God, who should again be all in all. The doctrine of the resurrection of the body he upholds by the explanation that the Logos maintains the unity of man's existence by ever changing his body into new forms, thus preserving the unity and identity of personality in harmony with the tenet of an endless cosmic process. Origen's concept of the Logos allowed him to make no definite statement on the redemptive work of Jesus. Since sin was ultimately only negative as a lack of pure knowledge, the activity of Jesus was essentially example and instruction, and his human life was only incidental as contrasted with the immanent cosmic activity of the Logos. Origen regarded the death of Jesus as a sacrifice, paralleling it with other cases of self-sacrifice for the general good. On this, Origen's accord with the teachings of the Church was merely superficial.

Quote:

Origen remained equivocal and did not ever decidedly confirm of deny the divinity of the putative Christ. If one abandons the notion of a divine Christ, and therefore ignores those passages of the four gospel canon which are alleged to have shown the divinity of the putative Christ, then one comes very much closer to an historical figure who simply retailed the Essene philosophy of self-realization through detachment from the material world in pursuit of spiritual translation. This is by far the more plausible explanation for the origins of Christianity on an historical basis, and is the reason that i do not deny that an Essene devotee who was styled a rabbi and named Joshua--i.e., the Rabbi Yeshua, which becomes "Jesu" in Greek--may well have lived and spread teachings in Palestine two thousand years ago, but continue to insist that there is no good historical reason to believe that the "Jesus" envisioned by modern Christians ever existed.

Origen wrote: "That there have been written down not only the four Gospels, but a whole series from which those that we possess have been chosen and handed down to the churches, is, let it be noted, what we may learn from Luke's preface, which runs thus: 'For as much as many have taken in hand to compose a narrative' . The expression 'they have taken in hand' involves a covert accusation of those who precipitately and without the grace of the Holy Ghost have set about the writing of the gospels.

"Matthew to be sure and Mark and John as well as Luke did not 'take in hand' to write, but filled with the Holy Ghost have written the Gospels. 'Many have taken in hand to compose a narrative of the events which are quite definitely familiar among us' . The Church possesses four Gospels, heresy a great many, of which one is entitled 'The Gospel according to the Egyptians', and another 'The Gospel according to the Twelve Apostles'. Basilides also has presumed to write a gospel, and to call it by his own name. 'Many have taken in hand ' to write, but only four Gospels are recognized. From these the doctrines concerning the person of our Lord and Savior are to be derived. I know a certain gospel which is called 'The Gospel according to Thomas' and a 'Gospel according to Matthias', and many others have we read - lest we should in any way be considered ignorant because of those who imagine that they posses some knowledge if they are acquainted with these. Nevertheless, among all these we have approved solely what the Church has recognized, which is that only the four Gospels should be accepted."

Origen was not ordained, and never held any ecclesiastical sinecure. Eusebius becomes important because he continued the work of Origen in editing both the old and new "testaments," and because his position as an influential Bishop, and crucially, the favor shown him by Constantine at the time of the Second Nicean Council, gave him an authority with regard to the canon which Origen did not possess. Origen (who lived and worked at the end of the second century and the beginning of the third) asserted that many of the epistles of Paul were spurious, as well as that the four testaments which he proposed as the only valid canon haD been adulterated. Nevertheless, the epistles of Paul have been accepted as an important area of Christian exegesis. Origen contends that Paul rarely wrote to the churches, and that when he did he wrote but few lines. Origen is also the first scholar of whom we have a record to compile a study of the contradiction between old and new testaments and within the four gospel canon. From an historiographic point of view, the work of both Origen and Eusebius throw into doubt the value of the "testaments" as evidence for what did nor did not occur in Judea and Samaria two thousand years ago, and the subsequent course by which a legend of the putative Christ was cobbled together and made the official canon of a church. Eusebius' impact on the canon in use today is very significant, as he was the ecclesiatic scholar who combined the work of Origen and of many others whose works do not survive outside references in Eusebius' work in the compilation and editing of the scriptures upon which Christians today base their theological views. You can deny the importance of his work to your heart's content, the Second Council of Nicea left the work in his hands, as did the Emperor Constantine.

Though it could have been a Frank assessment.

neologist wrote:

Though it could have been a Frank assessment.

Let's leave Frank out of this, we've got enough problems right here with "real" life.

Setanta,

I think you may be missing my point.

Any "heavy editing" done by Eusebius may have had the purpose of reinforcing one view or another, but the wide distribution of NT manuscripts for many years prior , in a great many languages, plus quotations of these manuscripts in the writings of numerous Church Fathers prevented an individual or even a group from monopolizing the text and altering it to suit their views.

The production of 50 expensive manuscripts to please the Emperor and even the dictate of a Council would hardly have been enough to overturn many decades of familiarity with the true readings of the scriptures by church elders and believers in lands surrounding the Mediterranean and into Europe and Asia and Africa continents.

Christians in those days were used to expecting to die, if necessary, for their beliefs. Neither the decrees of Emperor nor Council meant as much to them as what they believed.

Neo always rants about a priesthood (justifiably), but the bible to which he clings is a product of the will of a priesthood, never content to leave orthodoxy in the hands of congregations. What the accepted canon became, and its unquestioned authority in the minds of believers is a product of the will of a priesthood imposed from above.