Constantine ruined everything
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VanillaSunflowers
Black Lives Don't Matter More Than Any Other Life
Please remind me of the verses you speak of in Daniel?
I admire your courage to speak of this.
For some time now I've thought this as well. The fracturing of the words of Jesus in such a way as a creedal formula. And that appears to naturally have fallen into the denominational fracturing as human's have that natural need to personally claim ownership of the creed and its proper interpretation for righteous understanding. The falling away is easy to see in today's politics transpiring seemingly on a daily basis. And in the talk of world events as well as local and national here at home in the U.S.
But to look at it as having occurred during Constantine's time? That's truly a new take. You've given me something to think about there. Thank you.
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You are absolutely correct. The classical meaning of Protestant has been thoroughly degraded and those who are a part of the ecumenical movement have no clue. Indeed, they have abandoned truth for a lie.
All the Protestant denominations succumbed to theological liberalism, so today -- for example -- homosexual clergymen are applauded while those who oppose them are mocked. In Constantine's time it was the virus of paganism that entered into the Christian churches. For example, the title Pontifex Maximus was the title of the chief pagan priest in Rome, but the Pope wears this title today. So one could say that Constantine began the ruination of Christianity, although false doctrine and false practice has already corrupted the churches in the first century (Revelation 1-3).
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Alonso_Castillo
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And the Truth will make you Free.
either you embrace truth or embrace sin, Mexican-American war was illegitimate, there was no way that war could be legitimate.
James 4:1-3
4 From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?
2 Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not.
3 Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.
All European immigrants could have been accepted in Méxican territory with only Two conditions, Being Catholics, (even converting to catholicisim) and speak Spanish.
Masonic Government of USA was anti-Catholic and wanted to preserve English as the language of the colonies. Ther was no need for war far from protestants rejecting to Become Catholics, rejecting Confesion of sins and rejecting the sacraments, and Thus The Words of The Sacred Scripture in the Letter of the Apostle James, became true through that war.
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- Aug 21, 2003
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Total rubbish. Have you ever read any actual history of Constantine and the Nicaean council. The writings of two historians who lived at the time of Constantine, are available, Eusebius and Lactnatius. Have you ever read their accounts? If Constantine was going to force anything on the church, it would have been Ariansim because he was an Arian.
.....There were 300+ Christian bishops ate the council. All of them had lived through years of persecution being in danger of having all their property seized, being beaten and even killed simply for being Christian. They didn't denounce their faith and beliefs when faced with those dangers so why would they meekly, without a peep, let one emperor force anything unscriptural on the church?
.....One early Christian father Polycarp [A.D. 65-100-155.],who was a student of John, was burned at the stake because he refused to denounce Jesus. He said when he was threatened, "Eighty and six years have I served Him, and He never did me any injury: how then can I blaspheme my King and my Saviour?"
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VanillaSunflowers
Black Lives Don't Matter More Than Any Other Life
It appears this discussion is now entered into by those who wish to bring contention to the church. I'll say that you may be interested in an article you'll find by searching for: Emperor Constantine's 6 Major Changes to Christianity
Read that over and see what you think. This is a great topic. Let us keep ourselves civil shall we? Remembering as we speak to one another we are speaking before the eyes of Abba Father and Jesus Christ.
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yeshuaslavejeff
simple truth, martyr, disciple of Yahshua
Test everything. (by Scripture and in constant prayer with the Creator Himself)
Not everything (by a long shot sometimes) passes.
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The Alamo had been occupied by Spanish then Mexican soldiers since the early 1800's; it had been decades since it was use as a mission.
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ViaCrucis
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Except that it really didn't change anything. Nicea wasn't the first time that the faith had been expressed in the language of a creed, in fact the symbol drawn up at Nicea follows the same outline that the earlier expressions of faith had used, most famously the Old Roman Symbol, itself looking like the symbols of faith already used, for example, in Baptism (c.f. St. Hippolytus baptismal creed) or as a defense of orthodoxy against heresy (c.f. St. Irenaeus' rule of faith).
What makes Nicea interesting and noteworthy is the following:
1. It attempted to address the ongoing theological crisis which was raised by Arius' teachings and actions (Arius, a former presbyter from Alexandria, who insisted that Christ was a secondary God and a creature had his ideas condemned at a local synod of bishops from Egypt; and so he left and started preaching in other parts of the eastern Empire and some accepted his ideas). It did this by insisting that the Arian formula that the Son and Logos was heteroousios (of a different substance) was heretical, and it also rejected the compromising formula of homoiousios (of a similar substance) by utilizing the formula of homoousios--the Son and Logos is of the same substance as the Father. This itself faced some scrutiny because of earlier problems and some ongoing problems with the Sabellians who used the same word in their heretical teaching that Jesus was His own Father--but the framers of the symbol at Nicea were rather clear with other language, such as that the Son is "begotten before all ages" which both denied the Arian claim that the Son was begotten in time, as a creature and also insisted that the Son is to be understood as distinct from the Father.
2. It was, until that time, the single largest gathering of bishops to any council in the history of Christianity. There had of course been many councils in the past, the first recorded council of the Church can be found in the Bible itself, the Council of Jerusalem as recorded in the 15th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. According to Eusebius of Caesarea (himself a semi-Arian and a friend of Arius) a grand total of 318 bishops attended, the majority from the Eastern churches (only five from the Western churches, the bishop of Rome was himself not even able to attend due to his old age).
3. It's symbol provided the groundwork for the Nicene Creed as accepted at the Council of Constantinople, what is known often as the Nicene Creed is perhaps better called the Niceno-Constantinoplian Creed; the only significant difference is that the Creed as put forward by the council fathers at Constantinople expanded on a few points, namely in regard to the Holy Spirit in order to address the heretical teachings of the Pneumatomachoi (aka the Macedonians), and also brought in the language from earlier creedal language such as references to the Church, the resurrection of the dead, etc; likewise it did not retain the specific anti-Arian anathemas which were used in the Nicene symbol itself.
Constantine didn't do anything like that. However at the Council of Nicea the council fathers did decide to finally establish a universal Paschalion (calculation of when to celebrate the Paschal Feast, more commonly called "Easter" in English); the consensus was two-fold, the Quartodeciman system was already incredibly small and generally only adhered to by a few handfuls of heretics at the time (it had at one time been the common practice of the Churches in Asia and Palestine, most notably the great St. Polycarp bishop of Smyrna had been a Quartodeciman a position which was not condemned because it was not then associated with other heresies and heretical movements); further it detached celebration of the Paschal Feast from the Jewish calendar entirely as the Jewish calendar itself had been modified in the first few centuries of the Common Era, and frequently churches from many different places while generally following the same or a similar method of calculating Pascha ended up observing the Feast at slightly different times. Thus as explained in the letter sent to the Egyptian Churches, the council had found it was in the best interest to adopt the liturgical practice of the Egyptian churches and to establish a common Paschalion for all the churches; one that did not depend on the Jewish calendar which, as noted, had itself undergone changes in recent times.
Further, any cursory reading of the pre-Nicene writings of the Church--the New Testament included--it's pretty obvious that what was of critical importance was a unity of faith shared among the churches; there was after all one faith, one baptism, etc. And so a standardization of some liturgical practices was not exactly some drastic departure from some earlier, primitive, "pristine" form of religion in the past--it was a natural outgrowth of the same Church as Christ had founded doing and being what it ought to have been.
More likely Daniel was speaking of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who fits the bill for what Daniel speaks of--which would be more well known in Protestant circles if Bible publishers hadn't excised the Deuterocanonicals from Protestant English Bibles in the late 19th century. The relevant Maccabean history is easily read about online, and the book of 1 Maccabees is a pretty important read historically here. The king of the north was Antiochus, the king of the south was Ptolemy; the Syrian Wars were a number of conflicts fought between the Seleucids and Ptolemaic Egypt--for most of the post-Alexander period Judea was part of Ptolemaic Egypt, and generally, the Ptolemies were pretty lenient and allowed the Jews freedom of religion and practice--when the Seleucids conquered the area under the rule of Antiochus he systematically took the religious freedoms away from the Jews and attempted a program of forced Hellenization: the Jews were forbidden from circumcising their infants, from observing the Sabbath, celebrating their feast days, or performing their rites in the Temple. But what broke the camel's back was when Antiochus desecrated the Holy Temple by offering a pig as a sacrifice to Zeus in the Holy of Holies--the abomination that causes desolation. In response to these abuses and this outrageous blasphemy the brothers Judas and Jonathan Maccabeus would rise up and lead a revolt against the Seleucids and they managed to even restore sovereign rule to the Jews--and the rise of the Maccabean state allowed for an independent Israel for a time, until the conquests of the Romans, Caesar's general Pompeii conquered the region, and Antipater the Idumaen, the father of Herod the Great, was installed as king and in order to represent Rome's interests in the region. And you know the rest.
-CryptoLutheran
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Eusebius, was excommunicated for his Arian beliefs 312 AD, Constantine had him reinstated for Nicaea.
Your unsupported opinion is not evidence! How did any faction “know” what the decision was going to be and where is the evidence that the losing side didn't show up because they “knew” the decision before hand?
A diatribe with no, none, zero evidence.
According to Eusebius a historian who lived contemporary with Constantine he was a Christian. For your information Christians are not perfect.
Did Constantine leave a diary, is that how you “know” what he thought, planned etc? What evidence do you have that Constantine was still worshiping pagan gods? I know, you read it online somewhere.
A meaningless polemic with no, zero, none evidence.
There was no Catholic Church with a pope in charge until 1075 when the bishop of Rome unilaterally decreed that the bishop of Rome, himself, had authority over the whole church.
All total nonsense copied from some website. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia Here is the truth about Constantine killing his son and wife. “Crispus was executed on the charge of immorality made against him by Constantine's second wife, Fausta. The charge was false, as Constantine learned from his mother, Helena, after the deed was done. In punishment Fausta was suffocated in a superheated bath.”
Constantine altered nothing, the church was worshiping on Sunday long before Constantine.
Justin [A.D. 110-165.] First Apology
LXVII And on the day called Sunday,76 all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability,77 and the people assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given,78 and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons. And they who are well to do, and willing, give what each thinks fit; and what is collected is deposited with the president, who succours the orphans and widows and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds and the strangers sojourning among us, and in a word takes care of all who are in need. But Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead. For He was crucified on the day before that of Saturn (Saturday); and on the day after that of Saturn, which is the day of the Sun, having appeared to His apostles and disciples, He taught them these things, which we have submitted to you also for your consideration.
Ignatius [A.D. 30-107.] [student of John] Epistle to the Magnesians.
If, therefore, those who were brought up in the ancient order of things have come to the possession of a new hope, no longer observing the Sabbath, but living in the observance of the Lord’s Day, on which also our life has sprung up again by Him and by His death — whom some deny, by which mystery we have obtained faith, and therefore endure, that we may be found the disciples of Jesus Christ, our only Master — how shall we be able to live apart from Him, whose disciples the prophets themselves in the Spirit did wait for Him as their Teacher? And therefore He whom they rightly waited for, being come, raised them from the dead.
LXVII And on the day called Sunday,76 all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability,77 and the people assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given,78 and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons. And they who are well to do, and willing, give what each thinks fit; and what is collected is deposited with the president, who succours the orphans and widows and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds and the strangers sojourning among us, and in a word takes care of all who are in need. But Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead. For He was crucified on the day before that of Saturn (Saturday); and on the day after that of Saturn, which is the day of the Sun, having appeared to His apostles and disciples, He taught them these things, which we have submitted to you also for your consideration.
Ignatius [A.D. 30-107.] [student of John] Epistle to the Magnesians.
If, therefore, those who were brought up in the ancient order of things have come to the possession of a new hope, no longer observing the Sabbath, but living in the observance of the Lord’s Day, on which also our life has sprung up again by Him and by His death — whom some deny, by which mystery we have obtained faith, and therefore endure, that we may be found the disciples of Jesus Christ, our only Master — how shall we be able to live apart from Him, whose disciples the prophets themselves in the Spirit did wait for Him as their Teacher? And therefore He whom they rightly waited for, being come, raised them from the dead.
No, you read the made up history of modern heterodox groups.
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VanillaSunflowers
Black Lives Don't Matter More Than Any Other Life
[7.1] CONSTANTINE and THE COUNCIL of NICEA
Bishops of Rome under Constantine I
....in 325 Constantine convened and presided over the First Council of Nicaea, the first ecumenical council. None of this, however, has particularly much to do with the popes, who did not even attend the Council; in fact, the first bishop of Rome to be contemporaneously referred to as “Pope” (πάππας, or pappas) is Damasus I (366-384).[1]
New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia
The List of Popes
- St. Peter (32-67)
- St. Linus (67-76)
- St. Anacletus (Cletus) (76-88)
- St. Clement I (88-97)
- St. Evaristus (97-105) (list continues)
PART THREE
Sunday - fulfillment of the sabbath
2175 Sunday is expressly distinguished from the sabbath which it follows chronologically every week; for Christians its ceremonial observance replaces that of the sabbath. In Christ's Passover, Sunday fulfills the spiritual truth of the Jewish sabbath and announces man's eternal rest in God. For worship under the Law prepared for the mystery of Christ, and what was done there prefigured some aspects of Christ:107
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samir
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Me neither as nothing changed after Constantine other than Christians stopped being persecuted by the state.
Christians had creeds long before Constantine. Faith is a firm mental assent to Jesus' teaching. These beliefs were written down and insisted upon by the church from the beginning.
Also happened long before Constantine. Christians have always been required to believe certain facts and adopt certain practices.
Not likely since the ECFs show the things you mentioned were part of Christianity from the beginning.
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[7.1] CONSTANTINE and THE COUNCIL of NICEA
Bishops of Rome under Constantine I
....in 325 Constantine convened and presided over the First Council of Nicaea, the first ecumenical council. None of this, however, has particularly much to do with the popes, who did not even attend the Council; in fact, the first bishop of Rome to be contemporaneously referred to as “Pope” (πάππας, or pappas) is Damasus I (366-384).[1]
New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia
The List of Popes
- St. Peter (32-67)
- St. Linus (67-76)
- St. Anacletus (Cletus) (76-88)
- St. Clement I (88-97)
- St. Evaristus (97-105) (list continues)
PART THREE
Sunday - fulfillment of the sabbath
2175 Sunday is expressly distinguished from the sabbath which it follows chronologically every week; for Christians its ceremonial observance replaces that of the sabbath. In Christ's Passover, Sunday fulfills the spiritual truth of the Jewish sabbath and announces man's eternal rest in God. For worship under the Law prepared for the mystery of Christ, and what was done there prefigured some aspects of Christ:107
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.
https://www.britannica.com/event/Council-of-Nicaea-Christianity-325
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Razare
God gave me a throne
The modern American gospel is not exactly what the Bible had in mind. Don't get me wrong, we've discovered back to it, yes. We had the reformation with Martin Luther... it was a step in the right direction, but only a step. The full reformation to remove what state organized religion turned Christianity into... the reformation to ultimately undo this, is to leave the boxes and go preach the gospel to all the world, and make disciples. You can't fulfill the great commission inside a box (church building).
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On a side note...
you know how every news and social media story is 5% truth and 95% opinion?
I suppose the ancient texts should be read the same way.
you know how every news and social media story is 5% truth and 95% opinion?
I suppose the ancient texts should be read the same way.
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VanillaSunflowers
Black Lives Don't Matter More Than Any Other Life
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VanillaSunflowers
Black Lives Don't Matter More Than Any Other Life
Please consider checking the link. I wasn't speaking of or to martyrdom.
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