An abstract manifestation of the best within us: universal love and brotherhood.
The ancient Hebrews had a problem, and they thought the solution would be the Messiah. This Christ is the Messiah, the real Messiah–it might not be in the form they were expecting from prophecy, but it’s the actual, real-world-workable solution to their problems, and to the problems of humanity today as well.
We know what the Christ is by asking the question, “How do we save humanity–how do we keep from destroying ourselves.” We know the Christ because the Christ is whatever the logical and real-world-workable answer to this question happens to be.
About a Paul/Mithraism connection? Plenty, all packed full of conspiracy-minded nonsense and drivel. But if you want actual evidence and rational scholarship that such a connection exists, you’re out of luck, 'cos it doesn’t.
Pffft. “Captain Planet” wasn’t really a guy, like the documentaries try to tell you. He’s an abstract concept. If you don’t get that, you’re not a real Planeteer.
Re: Given that many millions of people throughout the world believe that Jesus is the Son of God, the English language has a pressing need for a word to describe these people. And I think “Christian” is a far more convenient phrase than “people who believe that Jesus is the Son of God.”
Yeah, this works for me, Weeping Wyvern.
If I want to further specify what kind of Christian I am, there are plenty of further descriptors one can use.
If you want to open a new thread to witness to your own personal beliefs and expound upon them, feel free to so. Your actions in this thread amount to trolling.
Language is used to communicate. There is a 1900+ year tradition of referring to certain people as Christians. This thread is discussing how people should identify that group and its members.
Wandering in here and posting a half dozen cryptic "nuh uh"s on the topic before you even hint at your own beliefs, (that are really irrelevant to this discussion, being, basically, an idiolectic usage), is not appropriate.
You will stop this attempt at a hijack and go open your own thread if you feel it is important.
However, the Catholic Church does not teach an altogether different definition of God the Eternal Father. I will say that nothing in the LDS Thirteen Articles is contradictory to classical/traditional Christianity, but then again, they neglect to mention Eternal Progression or Temple rituals, which aren’t exactly marginal in the LDS.
Good grief. Does it have to be put in large type? IN MY EXPERIENCE it is exactly like that. And I was NOT TALKING ABOUT THE CATHOLIC CHURCH; I was clearly talking about the groups of folks (again NOT THEIR CHURCH LEADERSHIP/HQ) who rant on about how Catholics aren’t Christians and also how LDS aren’t Christians either.
For the love of Pete, I don’t think I’ve ever used that posting style before. And that’s probably because it’s never been necessary before now.
I had a juvenile client the other day charged with hacking a twitter account. I understood about 1 in 3 words she said. I always thought I was moderately internet savvy. Not so much!
I have read that Constantine Is said to have had a vision of a cross in the sky and used that to believe he would conquer the world after noticing the Christian beliefs and practices. He wasn’t baptized until on his death bed.To do this it was important to have a unified Christianity. Many of the Gnostic texts have been found and writings attributed to Thomas etc, were declared not inspired by God.
I was going to go for something along the lines of “a Christian is a religious person who considers his or her religiosity to be in accordance with the teachings of Jesus Christ,” but then that would also include Muslims.
I also thought of changing “in accordance with” to “based on,” but that isn’t quite right either.
Nitpick: the canon of Scripture for Catholics was set at the Council of Trent. The creeds were selected at the council of Nicaea. The Council of Carthage set the basic canon for the Church.
I have to correct you on this stuff at least once every year. Would you please go find some actual histories to read and stop harkening back to some New Age blather you vaguely remember from decades ago?
Constantine’s In hoc signo vincis (the Latin version; the actual Greek was supposed to have been ἐν τούτῳ νίκα), occurred when he was battling Maxentius to be sole emperor of Rome after the tetrarchy fell apart. There was no promise or imagined prediction of “ruling the world,” just a claim that he would beat Maxentius to rule Rome, leaving Persia, Parthia, Scythia, Ethiopia, and the lands of the German tribes unconquered.
While he appears to have been fascinated by Christianity on some intellectual level, he never pursued becoming a Christian until his final illness.
Your repeated claim, however, is that he was involved in suppressing other “scriptures” and other variations of Christianity. As presented, that claim is nonsense.
We have copies of lists of accepted Scripture that very closely match the version we have, today, dating to 170 C.E.–154 years before the First Council of Nicaea.
It is probably true that various books of the Gnostics, (and the Monophysites and the Manichaean and Montanists and others) were suppressed, but it had nothing to do with Constantine and nothing to do with Nicaea. It was an ongoing process going back to the time of Paul disputing what he called “Judaizers.” It was a process that included the author of the Epistle of James disputing with followers of Paul regarding faith and works. It was a process that included the many tracts of Irenaeus in the second century disputing people he identified as “heretics” (i.e., those taking a separate path). It included condemnations of some of the writings of Tertullian and Origen. It has gone on throughout the entire history of the church.
There was never a point at which dozens of independent minded individuals were shut down in their beliefs in order to “create” a single political entity and it certainly did not happen under Constantine.
Rather, Christians constantly examined one new idea or another agreeing with or disputing that idea and with one side prevailing at each dispute with the winning side being recognized as the (not capitalized) orthodox church.
The notion of some grand conspiracy in which some small group of empire-backed zealots suddenly suppressed dozens of other beliefs is imaginary nonsense.
How do we know this? Because, regardless whether the “winners” suppressed the writings of their opponents, they spent a lot of energy and paper condemning the beliefs of their opponents and we have the records of those condemnations to this day. They did not secretly suppress anything, but trumpeted the (perceived) errors of their opponents at every incident.
Constantine did intervene to stop Christian disputes. However, that was for the sake of keeping the Christians from tearing apart the empire from within. He first intervened in the disputes on Donatism, resolving it at the local level. He later called the Nicene council to resolve the most recent (to him) of those many disputes that affected the wider church–and for the same reason: to stop the Christians from killing each other off over theological disputes. The bishops were brought together from the far corners of the Roman Empire to judge whether Arius or Athanasius had a better understanding of who and what Jesus and the Father and the Holy Spirit were. In that council, they voted several hundred to two to support Athanasius over Arius. That decision stands to this day. What did Constantine do about it? He exiled Athanasius, called Arius back from his church-imposed exile, and went on to be later baptized by an Arian bishop. If Constantine was trying to make the empire uniformly Christian, why did he not, then, imprison the bishops who voted against his man while they were all gathered in Nicaea in his presence? Alternatively, if he wanted to rule through Christianity, why did he not support the bishops against Arius?
Your scenario makes no sense.
Further, I have posted a link to the decrees of the Nicene Council, above. Read it. There is no mention of suppressing Gnostics or Monophysites or Donatists or Manichaeans or Marcionites or anyone else except the teachings of Arius. In terms of theology, it was a one issue council. Further, there is not a single reference to scripture or creating a canon or suppressing other “scriptural” works.
It is rather frustrating to see you post this nonsense every few months without seeing you make the minimum effort to get it right.
