In that case, you shouldn’t have any difficulty providing a cite for that assertion.
“A lot of Christians wear crosses around their necks. You think when Jesus comes back he ever wants to see a fucking cross? It’s like going up to Jackie Onassis wearing a rifle pendant.”
-Bill Hicks
You’re talking about Eusebius of Nicomedia, who ended up becoming Patriarch of Constantinople and baptizing Constantine. But he wasn’t the one who introduced the Nicene Creed. He was an Arian, who endorsed the Nicene Creed under duress, and was exiled by Constantine for his defense of Arias at the Council. He was the one who ordained Ulfilas, the missionary who converted the Goths to Arianism.
Wha? So worshipers have them on the walls in their home, on their neck, prominently displayed in the most sacrosanct areas of their holy places often made from gold and it’s just because they like the geometric design?
According to you, if they did worship the symbol of the cross how would they show it?
Do I worship my star of David necklace? How about the US flag that we fly? It’s a symbol, not an object of worship. Christians worship God as represented in the Trinity, not the cross.
Maybe if some of the prayers talked about having faith in the Cross? I admit the argument is a little trickier when you talk about Mary, but it further emphasizes just how much the Cross is not an object of worship.
Christians worship God: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There are numerous prayers which say “We worship God”, “We worship the Father”, etc.. There is no prayer which says “We worship the Cross” because nobody worships the cross.
Wow, that’s some pretty densely packed erroneous information there.
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The ancient Indic swastika dates back AFAIK to about the third millennium BCE; it’s sometimes hypothesized to be an earlier Indo-European symbol common to the cultural heritage of various Indo-European language speakers, but it’s not uniquely or specifically “Zoroastrian”.
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Zoroastrianism is an ancient Iranian religion. While various Iranian empires controlled Babylon at various times, including the Sassanian empire that officially proclaimed Zoroastrianism as the state religion, Zoroastrianism is not “of Babylon” in any meaningful sense.
Actually, this paragraph, with points figuring prominently in nonsense published by the likes of Jack Chick, some members of the Moody Bible Institute, and a few promoters of New Age religious beliefs is nearly entirely false. (The church–both Catholic and Orthodox–will take credit for the New Testament, but that happened long before Jerome was born.)
There is evidence, (the Muratorian Canon), that the Christian scriptures were recognized as such, with only a couple of differences from the current canon, by around 170.
Constantine did not “create” the Catholic church or even, in the near-miss history given by monavis, suppress all the various different versions of Christianity that existed. There were factions within the church from the very beginning, but they tended to work themselves out. Unfortunately, the “working out” periodically included bloodshed, which led to the Great Persecution ordered by Diocletian. However, Diocletian’s persecution failed and his successors, including Constantine gradually dropped the restrictions on Christianity, issuing various declarations of (greater or lesser) religious freedom. By 313, Licinius and Constantine issued letters, later called the Edict of Milan, that granted freedom of worship to all religions in the empire.
With the freedom from persecution secured, the Christians began to squabble among themselves, again, with the greatest divide occurring between the followers and opponents of Arius. When it seemed that that division might break out into civil war, Constantine told the bishops of the church to work it out. The bishops met at Nicaea and condemned Arianism. By that time, however, splinter groups such as Gnostics had long since fallen away into their own separate churches. Nothing in the record of the Council of Nicaea addresses any of the other various schisms or heresies that had developed within the church in the previous 250+ years. The church already existed, at that point, otherwise there would have been no need for the Nicene council. If Christianity was simply a diverse bunch of groups with similar ideas, they could have all gone on as they had been, living separately and not feuding. There is nothing published by the Council of Nicaea that attacks, Gnosticism, Docetism, Monophysitism, Manicheanism, or other sects beyond the Arians. If the Nicene Council was an attempt to suppress all the various “flavors” of Christianity, there there should be ample evidence that other “flavors” existed, yet only the Arian beliefs are addressed and condemned by bishops who came from the far ends of the empire to that meeting.
The comments about Jerome are just silly. Jerome, (born around 347) did not begin writing on religious matters until around 380. This was ninety years after Eusebius of Caesarea had written a history of the church, compiled a critical list of accepted Scripture, (that matched the canon later recognized by the church), and published liturgical treatises including a copy of an old (to him) Eucharistic Prayer that is the core of the mass. So claiming that Jerome “compiled” the New Testament when we have multiple references to it dating to 90 and 210 years prior to his writing career makes no sense. Similarly, attributing the liturgy to Jerome when we have attestations to that liturgy that preceded his writings by 90 years renders such a claim absurd.
Not historical. Not fact. The various churches of St. Peter were built over the site of an ancient cemetary in which it was traditionally believed that St. Peter had been buried. There was an amphitheatre nearby, so there might have been minor temples in the neighborhood, but none of those was chosen as the site for the Petrine churches.
Utter nonsense. Christos ([symbol]cristos[/symbol]) is the Greek word for “annointed” that corresponds to the Hebrew word for “annointed” that we now render messiah. The followers of Jesus (beginning with Paul?), associated Jesus with the Messiah of Jewish prophecy and, writing in Greek, named him “the Christ.” The earliest non-Christian reference to that name was a reference by Suetonius to the followers of “Chrestus.”
:rolleyes: The Eusebius who played such a dramatic role in the Council of Nicaea at which the Creed was adopted was Eusebius of Caesarea. There was a bishop named Eusebius associated with Constantine and the royal court, Eusebius of Nicomedia. However, he was actually an Arian who (ironically) wound up baptizing Constantine and he would have had nothing to do with writing or promoting the Nicene Creed.
I am not calling you names. I will point out that your sources of information are horribly wrong.
Well, Eusebius of Nicomedia did play a dramatic role at the Council of Nicea by being the first of the Arian bishops to sign the Nicene Creed when it was obvious the Trinitarians had won. The defection of one of the most prominent of the Arian bishops made the Arian cause fall apart, and all but two of the Arians at the Council signed the creed. (Eusebius then, after the council, for the rest of his life, did his best to get revenge on the most outspoken Athanasian bishops, and actually succeeded in getting Athanasius exiled for a while.
I am an Atheist, so I could and am probably wrong, but I thought the entire idea of worship was the song and dance around and supporting faith. Christians make the sign of the cross with their hands, they wear the cross, draw the cross in sunday school, have it displayed purposefully in front of where they pray. It is strange to me you feel defining something a symbol prevents it from being an object of worship by definition.
Yeah, Christians have never desired to possess anything associated with their god, grail cough. Nor believe those objects had miraculous powers in their own right, shroud cough, lance cough, cross cough, finger bones, pelvis, etc.
This is isn’t going to be about lizard people, is it?
Not to mention “fragments of the True Cross”, which seems especially relevant in this case. Or for that matter look at all the times the cross is portrayed in fiction as an object or symbol of power, repelling vampires and demons and such, often with a glow of power.
Perhaps “idolize” or “revere” would be a better word than “worship”.
You do realize that most of this is an outgrowth of mediaeval folk superstition?
Note to self: do not post from phone while waiting for carryout. That was after editing!
He also held onto most of his Arian beliefs, to the point that most scholars agree that Constantine was baptized Arian. 
On re-reading the linked page, I see that I misunderstood which Eusebius they were talking about. Of course, I was misled by their error. It was Eusebius of Caesarea, (who was never the court bishop of Constantine), not Eusebius of Nicomedia, (who was the bishop of Constantinople), who promulgated the legend of “In This Sign, Conquer.” In addition, no one with any sense of history would refer to Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia simply as Bishop Eusebius. Any unmodified reference to Eusebius in that period would always be a reference to Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea. It would be rather like referring to “Hollywood mogul, Sam” only to discover that the discussion was regarding Sam Arkoff and not Sam Goldwyn.
The word that should be used is “venerate.”
If anyone is idolizing the cross, (and I am sure many have), they are actually missing the point and falling into error.
Worship (and adoration) refer to the reverence and honor accorded to (a) god. It presumes that the deity is of such stature that that deity is worthy of devotion.
Objects must not be worshiped or adored because they cannot be actually better than a person.
To venerate something is to show that object respect. It stops there, however, as an object cannot be greater than a person. (In the same way, the church uses the word venerate when discussing the relations to the saints. Saints may be respected, but they do not deserve the devotion or adoration accorded to God.)
Just a couple of, perhaps, minor points:
- Not all Christians use the cross as a symbol.
- Not all Christians make the “sign of the cross” when worshipping or at any other time.
- Not all Christians are trinitarians.
If what Jesus is quoted in Matthew C 16, then revelations would be moot. He said he would return in His father’s Glory with his angels while some of them standing there listening to him would still be alive, also in Matthew I believe it is C 15 He is quoted as saying the end of the world signs were: the sun would not give it’s light, the Stars would Fall, the moon would be turned to Blood. And those things would happen in that generation. Some churches say the word generation meant different then than now. But Matthew states there was 14 generations between Davis and Jesus, the same way we use it now!
According to what I had heard Constantine called the Bishops to decide what was of God and what was inspired by Him. The church was divided and only the one’s who believed that The Church was one, Holy, Catholic(Universal) and Apostolic would be considered as the one true Church od God.
Indirectly, Constantine was involved due to his desire to unite Christians. He seemed to need a united church to use to conquer.
Many writings were destroyed and many rejected. Some were hidden by other believers and were found many centuries later by Archeologists.
Even today Christianity is the most divided of all religions.
I read that Constantine was Baptized on his death bed?