Posted: Aug 27, 2015 6:04 am
duvduv wrote:Can anyone explain how it was possible for official Roman Christianity to successfully wage persecution against Arianism and Nestorianism when the entire dispute was over some intangible, abstract and obscure notion about the nature of the Christ?
ARIUS
While Constantine ruled (325-337 CE) Official Roman Christianity was Constantinian. Constantine persecuted Arius on account of a number of related issues:
(1) His unacceptable statements about Jesus in the Nicene Council (5 sophisms - there was a time when he was not, etc)
(2) His opinion that the essence of Jesus was similar but not the same as the essence of god
(3) the controversial books that Arius had written, which were to be burnt, with the death penalty if not burnt.
That the entire dispute was over some intangible, abstract and obscure notion about the nature of the Christ is simply a fabrication of the 5th and subsequent century heresiological historians rendered over the top of the political history which they have suppressed.
IMO Arius and his associates authored at least some of the "Gnostic Gospels and Acts". These stories were full of very exciting adventures of Jesus and the Apostles, and were popular with the common people. This IMO is one of the major historical events that the Ecclesiastical Histories authored in the 5th century (concerning the rule of Constantine and the Arians) purposefully suppressed. Instead, the orthodoxy decided to retroscript references to nameless heretics of blasphemous books to the 2nd and 3rd century. This forgery and interpolation of supposedly earlier authors, for posterity took the heat off the utter controversy which ensued when the NT+LXX Bible was first published and made an authority by Constantine c.325 CE.
So there is reason to believe that the Arian controversy included a massive war of books. Constantine held the canon. His opposition - the Arians - authored and held the non canonical. In the end Constantine wiped out the Greek non canonical books from the city of Alexandria. Perhaps the last copies were those taken 400 miles up the Nile to the Pachomian monastic settlement where they were translated to Coptic and codices were manufactured and ultimately buried as the NHL.
What PRACTICAL significance could that have possibly had among the ordinary people, or even among the elites? Evidently when Arianism became unkosher after Nicaea and the so-called Alexandrian version of Christianity became official, the regime decided to persecute Arians. But what did this mean in PRACTICAL TERMS? How could ordinary people relate to the dispute especially if they kept their opinions to themselves?
Besides persecuting Arius, Constantine persecuted and prohibited the pagan philosophical traditions and the long standing customary practices associated with the pagan temples. Just think about that for a moment. The incoming Roman Emperor destroys temples and prohibits customary religious practices. Was there any opposition to this? Perhaps Arianism was the term the victors used to represent the resistance to the Constantinian revolution?
The ordinary people were caught in the middle of a revolution between the Emperor and Pontifex Maximus Constantine and the traditional Graeco-Roman priesthoods of the Eastern empire. Constantine wanted to implement Christianity as the monopoly religious business. He may have met - temporarily - with some resistance.
Was there an ethnic or economic aspect to it, whereby certain people identified with one view or the other in the case of Arianism and Nestorianism and therefore had a STAKE in which side of the obscure issue "won"?
Constantine surrounded himself with a close-knit circle of barbarian chieftains, who's tribes served in the army. Arius and his supported are Hellenistic philosophers and literary experts perhaps priests.
Cyril and Nestorius need to be dealt with separately.
Of course I don't understand what "winning" meant. Did it mean Christians had to swear which theory of Jesus' nature they believed in, and then the government would decide what to do with that person or community? Was it really something that had any real significance to anyone other than the ones sitting in their ivory towers?
The ecclesiastical histories of the Arian controversy were written from the ivory towers of 5th century heresiologists. Heresiologists are likely to look kindly upon "Constantinianism" and take exception to anything which resisted it.
The only political history we have of the 4th century is from Ammianus and commenced in the year 353 CE. It reveals that in that decade there was in place at least one Christian "inquisition" to which numbers without end of pagans were dragged for torture and execution.