I had a long drive where I listened to The Great Courses, which had a set on early Christianity. I think the professor was from Notre Dame. The early church was wrestling with polytheism (is the OT god seemed really different from the NT god) and it eventually had to get resolved by the Council at Nicaea at Constantine's behest.
I've never heard anyone say the early church wrestled with polytheism. Maybe that's my bias nestled in Christian circles of not using that word, in favour of something more like "the nature of the triune Godhead", etc.
Even today plenty of Christian sects refuse to recognize the council of Nicaea's interpretation of the trinity, including the Mormons and the Jehovah's witnesses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nontrinitarianism (Whether or not any of these flirt with polytheism is up for debate.)
Meanwhile, the Catholic church's own profusion of saints whom you are supposed to beseech for specific blessings is dangerously close to a polytheistic practice in its own right.
As an Atheist (formally Orthodox), I think I can adjudicate this.
The problem with the First Council of Nicaea was that it was decided wrong. The whole "there are three gods, but only one god" is inherently confusing. There's a reason why Arianism keeps recurring over and over again. All the new nations who have been introduced to this aspect of Christianity find it bizarre.
If the decision would have been more along the lines of Islam (i.e. Jesus is super holy, but not God) then it would have been easier to maintain unity. In fact, Islam's adoption of a form of Arianism is one of the reasons it replaced Christianity so quickly in North Africa and the Middle East. (Well, that and the sword.)
> The whole "there are three gods, but only one god" is inherently confusing.
I imagine it would be. But that's not what the council of Nicaea decided, nor what Christians believe.
It's further developed in the Athanasian creed that the Trinity is understood as one God (homoousios - same substance), but three persons. Whether or not the philosophy of consubstantiation is that useful to modern believers is another issue; attempts to reformulate the doctrine (like "there are three gods, but only one god") usually end in heterodoxy, or at least misunderstanding.
This is just the same one vs the many dialectic that always leads to self-refuting positions over time. Orthodoxy is the only faith to resolve this problem.
> There's a reason why Arianism keeps recurring over and over again.
I don't have the numbers on hand, but I recently read that a remarkable number of US Evangelicals regard each member of the Trinity as an autonomous entity. This might invite you to scoff at sola scriptura, but I can't imagine the numbers being better for other denominations.
It's a strange thought: how many, maybe most devotees are actually heretics, especially when you consider more remote cultures. I've been looking for fiction that explores this idea. I think Black Robe touches upon it, but I haven't seen it in two decades and could be misremembering.
> Even today plenty of Christian sects refuse to recognize the council of Nicaea's interpretation of the trinity, including the Mormons and the Jehovah's witnesses
In some ways the (English) word "God" has become 'overloaded' over time:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filioque - to this day the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church disagree on whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, or from the Father and the Son.
Yeah but most lay people from either branch couldn't tell you the practical consequences of this. It's widely known & considered important because it's a remaining theological justification for the schism, not the other way around.
An interesting take on the dilemma between the two 'sides':
> You see the problem. If you include the filioque, you fight the Arians in the West while inadvertently supporting the Sabellians in the East. But if you exclude it, you fight the Sabellians while inadvertently supporting the Arians. At its heart, the filioque is really a linguistic debate, not a theological one.
I don't know either. To me (an orthodox christian) the filioque seems like a post hoc justification for a schism that was already well underway if not inevitable. By 1054 what became the two churches had already clearly differentiated religious traditions, local saints, and liturgical practices with very little interchange between them, not to mention language, governance, and secular culture.
I have heard some fairly convincing (to a lay person) discussion between orthodox and catholic scholars that the filioque is potentially resolvable as a linguistic problem yes. But it's not worth really pursuing without a solution for the bigger issue of papal primacy. I don't know anyone who claims to have a viable path to reconciliation there. Plus, you know, the thousand years of mutual distrust and enmity.
Ok - I'm not saying that I believe Jesus was born of a virgin and placed within the womb by an angel, I mean maybe, but very very likely Jesus was a man, Joseph was his father or his Mother for away with the biggest lie ever to cover her adultery - obviously either of those things that actually have and do happen are more likely than something that never has, save this one time... maybe.
Jesus said he was the Son of God bc WE - HUMANITY is in fact that. It's not an actual parent child relationship but 2500 years ago Jesus had nothing in his pocket to explain better than the family analogy.
The actual OG basis of almost all religious teachings in almost every religion is that WE are in fact God, living as human, experiencing his creation first hand, as US.
Jesus claimed to be the Son of God and didn't lie even if not true the way we believe it to be. It was also prolly a great way to get attention as he had a Father, ppl must have spoke of that.
Consider the analogy: the difference between two programs is one line of source, and most end users couldn’t tell you the practical consequences of that change.
The Orthodox allege that the Filioque amounts to a demotion of the Holy Spirit. Comparing the liturgies, disciplines and general character of the two churches, it’s difficult to feel totally confident that they don’t have a point.
From the Father, as all things are, but the Son directs it thereafter.
The Holy Spirit is like the force - it's behind all things, like lines of code behind a web page - but more specifically it's similar to a background process within a system that allows for all actions on the page to exist, by their causes, their consequences and the ensuing causes and consequences and so on forever and since the start of time.
The Holy Spirit is similar to fate but unlike fate we have ability to dictate and direct our reality - like in "How to Win Friends and Influence People" this is the force within reality that delivers what we expect and believe will be.
This is what pushes us along
- individually and collectively, that which is behind evolution and behind the miracle rain dance is the same thing.
Faith that moves mountains is merely the most known example of the ability attained by our true understanding of the Holy Spirit - it allows us to access all the powers and forces and laws and systems of this reality and utilize them to our benefit and ends. One who knows and has faith has higher authority than all worldly authorities and can bend them to utilize them to attain whatever desires.
If one needs the Queen of England to write a letter, that person must only believe - enough to kno for certain, that she has already done so and it will be so.
Expectation is part of asking when we have desires of God - ask and expect to receive - expect more, ask less. Asking is less important than expecting - faith is part belief, for example a belief that you can ask God - the other part is expecting God to deliver as he said he would...
Again, this is a rant but this conversation hopefully adds to your spiritual progression faster than the teachings I'm reading professed here will allow any of you.
I have faith that those with hears will hear and act accordingly, there are no limits - only consequences.
In a taxonomy of religious belief the communion of saints is much closer to ancestor veneration than it is polytheism. If you're going to see anything in christianity as potentially polytheistic it's the triune god come on.
I think, in a technical sense, you're right. But the difference between ancestor veneration (especially semi-legendary ancestor veneration) and veneration of a pantheon of lower-tier dieties is practically nonexistent. Its a distinction without difference.
Nobody hesitates to call Shintoism polytheistic, and its core practices, to an outsider, seem strikingly similar to how a Christian, especially a Roman Catholic, interacts with the saints.
I don't disagree really. I do think there are in-this-context significant differences between how individual saints are interacted with. A personal or family patron saint tends much more towards looking like ancestor veneration, compared to eg mary who in practice takes a role that would in other religions be filled by a deity of femininity/motherhood/nurturing/etc.
But overall in any case I think it's sometimes valuable to think of christianity this way and sometimes not. It is a syncretic religion so of course it has regional variations and contradictory remnants of absorbed practices. IIRC some of the specific saint traditions, like icons in the home, predate christianity in the mediterranean.
But on the other hand there are practices and relationships common in true polytheistic religions that you don't see in christianity at all. If taking the saints as minor deities, you don't find sects exalting one of them exclusively, nor do you see individual christians "defect" from one saint to another for personal advantage. There's no theology of competition or opposition between the saints to base such practices on at all. So there are limits to the usefulness of this perspective too.
The shintoism example is interesting, I'll need to look more into it. I had considered it polytheistic but now that I think about it I haven't read shinto writings on the subject so I don't know if most shinto practitioners experience it that way. Outside perspectives aren't completely invalid of course but they aren't as interesting to me as how believers experience their own religions.
God is in 3 parts that comprise a whole in their sum.
Legislative, Executive, Judicial = Govt of US
Strike 1, 2 and 3 = an out
Mind, Body, soul = A person
I could list hundreds of these examples.
3=1 is a rule found all over reality. The easiest way to create something that will exist for awhile, as it has a sound foundation, is build the foundation in 3 parts that make the whole.
Almost all dichotomies have a hidden third aspect. The fight is over how obvious it was at the time - the church was scared people may discover the secret way to create like the divine, so they convoluted it until they couldn't understand it uniformly anymore.
> is dangerously close to a polytheistic practice in its own right.
I don't really think so. We're supposed to pray with Mary to God and everyone recognizes that all of creation came through Christ, not Mary or any other saint.
Indeed, I'm not trying to argue that the tradition of Catholic saints doesn't obey an absolute hierarchy. I'm referring to practices that are specific to the domains of various patron saints, such as placing medals of Saint Christopher in your car for protection (him being the patron saint of transporters and travelers, as well as athletics, bachelors, surfing, storms, epilepsy, gardeners, and toothache). One of the reasons that Protestants objected to saintly veneration was precisely because they felt it took focus away from Jesus.
Even if the Catholic church might technically be not polytheistic, it is hard to argue that the cult of saints didn't replace the ancient Roman lares in the day to day cult. Yes, saints are supposed to intercede to provide favors and protection, but the practical effects [1] are the same. Religious syncretism is very well attested.
As Mary asked Jesus to perform the miracle at the wedding at Cana, for the said of her friend, we too are called to pray to ask Mary to intercede for us for our intentions.
Yes, with "saint" I wasn't even trying to invoke a discussion involving Mary at all, because in practice she's so far above the saints that to equate them feels like heresy (and might literally be heresy in some contexts; hyperdulia vs. dulia and all). In practice the absolute adulation of Mary is such that she nearly feels like the fourth member of the trinity.
We can have separate interpretations of how things play out in practice, anything I list is free to be dismissed as anecdotal. But when I think of famous Christian art, I think of art that depicts Mary (and baby Jesus, yes, but the artists deliberately chose not to depict a scene of Jesus without Mary); there's so many of these that it became its own genre (which is literally named after Mary, not Jesus): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_(art) . And when I think of famous Christian cathedrals, I think of the Notre Dame, among the other zillion "Our Lady Of"s that are named after Mary. And when I think of people pointing out modern miracles I think of weeping statues of Mary or people finding Mary in a grilled cheese sandwich; this once again has its own entire genre: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_apparition . And in Catholic parts of the US at least, IME you're more likely to see a Bathtub Mary outside of a house than a cross: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_Madonna . And when I think of the most important prayers, I think of exactly two: the Our Father and the Hail Mary.
I was taught as a child, and this was Protestant with a clear anti-Catholic bias, that:
* Catholics prayed _to_ Mary (eg asking to intercede on your behalf);
* This was speaking to the dead, and expecting a response, and thus a sin in some way I am not sure of.
I'm guessing you're Catholic from your response; would you mind explaining to this somewhat lost person how Catholics view these two topics please? (I've never heard a good explanation, and even praying "with" Mary is new to me.) I admire Catholicism and wish I felt more trust in it, which is something that comes from childhood indoctrination, I know. Things stick into adulthood even when you're consciously aware of their root. So I'm keen to hear countering views :)
>This was speaking to the dead, and expecting a response, and thus a sin in some way I am not sure of.
Catholics believe that people in heaven are not dead, and can hear your prayers for intercession (this is the case with most protestants too). Jesus said, after all, that he is the God of the living not the God of the dead[1], and that those in heaven will be reborn in a new and everlasting life. Catholics further believe that the saints in heaven can pray on your behalf and are, in fact, excited to do so, and possibly better at it than anyone on earth.
I’d be careful describing a belief to “most” Protestants. Many, many Protestants don’t believe any soul will enter Heaven until the last judgement.
Many more believe that only God (and Jesus if they don’t believe they are the same) can exist in heaven and the promise of Christianity is to make Earth like Heaven. Some of those groups believe that prayers to the dead, including to Mary or the saints, is therefore forbidden or an overt act of devil worship or paganism.
Even more controversial is the idea that the dead can intercede on your earthly behalf. That would be seen as pretty outside the view of many very mainline Protestant denominations.
The dead are dead - they cannot hear those prayers. God may be able to but if he hears our laments to our lost loved ones, even if we ask them to help us, I cannot conceive how he could anything but pity us, he loves us after all.
People punish - Jesus loves. That's a super easy way to see the lies from the truth
1. Prayer means several things - "I then prayed my friend that he would accompany me on my trip to Italy" does not mean that you worshiped your friend. Mary (and all the saints) are prayed to in that intercessory way, not in the worshipful way that we pray to God. The man at the Beautiful Gate asked Peter for charity and Peter gave him the ability to walk, not by his own power by by the power of Jesus (Acts 3:2-6). And again intercessory prayer as an important part of the life of the Church is well-attested - e. g., St. Paul in 1 Timothy 2:5 says "I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all men". Finally, why the focus on Mary above all other saints? "Who am I, that the mother of my Lord should come to me" says Elizabeth "filled with the Holy Spirit" and before that "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you" says Gabriel bringing God's message to Mary. And what does Mary say in response? "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my savior" and "I am the handmaid of the Lord, let it be done to me as you have said". When trying to draw closer to Christ, who would you want with you on your journey more than she who was called to be His mother? And who among all mankind would be more eager to have you come to the throne than she for whom "the Almighty has done [great things for]"?
2. "In fact, [God has not forbidden contact with the dead], because he at times has given it — for example, when he had Moses and Elijah appear with Christ to the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matt. 17:3). What God has forbidden is the necromantic practice of conjuring up spirits. " Via https://www.catholic.com/tract/praying-to-the-saints
> I've never heard anyone say the early church wrestled with polytheism.
See:
> Marcion preached that the benevolent God of the Gospel who sent Jesus Christ into the world as the savior was the true Supreme Being, different and opposed to the malevolent Demiurge or creator god, identified with the Hebrew God of the Old Testament.[2][3][5]
I find myself agreeing with a lot of these “gnostic” interpretations tbh. When you read stuff like Numbers 14, God just comes off as a total asshole lol
Although the whole theology they cooked up around the “true god” reads like bad fan fiction usually.
For those curious about the trinity what it is and why it is important to Christian faith I highly recommend Delighting in the Trinity by Michael Reeves [1]
"...what kind of God could outstrip the attractions of all other things? Could any unitary, single-person god do so? Hardly, or at least not for long. Single-person gods must, by definition, have spent eternity in absolute solitude. Before creation, having no other persons with whom they could commune, they must have been entirely alone.
Love for others, then, cannot go very deep in them if they can go for eternity without it. And so, not being essentially loving, such gods are inevitably less than lovely. They may demand our worship, but they cannot win our hearts. They must be served with gritted teeth.
How wonderfully different it is with the triune God. In John 17:24, Jesus speaks of how the Father loved Him even before the creation of the world. That is the triune, living God: a Father, whose very being has eternally been about loving His Son, pouring out the Spirit of love and life on Him. Here is a God who is love, who is so full of life and blessing that for eternity He has been overflowing with it..."
This is something best between you and God - let kno others tell you what this is, it is perhaps the most powerful thing ever revealed to us.
3 that equal 1.
It's a fundamental rule found everywhere - there is a softer voice within that will speak to of it but you have to ask it to tell you and then have ears to hear it.
While I agree that many of us are headed from different parts of the city or countryside, if we are Christians or seekers we are all headed to the same destination. So while our satnav path may look different, there are inevitably similar experiences along the way from which we can learn. Beyond that if you are a Christian you believe the Word will apply to all of those situations. Those who study the word can therefore offer insight. I believe this also includes truths like the trinity. So in those sense I would say no it's no purely internal. That being said yes, faith is head knowledge acting in anticipation from the heart as a relationship between you and God.
"It's a fundamental rule found everywhere - there is a softer voice within that will speak to of it but you have to ask it to tell you and then have ears to hear it."
But without experience and until you learn to discern the softer voice you must test it against scripture, to know whose it is.
this seems like a sideways retelling of the "Gospels of Thomas" stories.. this is a nuanced topic and shrouded by history.. Suffice it to say that intellectuals and pious people knew very well the cults of Apollo, astrology of High Priests, nature worship, Egyptian deism, goddess worship, and pantheonism while the Christian scriptures were solidifying as a social blueprint.
