#nicene faith

[apenitentialprayer]

How much Latin should a Catholic know? For example, should one know Our Father? Hail Mary? The whole rosary? Entire Creeds? None? Would love your opinion/scholarly analysis! Always appreciate you, God bless

I don't think there is a cookie-cutter answer for this. If I had to give a no-nuance answer to the minimum amount of Latin an individual Catholic should know, I'd say "the amount of Latin used in your region's average Novus Ordo Mass."

That being said, I am never going to advocate against learning a language. I think there are a lot of benefits in learning and studying a given text in its original language (or, in the case of the Creeds and the standard prayers, in the language through which the Latin Church Fathers interpreted them).

To use one example: in the United States, the English translation of the Nicene Creed used in the Roman Rite uses the phrase "I believe in one, holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church." But if you look at the original ("original"; bear with me) Latin, there is no "I believe in," but "I believe." (Credo in unum Deum […] Et in unum Dominum […] Et in Spiritum Sanctum […] Et unum, sanctam, catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam). This linguistic construction was considered very important to the Latin Fathers; you "believed in," you placed your faith in, the three Persons of the Trinity in a way you didn't "believe in" the Church. You simply believed the Church in what She said about the God who established Her. This is a nuance that is lost in our English translation.

To be quite honest with you, I pray purely in the vernacular. English is the one and only language that I feel comfortable inhabiting enough to speak to God in. (Hopefully someday soon I will add Swedish to that list, but for now I am a living American stereotype). But if you look at the Pater Noster, or the Ave Maria, or the text of the Missale Romanum, you know, you potentially learn to look at these prayers in a new way.

So the short answer, really; you shouldn't feel obligated to know Latin, but learning Latin might help you gain further insight into the prayer life of the Latin Church.

[idylls-of-the-divine-romance]

Me: Ooohhh yeah! Let's have a discussion on theology and philosophy.

Them: Everything went wrong after the Council of Nicea.

Me: I know longer trust your opinion on anything T-T

[seekingtheosis]

Understanding Formal Creed Statements: Its Need in Early Christianity

Explore the need for formal creed statements in early Christianity, addressing false teachings like Gnosticism, Docetism, and Arianism to preserve the true faith of the Church.

In the name of God the Father, Christ Jesus His Son and the Holy Spirit, One True God. Amen. Dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus In the previous blog, where we introduced the topic of the Statement of Faith, we learned how the early Christian statement of faith, encapsulated in the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed, played a pivotal role in defining and uniting Christian belief across…

[walkingthroughthisworld]

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.

Who, for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the living and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.

And I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life; who proceedeth from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spake by the prophets.

And I believe one holy catholic and apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. AMEN.

[inspiredbyjesuslove]

[troybeecham]

Today the Church remembers St. Leander of Seville, Bishop.

Ora pro nobis.

The next time you recite the Nicene Creed at Mass, think of today’s saint. For it was Leander of Seville who, as bishop, introduced the practice in the sixth century AD. He saw it as a way to help reinforce the faith of his people and as an antidote against the heresy of Arianism, which denied the divinity of Christ.

St. Leander was born at Cartagena, Spain, in 534 AD, to Severianus and Theodora. St. Isidore and Fulgentius, both bishops, were his brothers, and his sister, Florentina, also numbered among the saints, was an abbess who directed forty convents and one thousand nuns.

Leander moved to Seville as a young man and became a monk. He spent three years in prayer and study. At the end of that tranquil period he was ordained and consecrated the bishop of the diocese of Seville. For the rest of his life he worked strenuously to fight against heresy. He was instrumental in converting the two sons, Hermenegild and Reccared, of the Arian Visigothic King Leovigild. This action earned him the kings's wrath and exile to Constantinople, where he met and became close friends of the Papal Legate, the future Pope Gregory the Great. It was Leander who suggested that Gregory write the famous commentary on the Book of Job called the Moralia.

The death of the anti-Christian king in 586 AD helped Leander’s cause, and he returned to Seville. Once back home, he and the new king Reccared worked hand in hand to establish orthodoxy against the Arians of Spain. Leander succeeded in persuading many Arian bishops to change their loyalties. The third local Council of Toledo (over which he presided in 589 AD) affirmed the consubstantiality of the three Persons of the Trinity. Leander's unerring wisdom and unflagging dedication to Christian orthodoxy led the Visigoths and the Suevi back to the true Faith and obtained the gratitude of Gregory the Great. The saintly bishop also composed an influential Rule for nuns and was the first to introduce the Nicene Creed at Mass.

By the end of his life, Leander had helped Christianity flourish in Spain at a time of political and religious upheaval. Worn out by his tireless work in the cause of the orthodox Faith, Leander died around 600 AD and was succeeded in the See of Seville by his brother Isidore. The Spanish Church honors Leander as the Doctor of the Faith.

O God, who by thy Holy Spirit dost give to some the word of wisdom, to others the word of knowledge, and to others the word of faith: We praise thy Name for the gifts of grace manifested in thy servant Leander, and we pray that thy Church may never be destitute of such gifts; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with thee and the same Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, forever and ever. Amen.

[mindfulldsliving]

The Nature of God, Trinity Doctrine, and LDS Beliefs

Eric Johnson's claim that Latter-day Saint teachings lack evidence is easily refutable. Extensive scholarly research and ancient texts, combined with modern theological studies, offer a robust body of evidence supporting these teachings.

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Are Christians: Here’s Why Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Are Christians: Here’s WhyBiblical Definition of a ChristianMatthew 16:24-26Romans 12:1-3God Was Never a SinnerThe Concept of ‘Mormon Jesus’Jesus and Satan as Brothers: Historical ContextSatan as a Son of God: Biblical References in Job 1 and 2Symbols…

[minnesotafollower]

The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)    

I am a member and non-ruling elder of Westminster Presbyterian Church (Minneapolis), which is a member of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) denomination. The latter’s Constitution consists of the following two parts. Part I: The Book of Confessions This Book contains the following confessions: The Nicene Creed (A.D. 381) The Apostles’ Creed (A.D. 180) The Scots Confession (1560) The Heidelberg…

[flagellant]

What would you say is the earliest church heresy? Like, the original big no-no

Oh see now you've hit an interesting little rabbit hole without realizing it, because we know both a whole lot and also not much about the early days of the Christian church as we understand it.

So this faith leader guy gets executed or whatever, right? And now you have a bunch of his post-postmortem followers running around spreading his branch of weird Judaism which gets twisted into the first beginnings of Messianic Christianity. But this is back in ye olde days, and also the Romans are gonna be killing any Christians they can find, so the earliest days of the church are mystery cults sporadically popping up like mushrooms. (Is the Holy Spirit like a mycelial network? Who can say)

One of these early Christians was a very popular guy named Arius. Arius told his followers that Jesus WAS born of God, but that he was NOT God himself (the word you're looking for vis a vis that relationship is that Jesus is consubstantial with God, as in, made of the same simultaneous divinity.) and therefore should not be worshipped as one would God.

Then some time passes and all the big bishops of this hot new gig called Christianity realize, wait, hold on, we need to get shit straightened out. We can't ALL be calling ourselves Christian when people are saying Jesus was a hologram, or that he was born of God but isnt God, or that he was just some guy that God really liked. We need to all sit down and decide what we as a unified and universal group believe about our religion. So they all go down to this little place called Nicaea where everyone hashes out exactly what they believe in as Christians, and the end result is that Arius was shot down, which is why in the Nicene Creed there's that one specific line that goes something like this:

Et in unum Dominum Iesum Christum, Filium Dei unigenitum, ex Patre natum ante omnia saecula. Deum de Deo, Lumen de Lumine, Deum verum de Deo vero, genitum non factum, consubstantialem Patri; per quem omnia facta sunt.

Sharp eyes may have spotted that special little word consubstantialem in there. The earliest founders of the early church basically made certain that in their formalized dogma, Arianism would always be called heretical, because Jesus' position in the trinity requires him to be equal to but distinct from the Father. All of trinitarian Christianity agrees that Arianism is a no go.

Personally I do think we should have more Judasian heresies though. Like I guess I get why so many early heresies are centered around the nature of the trinity and specifically J Dog but it does begin to grate.

[beloved-of-john]

Forgive me if this is a silly question or if maybe you’ve answered something similar before, but is it necessary to believe that Jesus was literally resurrected in order to be a Christian? Is it enough to believe in the idea? In the message of the story? I’m exploring Christianity again after being raised in the religion and then moving away from it for a while, and the resurrection is one of the toughest things to wrap my head around.

I'm afraid it might not be what you want to hear, but believing in the literal resurrection of Jesus is necessary. The resurrection was God conquering death, and is foundational to our belief in our salvation. Essentially, it's the core tenet of our faith, and it isn't symbolic, it really happened. I understand it's hard to wrap your head around, the workings of God always are for us humans, and it's totally okay to practice the faith and give yourself time to truly believe. But it isn't something Christians can decline, nor is anything included in the Nicene Creed really.

[seekingtheosis]

Defending the Divinity of Christ: The Church's Battle Against Arianism - Part 4

Discover how the early Church defended the divinity of Christ against Arianism. Learn about Arian beliefs, the Nicene Creed, and key Church Fathers who safeguarded orthodox Christian doctrine.

In the name of God the Father, Christ Jesus His Son, and the Holy Spirit, One True God. Amen. Dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus In the previous blog, we delved into the early heretical movement of Gnosticism, a significant threat to early Christian doctrine. Gnosticism’s emphasis on secret knowledge, dualism, and a distinct interpretation of Christ’s nature prompted the Church to…

[sapphosremains]

Thoughts on Calvinism?

This is so interesting bc the majority of posts about Calvinism on here have focused on its beliefs about predestination, so I want to try and buck that. As with everything on this blog you'll get a weird mix of personal religion and academic theology, so do shout if you only wanted one or the other and I'll try again! Another disclaimer: I have no formal reading or research on Calvinism - denominational theology isn't really my area, so anything in here is personal opinion and from brief research, but no real academic reading. I'll get round to it, but it's not the top of my list right now!

Starting with the unified idea against the Real Presence, with Calvinism teaching that the Eucharist is simply a reminder of Christ's sacrifice, personally I just can't agree. I am still working out where I am on trans/consubstantiation, but I do completely believe in the idea of the Real Presence, and reject a memorialist theology. To me, it just doesn't work that the Eucharist can be a sacrament yet only a reminder and a memorial (although to be fair, Calvin's alternate view of what a sacrament is dodges this issue, but I can't agree with it so still personally doesn't work).

Now, from what I've read, Calvinism seems pretty on the side of sola scriptura, which again as an anglocatholic I am not. I think there's a reason why Revelation is addressed to the churches, and why Jesus devoted so much time to His disciples. Do I think that the Church is possibly more fallible than scripture? Yes, that's why I'm not RC, but I think the Church and community is of utmost importance, and understanding of Christianity and rule of faith is reliant on the Church. Furthermore, I think that again there's a reason why the Pope is the Pope and I'm not, and the Archbishop of Canterbury is and I'm not! Not that I would suggest that Calvinists reject this idea, just that I think there is a chain of authority and expertise in the Church for a reason, and their view ought to carry more weight than mine, despite us both reading the same scripture.

Carrying on with this Church idea, despite what I've just said, I'm not sure about the idea of God's only communication being through Christ. I'll come onto other reasons, but the first one that landed concretely with me was the idea that the preaching of ministers about God is the Word of God. Mmmm. Not sure. I think it's quite a vain idea to suggest that humans, ordained or not, let alone a massive group of them all preaching different things can all be speaking the word of God. Even just think of a minister you know who's said something slightly off, or a denomination that is far off every other, or not to generalise but if you've ever watched a mega-church service... can they all be the Word of God? Makes me feel a bit icky. The other stuff about Christ and salvation being the only two methods of God's self-revelation I feel like I don't know enough theology about to write about, but my instinct is against.

Covenant theology to me just felt like another framework, and I'm not keen on it. So far what I've read of Calvinism just seems to me like it tries to restrict a divine and infinite being into finite and defined ways of working with humans, and I'm not super keen.

Social trinitarianism? Nuh uh. I just, no. Not sure what to say, I'm just a Nicene creed girly.

Now, getting into the stuff we see more on here, starting with total depravity. This one makes me sad. There was a really good post on here which I've just been looking for (similar to this post by @hymnsofheresy) and I wish I could find it but essentially just a different view of original sin, seeing it more as meaning that we cannot be perfect, and to prevent us being perfectionists because we are in a world which cannot let us be perfect. I really like this view. The Calvinist idea of total depravity meaning that we are displeasing to God, 'defiled and polluted' in his sight, and makes us 'naturally hateful to God' is just like what? God loves us. Yes, He hates sin, and sin is irrevocably linked to the person, but I can't believe that He hates us and finds us displeasing, defiled, and polluted from the minute we are conceived.

Now, predestination. Similarly to the original sin, I just think this is such a nihilist theology. I think if I believed that there was a chance that before I had a chance to have faith, or do good works, I was condemned to hell, no matter what I did, I would struggle to have faith. Why would one want to believe in a God if you think that He could have condemned you to hell before your existence, based on no characteristic of your own?

On a more flippant note (ha), I couldn't be Calvinist because I love music, and as cool as a cappella is, it definitely couldn't be my whole liturgical life (also I'm an organist!).

Hope this was somewhat interesting, and I hope not horrifically uniformed. What are your thoughts?

[tanadrin]

@maaruin

Hinduism is probably a good example for how Roman-Platonist Monotheism would look like without the Jewish origin of Christianity: the theology is monotheist but to an outside observer the rituals look like they are honoring various gods, because polytheist practices have been re-interpreted in a monotheist way. Christianity is unusual not in its monotheist beliefs, but in that it required its followers to stop performing the traditional (polytheist) rituals.

I want to expand on this bc it touches something else McClellan mentions--how being the organized faith of the Empire really changed Christianity, or at least Nicene Christianity. Before it became institutionalized, there was a lot of room in early Christianity for different, contradictory Christologies (like Arianism, which was basically mainstream at one point); it's only with the Council of Nicaea that a compromise form of all these Christologies has to be hammered out (because the institutional church needs dogmatic harmony), and the boundaries of orthodox theology have to be policed--and can be, eventually with the full backing of state power. Before the most you could do was expel members of your church who disagreed with you, maybe refuse association with other churches whose theology differed too much. Once you have state backing you can use that authority to exclude heretics; and, later, once you are the official religion of the Empire, you can have heretics punished by the state.

I think this harsh ideological boundary maintenance really becomes a part of every state-backed church, but of course it's the Roman one that is by far the most powerful and most widespread; and even post-Great Schism and the fall of the western empire, the need for Catholic rulers to be in good with the Pope, and thus to enforce Christian orthodoxy within their territory, has the same boundary-maintenance effect.

McClellan contends that without this forced institutional compromise--which is what the Trinity is; "three persons with one substance" and stuff like "100% divine and 100% human" is not just "a mystery," it's functionally a nonsensical contradiction, and the reason why so many attempts to explain the Trinity fall into heresies like modalism or partialism is because the Trinity is wording-by-committee aimed at producing phraseology that most people at this one ecumenical council could tolerate, even if they didn't like it.

And by "most people" here we mean a very particular kind of educated Greco-Roman elite; a lot of early theology is shaped by what is conceptually acceptable to these guys, steeped in stuff like Neo-Platonism, and maybe doesn't have all that much to do with the peasant religion version of Christianity elsewhere (indeed, get your average theologically-untrained Christian of any era to try to explain something like the Trinity and I guarantee ninety-nine times out of ten they will produce an explanation that is technically a heresy).

All of which is to say I agree; a counterfactual "monotheistic" late-antiquity religion in a world without Christianity, but with the same Greco-Roman influences, would look very much like Hinduism; it would have a big split between, like, the everyday version of the religion and the theologically elucidated elite version of the religion; and I think it's the latter that would resemble Nicene Christianity on a lot of points. But then, folk Christianity often is very different from "orthodox" Nicene Christianity in the world we do inhabit, also.

[apenitentialprayer]

i've read that mormons and JWs are considered heretics because they don't affirm the trinity, so i was wondering what the sort-of 'cut off' point is. like would the ACOE be considered heretics because they say mary isn't the mother of God, only the mother of christ, for example

Alrighty, this is a big one. So, as far as the Jehovah's Witnesses and the (mainstream) Latter Day Saints movement go, things are.... a little more complicated in terms of whether their doctrine is "heresy" or if they are just plain non-Christian (and thus wouldn't count as heretical).

The crux of the argument that they are not Christian is that they do not affirm the Nicene Creed, which was articulated during the Councils of Nicaea (325 AD) and Constantinople (381 AD). While Mormons and JWs can affirm the most primitive of Christian creeds ("Christ is Lord"), the Nicene Creed very quickly took on the status of the σύμβολον, or symbolum in Latin; the "symbol of faith," the creed whose affirmation is itself a verification of one's Christian identity. That's why during the Council of Trent, for example, the Tridentine Fathers invited Protestants to participate in the Council on the condition that they could still affirm the Creed.

Of course, Mormons and JWs do not see it that way. They self-identify as Christians; and each group doesn't see themselves just as Christians, but as restorers of a purer, more original Christianity that had existed before the creation of that Creed.

But, anyway, if the conclusion of this argument is accepted, and members of the (mainstream) Latter Day Saints movement and Jehovah's Witnesses are not considered Christian, they by definition cannot be considered heretics; per the Baltimore Catechism, heretics are "baptized Christians, but do not believe all the articles of faith" (Q 1170).

The Assyrian Church of the East affirms the Nicene Creed, have Apostolic Succession, and have limited intercommunion with the Catholic Church. And, Christologically, they have an interesting situation going on. The Assyrian Church has not formally accepted the dogmatic Christological definitions of the Council of Ephesus (431). And, on that alone, the ACoE would seem to fit into the Baltimore Catechism's definition of heretic.

But over 1550 years after that split, the leaders of both the Assyrian Church of the East and the Catholic Church signed a document that affirmed that both Churches saw the other's Christological doctrines as valid, and that both theologies were expressions of the same Apostolic faith. You can read the full document, which is not very long, here.

But to abstract the discussion of heresy for a moment (bold of me to do, admittedly, after saying the last ask was a little vague); we need to make a distinction between formal heresy and material heresy. As Pope Benedict noted in 1993, which itself was an echo of the 1912 Catholic Encyclopedia's description of heresy, the defining characteristic of formal heresy is pertinacia, which can be translated as "stubbornness." What makes a person a "heretic" in a condemnable sense is this pertinacia, this holding fast to falsehoods in defiance of correction by proper authority.

So while the first generations of Protestants may be considered formal heretics, Pope Benedict noted that this does not reflect the actual social and religious conditions of Protestants living today, who are simply living out their Christian faith in the traditions that have arisen since the Reformation. They may be material heretics, and the doctrines of Protestantism may be considered heretical from the Catholic viewpoint, but being a Protestant does not automatically incur the guilt of heresy.

And, in all honesty, most Christians alive today (and most Christians in all ages) have in all probability been material heretics - i.e., they hold some wrong or incorrect opinions concerning the faith, but simply out of ignorance and not in defiance of proper authority. And that is not a sin.

[eesirachs]

what does the trinity mean to you? do you always/mostly think of god that way? your idea of god seems to be very fluid & all-encompassing, as is mine most of the time, and for me a strict trinitarian view kinda gets in the way of that. then again i do think of god as spirit/energy, god as the logos of all gestalts, god as Source beyond being….

god is emergent in inherited narratives. here, faith is negotiated across bodies, language attached to a god that exceeds it by many hands at once. because all god-talk fits ill, there is a kind of right-ness to defaulting to that which moves me into ethical relationship. and so my trinitarian theology is an inherited narrative, one through which i keep tether to my (catholic) church. god is in homoousion, three persons in one essence. god is the father and the son and the hs. there is procession here but no ontological or temporal hierarchy or confusion. when i say the nicene creed, i mean it as much as it lets me

[heresylog]

[Screenshot description: Text that reads, yes to some faith questions, my faith is part of my daily life, I attend Mass almost daily, normal Sunday Mass. Agrees with the Church on sex before marriage and contraception. Disagrees with the Church on the Nicene Creed, the Eucharist, Sanctity of Life. End screenshot description.]

Disagrees with the Nicene Creed and the Eucharist?? What is the point lol