#the nicene creed

[dirtdotmp3]

started this in therapy, used part of the christmas eve mass program lol. cat is censoring my schools name.

[frangipani-wanderlust]

And, to be clear, this is the no-nuance summary of basic Christianity. Every single Christian should be able to affirm all of this without reservation or hesitation. These are the bare bones about which there is no argument.

If you don't believe these things, then whatever else you may be, you aren't a Christian.

if they don't affirm the Nicene Creed, they are not Christians. if they claim to be Christians but they don't affirm the Nicene Creed, they are 9 times out of 10 a cult.

[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…

[banishedchildofeve]

‘Jesus Christ in Sorrow in Gethsemane’ - Carl Heinrich Bloch

⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ♰

[beloved-of-john]

it is absolutely not necessary to believe in a literal body resurrection to be Christian. this literalization of important stories does not make things more real.

for many people a literal body resurrection and a literal general resurrection of the dead are very definitely non sensical.

we are not bound to the 4th century worldview. the way Christians have understood Christianity has always been subject to evolution. the creation of the literal bodily resurrection you can see evolve in the new testament

Paul and Mark have no bodily resurrection. Matthew has visitations but in a way similar to the theophany @ sinai, a coming down from heaven.

John and Luke as the latest gospels have mixed aspects of their experience. experience that indicate a bodily resurrection tradition was. beginning by then.

I have to respectfully disagree. If you don't believe Jesus was physically raised from the dead then you are not believing the gospel. If a literal bodily resurrection is non-sensical, how do you deal with the raising of Lazarus? Do you pick and choose which of Jesus' miracles to believe in? Biblical literalism is not necessary in all cases, many parts of the Bible are written like poetry or literature to give us a better understanding of God, like the creation stories in Genesis, but this is not the case with accounts of Jesus' life. The gospels repeatedly ask you to believe the seemingly unbelievable. I'm not going to quote a load of scripture at you, but the New Testament does not support your view on this.

It is necessary to believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ as a Christian because God conquering human death is the foundation of our faith. Otherwise, what makes Jesus different to Elijah, who was taken up to God? The physical resurrection cannot be extracted from the belief of Jesus as our saviour. Plus, the Bible explicitly shows us that Jesus' physical body is resurrected, with Thomas touching Jesus's wounds still present on his body from the crucifixion.

Also, you imply that you believe Matthew and Mark to be true over Luke and John, because they came later and due to reasons of plausibility? Do you believe the gospels are divinely inspired or not? Don't get me wrong, you can be both a religious scholar and a Christian, but to be one doesn't make you the other. Being a Christian requires belief.

Also *out of breath* the Nicene Creed. God give me strength why does everyone think they just know better. It contains everything mandatory to believe to be a Christian.

"For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate, he suffered death and was buried, and rose again on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father."

Died -> buried -> rose -> ascended, not died -> buried -> ascended. There is no ascension without resurrection. The literal belief in THE key foundational concept of Christianity does in fact make things more real. Otherwise what is your faith based on?

[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.

[orthodoxadventure]

[matildalyonne]

Many have seen the picture (included for context) of boygenius dressed as the Trinity, with Julien – dressed as Jesus Christ – revealing she is wearing underwear emblazoned with “GOD’S EYES ONLY”, while Lucy – dressed as The Father – smirks and points at the article of clothing and Phoebe – as The Holy Ghost – covers her eyes.

This has raised a big question for some fans, namely: “Are Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus in a sexually intimate relationship?” This is truly no one's business. However, this photo also prompts a different and possibly more interesting question – what can we glean of the band’s theology of the Trinity based on the picture?

Phoebe – dressed as the Holy Ghost – averting her eyes in the picture has profound implications on the nature of the godhead. The most straightforward interpretation points to the boygenius picture depicting an understanding of the trinity that predates the 381 revision of the Nicene Creed at the First Council of Constantinople, which added the following lines to the Creed:

“And in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, who spake by the prophets.”

These lines were clarification on the nature of the Holy Ghost, who was mentioned in the original version of the creed established in 325, but not expressly stated to be worshipped or co-substantial with the Father and Son. The addition of these lines solidifies the council’s view of the Holy Ghost as an equal part of the Triune God. This view does not appear to be shared by the band members of boygenius, given that the Holy Ghost’s pose in the photo communicates a lack of authority to look beneath the underwear, implying that the Holy Ghost is not God.

The photo could also feasibly be interpreted from an Arian theology of Christ – that is to say that photo does not decisively communicate that Christ himself is God. Julien – as Christ - is looking away from the underwear, towards Lucy – as the Father. One could reasonably interpret the look as a one of deference. Perhaps only the Father is authorized to remove the underwear and gaze beneath. Whether Christ himself is able to look beneath the underwear is left inconclusive within the bounds of the photo. If Christ is also not considered to be equal and co-substantial with the Father as God, the picture may be Arian in nature. This, however, is less certain.

In conclusion, the picture depicts a view of the Trinity that is – at the very least – not in congruence with the Nicene Creed after its revision at the First Council of Constantinople, and could further be interpreted in an Arian view with some assumptions. However, for this viewer, one thing remains clear: seeing Julien Baker has me muttering “Jesus Christ”, even when it isn’t Halloween.

[burr-ell]

it's very funny for people to be like oh this was a JESUS situation, ayden's not REALLY the dawnfather as a way to effectively weasel out of pelor having soft or kind traits when like. "if you have seen Me you have seen the Father". WHAT do yall think the trinity is. guys you're doing arianism

[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.

[maureen-corpse]

my current obsession for the moment is the goings-on at the southern baptist convention

[pishifuzul]

this blog is like on the verge of eclipsing my main in follower-count which invites the ontological question of what makes that account my main and not this one. of course, followers are a facile metric for this; likewise i won't rely on anything so meaningless as e.g. chronological primacy. no, it is clear that that account must remain my main because that and not this account has been greened on shinigami eyes.

[thepastisalreadywritten]

SAINT OF THE DAY (January 2)

St. Basil, one of the most distinguished Doctors of the Church and Bishop of Caesarea, was likely born in 329 and died on 1 January 379.

He ranks after Athanasius as a defender of the Oriental Church against the heresies of the fourth century, especially Arianism, which denied the divine nature of Jesus Christ. 

He was also a strong supporter of the Nicene Creed.

With his friend Gregory of Nazianzus and his brother Gregory of Nyssa, he is part of the trio known as "The Three Cappadocians" — of which he was the most important in practical genius and theological writings.

Basil resisted the pressure from Emperor Valens, an Arian himself, who wanted to keep him in silence and admit the heretics to communion. 

No wonder the responsibility of being the defender of the faith against Aryanism fell upon Basil when the great St. Athanasius died.

Seventy-two years after his death, the Council of Chalcedon described him as “the great Basil, minister of grace who has expounded the truth to the whole earth.”

[queer-reader-07]

no but actually going to mass for the first time in i don't even know how long was so wild

like i stick out like a sore thumb in a catholic church with my dyed hair and colorful makeup. and then i just sit there in the pews with my family zoning the fuck out for most of it except when we sing the songs because instinct i guess?? (you can take the person out the church but you can't take the gloria out of the mind)

i know all the motions, it's practically muscle memory and it just feels so wrong

[vpyre]

Civic duty fulfilled 🫡

[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