7 ms·

The Legacy of Nicaea

37 points by diodorus 10mo ago

tekla 10mo ago
It directly lead to Magnus to fall and commit heresy
- 7thaccount 10mo ago
  Bahaha. I was looking for the Warhammer 40k comment. For those that don't know, the writers of Warhammer basically copied off of history and many other IP like Dune. In Warhammer, there was also a Council of Nicaea where it was discussed whether the use of psychic powers was acceptable in the Imperium of Man.
schoen 10mo ago
I forgot who formulated the idea that difficult-to-understand and difficult-to-believe doctrines tend to have a unifying force for religious communities because they tend to require members of those communities to be more serious about their commitments, or a way for them to show how seriously they take them, by asserting to doctrines that are difficult. This article says that Nicene Christianity is more difficult to believe and more illogical than some of the heresies. If so, that difficulty may have been a challenge for orthodox Christian believers that allowed them to feel, or demonstrate, more unity with their fellow believers! It may have created a firmer distinction between Christians and non-Christians or near-Christians, for one thing. Edit: one search found the theory of Laurence R. Iannaccone (which is about different churches within Christianity) who argued that churches that impose more or stronger doctrinal requirements tend to receive more loyalty and commitment from their members. I'm not sure if that was the version that I was originally thinking of, but it seems closely related.
- ofconsequence 10mo ago
  > difficult-to-understand and difficult-to-believe doctrines tend to have a unifying force for religious communities because I would also venture that this leads to many members having different interpretations and assuming everyone shares their own. Of the Wittgenstein ilk. But, this theory may conflict with your Edit addendum.
- Metacelsus 10mo ago
  See also: evaporative cooling of group beliefs (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZQG9cwKbct2LtmL3p/evaporative-cooling-of-group-beliefs https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZQG9cwKbct2LtmL3p/evaporativ...)
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- schoen 10mo ago
  It's too late to edit my post above, but I also found William Irons and Joseph Henrich. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2001-05917-013 https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2001-05917-013 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1090513809000245 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10905... Henrich is a little more focused on the idea of actions that are demonstrations of one's commitment to the unifying beliefs of a group, but I think he may think that making public declarations that are confusing or embarrassing or unpopular from the point of view of outsiders can be one form of that.
CGMthrowaway 10mo ago
It would be nice to have a new Council, an ecumenical one, coming to agreement to unite Catholic, Orthodox, and as many mainline protestant churches as possible. It may require the Catholic church to make some sort of concession, which is probably the biggest obstacle. There is no question that not everyone could or would want to unite. But some progress would be nice. To take a historical example the Council of Chalcedon did result in a schism (Oriental Orthodox I think), yet even so, more Christians came out of that Council united than were united prior to it.
- dvt 10mo ago
  Extremely unlikely, as there are a lot of theological dealbreakers: the Catholic veneration of Mary & the saints, Protestant sola scriptura & sola fide, Catholic papal infallibility, among many others.
  - CGMthrowaway 10mo ago
    "Dealbreakers" are the reason councils exist. I'm not saying it would be easy. Far from it. But the longer we wait to try, the harder it will be.
    - dragonwriter 10mo ago
      What do you mean, the longer we wait and try? Ecumenical councils have always been held between communities that already viewed themselves in full communion, though dissaatisfaction with the results sometimes meant a council was the end point of that belief. There are ongoing efforts to move back to full communion between the various churches via bi- and multi-lateral dialogue, its not something that people are waiting to try.
  - shtzvhdx 10mo ago
    Venerate: 1 to regard with reverential respect or with admiring deference 2 to honor (an icon, a relic) Merriam-Webster. What's the problem with venerating Mary? The Apostolic Church, East and Rome can over come their differences, there's little substantive difference.
shireboy 10mo ago
As we are in the holiday season it may enlighten readers to know St Nicholas, from whom we derive Santa Claus, was known for two things: secretly giving gifts to the poor and needy, and slapping heretic Arius at this council.
- jbaber 10mo ago
  There are many meme images of a phrase like "I came to give presents to children and punch heretics. And I'm all out of presents." on top of an icon of St. Nicholas.
throwpoaster 10mo ago
The Arian Heresy seems to arise perpetually. Now it is typically of the form, “Christ was a great religious figure, like Buddha, or Mohammed.”; “every religion has X, what makes Christianity different?”; etc.
marcus_holmes 10mo ago
> “rejection of reason,” the same instrumentalized, utilitarian, and reductionist force that has pushed us to the edge of ecological collapse. This "rejection of reason" is also why we have anti-vaxxers and a host of other problems. Rejecting reason is insanity.
- CGMthrowaway 10mo ago
  There are reasonable and unreasonable people on many sides of the global warming and vaccine safety debates. Do you disagree?
  - marcus_holmes 10mo ago
    I think this is a different use of the word "reason". Reasonable people may not be using reason, or even reasoning. But yes, there are definitely unreasonable people on both sides of any debate, especially when that debate is mostly conducted on social media.
- undershirt 10mo ago
  I think debates are interesting because it’s obvious that people are temporarily imprisoning any devastating arguments within their higher sense that something about it is wrong. The attempt to “rationalize” and discover what this higher intuition is saying might look like rejecting reason, even if temporarily. But I think it underscores what is really meant by “rejecting reason”— that understanding the true meaning of a logical argument requires a vigilant process directed by a higher moral directive, to ensure nothing “evil” is laundered through it.
  - marcus_holmes 10mo ago
    I think logic and morality are distinct and separate. I'm not even sure what a "higher moral directive" is, or how you'd define "evil" in the context of a logical argument.
undershirt 10mo ago
Maybe a “heresy” is simply that which is valid but not sound. The ecumenical councils were in some ways the means by which they imprisoned and cut away what is valid (according to some presuppositions) to leave only what is sound (according to the presuppositions of the apostles). It is the opposite of enlighenment carte-blanche thinking, to take a multivariate attack on delusion through reason anchored in a legacy of wisdom. Too bad the schism broke our understanding of this, but it is still preserved in Eastern Orthodoxy.
jswelker 10mo ago
I find the Nicene Creed to be a major stumbling block as a person of Christian faith with a background in formal philosophy. Rather than accepting the inherent paradoxes in Christ's message, it attempts to shoehorn it together using the philosophical swiss army knife of the era, Neoplatonism. As a result, now Christian orthodoxy is saddled with neoplatonic philosophical vestigial baggage in the term "consubstantial", which means Christians are wedded to and forced to defend a hard metaphysical realism. This comes out hard in Augustine and later medieval Christians. (See Anselm, Aquinas, etc) They described the faith using the intellectual tools of their era, and now those artifacts are hard-coded into the faith. It would be like if the Nicene fathers were in the early 20th century and described the faith in terms of Theosophy and branded all non Theosophists heretics forever.
- throw0101a 10mo ago
  > I find the Nicene Creed to be a major stumbling block as a person of Christian faith with a background in formal philosophy. And yet intellects like Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas did not: what do you 'know' that they did not, or vice versa? Also, are you aware of the encyclical Fides et ratio ("Faith and Reason")? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fides_et_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fides_et_ratio > Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves (cf. Ex 33:18; Ps 27:8-9; 63:2-3; Jn 14:8; 1 Jn 3:2). * https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091998_fides-et-ratio.html https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/d... Further, in your "formal philosophy" studies, how much of logic and proofs did you study? * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35592365-five-proofs-of-the-existence-of-god https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35592365-five-proofs-of-...
  - jswelker 10mo ago
    I'll ignore your ad hominems there. I am not saying I _know_ anything. Rather, I am disappointed in the incredible hubris and overconfidence shown by the Church fathers, not in terms of their faith but in terms of their certainty in the intellectual tools they had available and the extent to which those fumbling tools describe a God who in their own telling is infinite. Yes I have read large portions of the Summa, Augustine, Anselm, Boethius, Origen, and others, and I am fairly confident in saying that if you strip away the metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle and their followers, many of the arguments laid out by the patristics become tautologies at best and semantically meaningless at worst. I am not saying I know what the answers are. Just that we need more humility than what was shown by a church council convened by--checks notes-- a power hungry and opportunistic Roman dictator.

37 points by diodorus 10mo ago

tekla 10mo ago

It directly lead to Magnus to fall and commit heresy

7thaccount 10mo ago
Bahaha. I was looking for the Warhammer 40k comment. For those that don't know, the writers of Warhammer basically copied off of history and many other IP like Dune. In Warhammer, there was also a Council of Nicaea where it was discussed whether the use of psychic powers was acceptable in the Imperium of Man.

schoen 10mo ago

I forgot who formulated the idea that difficult-to-understand and difficult-to-believe doctrines tend to have a unifying force for religious communities because they tend to require members of those communities to be more serious about their commitments, or a way for them to show how seriously they take them, by asserting to doctrines that are difficult. This article says that Nicene Christianity is more difficult to believe and more illogical than some of the heresies. If so, that difficulty may have been a challenge for orthodox Christian believers that allowed them to feel, or demonstrate, more unity with their fellow believers! It may have created a firmer distinction between Christians and non-Christians or near-Christians, for one thing. Edit: one search found the theory of Laurence R. Iannaccone (which is about different churches within Christianity) who argued that churches that impose more or stronger doctrinal requirements tend to receive more loyalty and commitment from their members. I'm not sure if that was the version that I was originally thinking of, but it seems closely related.

ofconsequence 10mo ago
> difficult-to-understand and difficult-to-believe doctrines tend to have a unifying force for religious communities because I would also venture that this leads to many members having different interpretations and assuming everyone shares their own. Of the Wittgenstein ilk. But, this theory may conflict with your Edit addendum.
Metacelsus 10mo ago
See also: evaporative cooling of group beliefs (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZQG9cwKbct2LtmL3p/evaporative-cooling-of-group-beliefs https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZQG9cwKbct2LtmL3p/evaporativ...)
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
schoen 10mo ago
It's too late to edit my post above, but I also found William Irons and Joseph Henrich. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2001-05917-013 https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2001-05917-013 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1090513809000245 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10905... Henrich is a little more focused on the idea of actions that are demonstrations of one's commitment to the unifying beliefs of a group, but I think he may think that making public declarations that are confusing or embarrassing or unpopular from the point of view of outsiders can be one form of that.

CGMthrowaway 10mo ago

It would be nice to have a new Council, an ecumenical one, coming to agreement to unite Catholic, Orthodox, and as many mainline protestant churches as possible. It may require the Catholic church to make some sort of concession, which is probably the biggest obstacle. There is no question that not everyone could or would want to unite. But some progress would be nice. To take a historical example the Council of Chalcedon did result in a schism (Oriental Orthodox I think), yet even so, more Christians came out of that Council united than were united prior to it.

dvt 10mo ago
Extremely unlikely, as there are a lot of theological dealbreakers: the Catholic veneration of Mary & the saints, Protestant sola scriptura & sola fide, Catholic papal infallibility, among many others.
- CGMthrowaway 10mo ago
  "Dealbreakers" are the reason councils exist. I'm not saying it would be easy. Far from it. But the longer we wait to try, the harder it will be.
  - dragonwriter 10mo ago
    What do you mean, the longer we wait and try? Ecumenical councils have always been held between communities that already viewed themselves in full communion, though dissaatisfaction with the results sometimes meant a council was the end point of that belief. There are ongoing efforts to move back to full communion between the various churches via bi- and multi-lateral dialogue, its not something that people are waiting to try.
- shtzvhdx 10mo ago
  Venerate: 1 to regard with reverential respect or with admiring deference 2 to honor (an icon, a relic) Merriam-Webster. What's the problem with venerating Mary? The Apostolic Church, East and Rome can over come their differences, there's little substantive difference.

shireboy 10mo ago

As we are in the holiday season it may enlighten readers to know St Nicholas, from whom we derive Santa Claus, was known for two things: secretly giving gifts to the poor and needy, and slapping heretic Arius at this council.

jbaber 10mo ago
There are many meme images of a phrase like "I came to give presents to children and punch heretics. And I'm all out of presents." on top of an icon of St. Nicholas.

throwpoaster 10mo ago

The Arian Heresy seems to arise perpetually. Now it is typically of the form, “Christ was a great religious figure, like Buddha, or Mohammed.”; “every religion has X, what makes Christianity different?”; etc.

marcus_holmes 10mo ago

> “rejection of reason,” the same instrumentalized, utilitarian, and reductionist force that has pushed us to the edge of ecological collapse. This "rejection of reason" is also why we have anti-vaxxers and a host of other problems. Rejecting reason is insanity.

CGMthrowaway 10mo ago
There are reasonable and unreasonable people on many sides of the global warming and vaccine safety debates. Do you disagree?
- marcus_holmes 10mo ago
  I think this is a different use of the word "reason". Reasonable people may not be using reason, or even reasoning. But yes, there are definitely unreasonable people on both sides of any debate, especially when that debate is mostly conducted on social media.
undershirt 10mo ago
I think debates are interesting because it’s obvious that people are temporarily imprisoning any devastating arguments within their higher sense that something about it is wrong. The attempt to “rationalize” and discover what this higher intuition is saying might look like rejecting reason, even if temporarily. But I think it underscores what is really meant by “rejecting reason”— that understanding the true meaning of a logical argument requires a vigilant process directed by a higher moral directive, to ensure nothing “evil” is laundered through it.
- marcus_holmes 10mo ago
  I think logic and morality are distinct and separate. I'm not even sure what a "higher moral directive" is, or how you'd define "evil" in the context of a logical argument.

undershirt 10mo ago

Maybe a “heresy” is simply that which is valid but not sound. The ecumenical councils were in some ways the means by which they imprisoned and cut away what is valid (according to some presuppositions) to leave only what is sound (according to the presuppositions of the apostles). It is the opposite of enlighenment carte-blanche thinking, to take a multivariate attack on delusion through reason anchored in a legacy of wisdom. Too bad the schism broke our understanding of this, but it is still preserved in Eastern Orthodoxy.

jswelker 10mo ago

I find the Nicene Creed to be a major stumbling block as a person of Christian faith with a background in formal philosophy. Rather than accepting the inherent paradoxes in Christ's message, it attempts to shoehorn it together using the philosophical swiss army knife of the era, Neoplatonism. As a result, now Christian orthodoxy is saddled with neoplatonic philosophical vestigial baggage in the term "consubstantial", which means Christians are wedded to and forced to defend a hard metaphysical realism. This comes out hard in Augustine and later medieval Christians. (See Anselm, Aquinas, etc) They described the faith using the intellectual tools of their era, and now those artifacts are hard-coded into the faith. It would be like if the Nicene fathers were in the early 20th century and described the faith in terms of Theosophy and branded all non Theosophists heretics forever.

throw0101a 10mo ago
> I find the Nicene Creed to be a major stumbling block as a person of Christian faith with a background in formal philosophy. And yet intellects like Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas did not: what do you 'know' that they did not, or vice versa? Also, are you aware of the encyclical Fides et ratio ("Faith and Reason")? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fides_et_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fides_et_ratio > Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves (cf. Ex 33:18; Ps 27:8-9; 63:2-3; Jn 14:8; 1 Jn 3:2). * https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091998_fides-et-ratio.html https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/d... Further, in your "formal philosophy" studies, how much of logic and proofs did you study? * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35592365-five-proofs-of-the-existence-of-god https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35592365-five-proofs-of-...
- jswelker 10mo ago
  I'll ignore your ad hominems there. I am not saying I _know_ anything. Rather, I am disappointed in the incredible hubris and overconfidence shown by the Church fathers, not in terms of their faith but in terms of their certainty in the intellectual tools they had available and the extent to which those fumbling tools describe a God who in their own telling is infinite. Yes I have read large portions of the Summa, Augustine, Anselm, Boethius, Origen, and others, and I am fairly confident in saying that if you strip away the metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle and their followers, many of the arguments laid out by the patristics become tautologies at best and semantically meaningless at worst. I am not saying I know what the answers are. Just that we need more humility than what was shown by a church council convened by--checks notes-- a power hungry and opportunistic Roman dictator.