[quote=Arraya]
I define modern christianity as beginning with the council of nicea. Constantine claimed the reason for his victory was because of the christian god. Then he convened the council to doctrinize it. This, IMO, was an attempt to keep the roman empire together which the western portion was beginning to collapse. I see that making it a state recognized religion as a political move over the population with it’s dogmatic aspects. The people were clinging to the jesus story because of the resistance meme and constantine went for it and made it official. In a sense corrupting the religion with the state for political purposes.
My interpretation of pre-nicea christianity was jewish mysticism with the messiah adopting the pagan mangod(jesus aka Osiris, Attis, Bacchus, Dionysus, and Mithra) because of the mythology attached to it. Kind of a synthesis of several religions going on. But I don’t think there was a historical man jesus.[/quote]
That’s very interesting, Arraya. I learned something new today. 🙂
The First Council of Nicaea is commonly regarded to have been the first Ecumenical council of the Christian Church. Most significantly, it resulted in the first uniform Christian doctrine, called the Creed of Nicaea. With the creation of the creed, a precedent was established for subsequent general (ecumenical) councils of Bishops (Synods) to create statements of belief and canons of doctrinal orthodoxy— the intent being to define unity of beliefs for the whole of Christendom.
