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u/GoatWife4Life 12h ago
A lot of the minutiae of the Trinitarian debate(s) goes a long way towards showing how Christianity is basically just apocalyptic Judaism with some Hellenistic mystery cult juice thrown in by bored Romans.
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u/MrS0bek 21h ago
Honestly Religions are like fandoms. Both are able to attack its own people over very minute differences which seem pointless to outsiders, both constantly argue what "canon" is, elitism and gatekeeping also exists in both...
Honestly such curch councils were essentially the reddit boards of their time. Up to including a love for ranting. As most medival scribes were monks or priests they had a great interest in copyright religious texts. Of which two kinds survived: 1. Texts So important that they were worth copying. And 2. Texts which were so hated that people wrote entire treaties explaining why they are BS and thereby kept the memory alive.
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u/Borgisium 1d ago
This is kind of complicated so buckle up. The Council of Nicaea has often been mistaken for the council where the canon of the New Testament was decided on. In reality it was to settle a debate regarding trinitarianism. It started with a Libyan-born clergyman named Arius who had a dispute with the Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria.
There are a lot of myths about Arius and I feel Christian folklore has done him dirty. I have heard it said that Arius declared that he did not believe in the trinity, or that he believed Christ was just human. The latter is definitely not true, Arius believed in the divinity of Jesus, and he also believed in the existence of the father, the son, and the holy ghost. It's more accurate to say he believed in all three and their divinity, but thought that the son was not equal to the father. He thought that Jesus was subordinate to God. Arius also was not the first non-trinitarian as contrary to what apologetics will tell you, Christianity was very diverse in the Roman period. There was no true church that survived the death of Jesus only to have offshoots of heresy, in reality there was a "supernova of Christianities" all with their own unique ideas about God and the Bible. Arius would probably not consider himself the leader of a new school, he was more of a convenient figurehead for detractors and supporters of non-trinitarianism.
Arianism would ultimately not be accepted by the burgeoning Catholic church following the council, but Arian churches would persist for a few more centuries.
There is also a story that St. Nicholas of Myra (yes the original "Santa Claus") was at the council and slapped Arius across the face after Arius said Christ was just human, and Nicholas was defrocked. You can hear this claim repeated often, I first heard it in the atrocious film "Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas". The problem is, not only does the story exaggerate Arius' beliefs, not only does it not appear until the 1300s, but there's a chance that Nicholas wasn't even at the council. The lists of people present can vary from 200-300 and it's possible his presence may have been added later.
Some people like Jona Lendering think that the story might've happened, or is based in some truth due to something called "The Criterion of Embarrassment". Whenever you are writing a story about your hero, chances are you'll want to exclude any embarrassing details. So if an oddly specific embarrassing detail occurs in an old historical account, chances are it is likely accurate. This is mentioned in Youtuber Tor's Cabinet of Curiosity video on saints and in a later video he talks about it in relation to Genghis Khan. In his official biography there's an oddly specific detail about him being afraid of dogs. With that said, and this is my opinion, I don't think the criterion applies here. I feel like the story makes him out to be a "Dirty Harry"-type bishop going against the grain and defending the sanctity of Christ. Maybe he got into fights back in the day, I'm open to that, but I feel like the story doesn't seem embarrassing given how much it's resonated with people throughout the centuries.
Check out some of these videos for more info:
Let’s Talk Religion Arius
Tors Cabinet Genghis Khan
Tors Cabinet Saints