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The Tree of History (IV). The Fathers of God

Christianity arises from the thought of Lucio Lactancio, a fanatic who expresses in God all the hatred that he kept towards the Jews. Lactantius was a rhetorician, he was not a theologian, so the initial idea of ​​God was rather inconsistent. It is nothing short of hilarious that he was later criticized for being «unorthodox» but, nevertheless, having been able to capture the «essence» of God.

This is one of those occasions when the creature escapes the creator’s control. Jesus Christ is gradually becoming a kind of Frankenstein, done to pieces of ideas of some and others, according to the political convenience of each moment. The truth is that it starts being a real monster.

Lactantius portrays God in his signed works, apart from the New Testament, such as De opificio Dei (on the work of God) that establishes the supervision of God over men based on the shape of the human body. Here he uses Platonic arguments to justify the interference of God in the lives of men. In De Ira Dei (On the Wrath of God), Lactantius states that anger is a necessary component of God, without it he can not punish evildoers. It is not that God gets angry, it is that he is always apocalyptically angry. This matter gives much; It began being used to condemn the Jews that was their great obsession and from there it spread to anyone who opposed it. This idea of ​​God’s wrath or righteous anger has been the most perverse idea in history, to build God as cruel and ruthless and divine justice, pure revenge.And in the Institutiones divinae (Divine Institutions) which consists of seven books, he tries to show that Christian doctrine is a harmonious and logical system.

When someone needs seven books to show that something is harmonious and logical is because it is not harmonious at all and less logical. If, in addition, we add to this central idea of ​​Lactancio the contributions of Eusebio de Caesarea, whose purpose was to give some meaning to the character so that it was possible to fit it credibly in History and not in the comic, introducing the concept of love , closeness and piety we finished the first phase of the construction of the monster producing a really dangerous bipolar Frankenstein.

The thought of Lactantius necessarily happened because Jesus Christ was not only the messiah of the Jewish people, to snatch their hope and their future, but God himself, to finish hammering the Jewish faith. For his part, Eusebio saw in this a conceptual barbarity, there is no one God if there are two gods. He clung to the idea of ​​making a hero, despite his miracle, who sacrificed himself for humanity, but he could not be God himself. Two are not one, that does not make sense.

To Lactantius logic was something accessory, it was an unshakeable defender of the faith. God does not need logic, only faith. This came to alter Eusebio to the point that he began to mark with the acrostic simon (False, mockery, lie), everything he wrote, as a way to boycott the delusions of his boss.

Lactantius passes away. But his position is occupied by Osio de Córdoba, another fanatic of the style of the main author. So we find, once launched the religion and with the fervor of the newly converted, the two irreconcilable positions, that of Lactantius that will result in trinitarianism, although at the moment only had two Gods, and Unitarianism, for those who » There is no God but Yahweh … «, note that if you change Allah for Yahweh you will see that the meme is born here.

Lactantius is dead and Eusebio was a poor man, he was neither a leader nor a similar one. So the controversy between Trinitarians and Unitarians led by their new leaders, Osio de Córdoba and Arrio de Alejandría, started, which split the newly created church into two irreconcilable factions. In order that the matter did not escape from his hands, the same Emperor Constantine the Great convoked the Council of Nicaea to agree on them.

That Jesus Christ is God implies a politically fundamental detail. In the first Gospel written by Lactantius, the so-called «de Mateo», the following quote appears:

«I also tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church; and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven … «

If Jesus Christ is not God, he has no power to give the keys of heaven to anyone, least of all to his dumbest disciple. The implications are huge. If it is not God, the church as a «salvific» organization does not make sense because it has no power. If Jesus Christ is God, either you pass through the church or you’re screwed.

At this point, the majority of the assembled bishops preferred by majority to accept the breastfeeding theses defended by Osio since it gave them real power over the people, before Arius who was left alone. Even his friend Eusebio, seeing how the panorama was going, abandoned him.

Although this was a victory, it was not final. Constantine changed his mind several times, possibly because of the ambivalence of having a strong church, but whether or not it was controlled. In fact, when he died, he agreed to be baptized as an Arian.

Arius was not, far from it, the most important figure in Unitarianism, which was another Eusebio, that of Nicomedia. He became popular thanks to the diatribes and attacks he received from another fanatic, Athanasius of Alexandria who based on condemnations and ridicule coined the term Arianism to ridicule Unitarianism.

At this point we could become cynical and ask what the «fathers of the Church» thought, those who supposedly had already defined these basic things for the previous three centuries. But of course, those parents live in the nebula of their nonexistence and they only had the books that Eusebius of Caesarea had fictitiously assigned them.

Eusebio was not always a coward. The Arian controversy continued despite the realization of the Council and Eusebio remained involved in the matter. He entered into a dispute with Eustace of Antioch, which opposed the growing acceptance of the theories of Origen, one of the characters that Eusebius created to give historical coverage to Christianity, and who thought that it was the theological origin of Arianism. Eusebio, like «defender» of Origins, was reprimanded by Eustaquio, who accused to him to move away of the faith of Nicea. Eusebio responded by accusing Eustaquio of following the ideas of Sabellio’s Modalism, for which Eustace was condemned and deposed at a synod in Antioch. and proposed that Eusebius be named as the new bishop. He, for his part, rejected the offer.Later, he faced Athanasius of Alexandria, a much more dangerous opponent. In 334, Athanasius was ordered to appear before a synod in Caesarea, although he did not appear. The following year, another synod was summoned in Tire, presided over by Eusebio. Athanasius, anticipating the result, went to Constantinople, where he presented his cause to the emperor. Constantine summoned the bishops to his court, among whom was Eusebius. Athanasius was condemned to exile at the end of 335. In that same synod, another opponent of his was condemned, Marcellus of Ancyra who had long fought against the Eusebians, protesting against the rehabilitation of Arius. Accused also of Sabellianism, he was deposed in 336. Constantine died the following year. Eusebio did not survive long.

Because the Trinitarians were not very clear about it either. Modalism is defined by the fact that God is not an essence shared by three people, but there is only one being in three ways at different times, so in the Old Testament God manifested as Father, in the New Testament during his incarnation He manifested himself as Son and from Pentecost as Holy Spirit. That is, a three-in-one, but sequential.

Modalist monarchism or modalism, identified Jesus Christ as God himself (the Father) manifested in flesh while dynamic monarchianism or Adoptionism, declared that Jesus was an inferior and subordinate to God. He maintained that Jesus was a human being who became the Son of God because of divine wisdom or the Logos that lived in Him.

Eusebio of Nicomedia and Constantinople (341 m) was bishop of Berito (present Beirut), later of Nicomedia when the imperial court resided there and finally of Constantinople from 338 until his death. He was one of the most important unitarian bishops. It propagated unitarianism among the Germanic peoples, particularly the Visigoths, Ostrogoths and Vandals. This is a fundamental detail for the history of Hispania.

As he was distantly related to the imperial family of Constantine the Great, he obtained the means to ascend from the insignificant episcopal see of Berytus to that of Constantinople, and also allowed him to attain great ecclesiastical power.He enjoyed complete confidence on the part of Constantine I and Constantius II except for a brief period, and some believe that it was he who baptized the first on his deathbed in May 337,1 when he is still in communion with the Church.

During the First Council of Nicea (325) he signed the Confession, but only after a long and desperate opposition. His defense of Arius and his theses angered the emperor and a couple of months after the council was condemned to exile. After an interval of three years, he managed to recover the imperial confidence and after his return in 329 he got the whole machinery of the government put on his side to impose his thesis on the entire Christian Church.

As we see, Nicea fails to impose the dogma. Rather, it was a kick to the hornet’s nest.

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