Jesus' Wife?

[Valmy]

Wait so Catholicism is about to collapse?

[Sheilbh]

I love this analogy.

Jesus is Marx,
Paul is Lenin,
There are many contenders for the role of Stalin  ,
Benedict is Brezhnev,
Francis is Gorbachev?

Sadly not entirely mine, but everyone loves Jesus just like everyone digs Marx nowadays. You needed Paul's betrayal of Christ's message to build Christianity as an actual religion for good or bad.

Constantine as Stalin.
Luther as Mao.
Calvin as Hoxha.
Pius X as Brezhnev.
John XXIII as Gorbachev.

[Valmy]

Everybody loves Marx? Huh.

[Sheilbh]

Same as everybody loves Freud or Jesus. Love in a sort of 'sure the implementation is batshit and maybe it doesn't work but they had some really interesting and important ideas that we've all internalised.'

[The Brain]

Marx, Freud, and Jesus?

[Malthus]

Marx, Freud, and Jesus?

Everyone loves a Jew with big ideas, it seems. 

[Valmy]

Marx, Freud, and Jesus?

Everyone loves a Jew with big ideas, it seems. 

The Jews didn't come up with every big idea in the world! What about Einstei....oh right....Darwin though.

[alfred russel]

I love this analogy.

Jesus is Marx,
Paul is Lenin,
There are many contenders for the role of Stalin  ,
Benedict is Brezhnev,
Francis is Gorbachev?

Sadly not entirely mine, but everyone loves Jesus just like everyone digs Marx nowadays. You needed Paul's betrayal of Christ's message to build Christianity as an actual religion for good or bad.

Constantine as Stalin.
Luther as Mao.
Calvin as Hoxha.
Pius X as Brezhnev.
John XXIII as Gorbachev.

Your list is much better, but I'm not sold Constantine is a good fit for Stalin.

[Valmy]

Well he was a pretty brutal and paranoid man.

[The Minsky Moment]

Paul may be Lenin but he doesn't stake out a clear Trinitarian position either which is why people are still arguing centuries later.

[alfred russel]

Well he was a pretty brutal and paranoid man.

From a Roman perspective, but from a christian perspective (which is the perspective of the list) I don't think it holds up so well.

[Sheilbh]

Could well be right

Who were you thinking of?

[alfred russel]

Could well be right

Who were you thinking of?

If I had a brilliant suggestion I would have offered it.

Torquemada?

[crazy canuck]

The problem is, of course, who should define what should be "enforced".  The people wishing to create the enforceable definition in this thread have adopted the Catholic orthodox view.  The problem with that is, despite Sheilbh's protestations to the contrary, that view was never actually a universal view of all Christians at any point in history including our modern era.  It may have been the dominant view at times but that really just goes to the point Jacob has been trying to make throughout this thread.

Psh

All I'm saying is I'm not a fan of this lovey-dovey idea of Christianity. Christ is important - and clearly divine - but the radical genius of Christianity is Pau. He's basically God's Lenin. There's none of this 'believe what you want' nonsense that saw a million other religious movements effervesce. Paul goes and builds the party. He sets up sects all around the place. He has cadres and is building a radical, Middle Eastern splinter group that survives against violent state opposition that he is in constant communication with. It's spiritual centralism.

But that persecution and risk of betrayal is why whether you're inside or outside mattered; whether it's the codes and symbols used to identify the real Christians or Cyprian's mediating position in the rows over apostates - extra ecclesiam nulla salus - and incidentally my understanding is that that argument was settled by a council and reflected existing precedent. Yeah Constantine matters and wants to unify the church around one coherent theology, but I actually think those schisms reflect the security of Christianity at that point. The church can worry about the will, nature, etc of Christ and his role in the Trinity because they don't have to worry about martyrdom. It isn't that they agreed, or disagreed, before its that that survival of this church, community, party mattered more before Constantine.

I don't disagree with that.   But I don't think it helps your argument that belief in the Trinity is necessary to be considered Christian.  It was only after Christianity became secure as the state religion that the true nature of Christ became a defining issue.  When Christians were at risk there was no discussion about the Trinity.  There is nothing about it in the Synoptic Gospels, Paul's writings or any of the other early writings that didnt make the cut of getting into the Bible.  In those early days the Christians were a lot more about community and serving the poor.  So in that regard Valmy's religion is probably closer to being truly Christian than someone who can recite (and understand) a creed created by committee to satisfy the political elite of the day. 

[Berkut]

Has the argument morphed to whether someone who thinks Christ is divine, son of god, came to earth to save us, etc., etc. is NOT Christian if they don't believe in the Trinity?