Bible not conservative enough?

[Valmy]

You could argue that the current "conservative revision" is also the result of a spiritual dispute.

I suppose I could but I don't think I will.  I was just explaining what I thought Shielbh was getting at.

[Valmy]

The spirtual debate itself was a tempest in a tea pot.  What was really at stake was who would control what diocese and who would enjoy the revenues from that control.  That is really what the Emperors were deciding.  As time progressed the side that lost the debate lost not only the theological issue but also their positions, titles and lands....

Same old issue of control and greed.  Very little spirtual about it.

Yeah I don't think so.  It sure seemed to me the Emperors often either:

A. Tried to avoid spiritual conficts at all costs and only stepped in when they absolutely had to.

B.  Often due to reasons that are not clear would adopt political disastrous spiritual policies seemingly designed to destroy their own state.  Iconoclasm and Justinians bizarre love of Monophysitism come to mind....though it is hard to figure out what the political advantages were for the Stuarts being so loyal to Catholicism.

I don't think it is as simple as you make it out to be...well at least during the Empire.  During the Renaissance and onward I think there is a great deal of cynicism behind it.

[Valmy]

Hadnt thought of it that way but cant say you are wrong.

What?  You just said they were all secular political disputes and now you are saying Jacob is not wrong?

[Berkut]

I don't think it is really possible to separate the secular from the spiritual - certainly there was plenty of both going on, and it was all tangled up together.

Just look at the English Civil War - I defy anyone to tell me if that was a secular, or spiritual conflict in its foundations. I am sure you can make great arguments either way.

[crazy canuck]

I don't think it is really possible to separate the secular from the spiritual - certainly there was plenty of both going on, and it was all tangled up together.

Just look at the English Civil War - I defy anyone to tell me if that was a secular, or spiritual conflict in its foundations. I am sure you can make great arguments either way.

Fair point.

[Sheilbh]

Really,  all the histories I have read lead to the conclusion that most religious disputes had a significant secular political dimension.

I don't think you can remove the secular impulse in explaining religion - historically I'm something a Marxist - but I think that the reason religious disputes became such heated disputes was because people believed that eternal life was at stake.

I also think that before the 18th or 19th century it's very difficult to separate the secular and the religious.  The religious provided the structure to life for the vast majority of people and I think the religious was inextricably woven into the life of each person. 

The spirtual debate itself was a tempest in a tea pot.

No spiritual debate within Christianity is a storm in a teacup.  The central alluring idea of Christianity is this:

I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.

Judaism and, to a lesser extent, Islam are faiths that are fundamentally based and grounded in a body of law with important elements of belief.  Christianity is overwhelmingly based on that simple act of belief and so defining what it is correct to believe in is nothing less than defining what it is to be a Christian and what is required for eternal life.

And it's worth remembering with those spiritual debates that the Emperors didn't always get their own way.  The Emperors often wanted a middle position, a politically palatable fudge.  Neither side of the theological debate would give in on that because they literally believed their souls were at stake.

Just look at the English Civil War - I defy anyone to tell me if that was a secular, or spiritual conflict in its foundations. I am sure you can make great arguments either way.

As I say I think it's almost impossible to separate spiritual and secular in the vast majority of the past 2000 years.

[crazy canuck]

A. Tried to avoid spiritual conficts at all costs and only stepped in when they absolutely had to.

I dont think that is true.  I dont have my source materials here but pre 1000 there were numerous councils instigated by and hosted by various Emperors so that they could keep direct control of matters regarding the Church.  Remember at that time the Emperors were the head of the Church.  The development of the office of the Pope and his authority is a later creation.  The emperors certainly did not avoid the conflicts at all cost.

B.  Often due to reasons that are not clear would adopt political disastrous spiritual policies seemingly designed to destroy their own state.  Iconoclasm and Justinians bizarre love of Monophysitism come to mind....though it is hard to figure out what the political advantages were for the Stuarts being so loyal to Catholicism.

The emperors were making decisions for short term political gains.  If they had the hindsight we now have they would probably make different decisions.

I don't think it is as simple as you make it out to be...well at least during the Empire.  During the Renaissance and onward I think there is a great deal of cynicism behind it.

I dont see any basis to believe the Emperors or the clergy were acting any more or less cynically in 711 then Princes and clergy were in 1711.

[crazy canuck]

And it's worth remembering with those spiritual debates that the Emperors didn't always get their own way.  The Emperors often wanted a middle position, a politically palatable fudge.  Neither side of the theological debate would give in on that because they literally believed their souls were at stake.

I am trying to think of one council where the Emperor actually had a position he wanted to enforce but was not able to do so.  I cant think of one.  Which one are you thinking of?

[Valmy]

I dont see any basis to believe the Emperors or the clergy were acting any more or less cynically in 711 then Princes and clergy were in 1711.

You have got to be kidding me.  Who is the 1711 equivalent to Leo III?

[Sheilbh]

I am trying to think of one council where the Emperor actually had a position he wanted to enforce but was not able to do so.  I cant think of one.  Which one are you thinking of?

Monothelitism and the Lateran condemnation of Emperor and Patriarch.

[Martinus]

People have always selected, re-interpreted and re-translated scripture to suit their social and political needs. like anything else, this can be done well or it can be done badly.

To my mind, one of the positive aspects of Judaism is that they have this process down to a fine art - a goodly percentage of Rabbinical debate is based on this. The scriptural *premises* may be weird (an essentially Bronze Age, if not Neolithic, set of religious texts), but one cannot argue with the logic of the *process* - which in many ways is similar to that of the Common Law, emphasizing logic (perhaps one reason so many lawyers are Jewish ... ).

In contrast, the process here looks, well, incredibly crude. That's what makes it absurd. It isn't that the authours are re-imagining scripture to suit themselves, it is that they are doing it crudely.

I think the "extra touch" is the hypocrisy of the religious Christian conservatives who otherwise insist on immutable and inviolable nature of the scriptures, when it comes to, say, condemning fags to hell.

But then again, it's not like we really need more proof that religious people are hypocritical and stupid.

[Martinus]

Do you think those decisions were taken without consideration of the political implications?   As an example, were the various attempts to create a universal Church Creed done because the various  Emperors who took part in those conferences over the decades decided the spirtual question was important or because they wanted the matter settled once and for all so that stability could be maintained.

That is different.  They all started as spiritually motivated disputes that got so heated and contentious eventually the secular authorities felt it was important for them to step in and decide them.

I think your view of the church fathers is somewhat naive and idealistic.

The only difference between Christianity and Scientology is 2000 years of propaganda and bad memory.

[crazy canuck]

I dont see any basis to believe the Emperors or the clergy were acting any more or less cynically in 711 then Princes and clergy were in 1711.

You have got to be kidding me.  Who is the 1711 equivalent to Leo III?

I am not sure what you are implying but how is pandering to the aristocracy by banning idol worship at the cost of upsetting the monks and peasants any different from decisions that any prince in the Renassaince might make.  Since when do people in power make decisions that upset their peers in order to appease the proles?  Sure there are some examples of this but they are the exceptions.  You might even argue that the US is the great exceception of the general time period.

[crazy canuck]

I am trying to think of one council where the Emperor actually had a position he wanted to enforce but was not able to do so.  I cant think of one.  Which one are you thinking of?

Monothelitism and the Lateran condemnation of Emperor and Patriarch.

Ok but which council are you talking about.  I suspect you might be thinking of one of the splinter council's the Emperor did not actually attend.  Am I right?

[Sheilbh]

Ok but which council are you talking about.  I suspect you might be thinking of one of the splinter council's the Emperor did not actually attend.  Am I right?

Yep.  The Emperor and Patriarch (with the Pope) imposed theological beliefs because there were divisions within the Byzantine Empire between the emerging Oriental Christian Churches.  Those Churches were opposed to the new doctrine and basically continued the process of becoming schismatic.  Meanwhile in the West a new Pope was elected who summoned an independent Council (which isn't regarded as ecumenical as only the Western Bishops attended) and condemned the Emperor and Patriarch, for the opposite reason that most Oriental Christians were unhappy.  The Emperor never got the unity he was looking for and both the Western and Eastern Churches (and the Oriental Christians) subsequently condemned him and the Patriarch as heretics.