Let me pick up our recent debates about why your version of early Christianity is distorted. ( Because you got your information mostly from secular media, magazines and from Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown and his like mind fellows full of biases against Christianity. How can your assumptions be right, I wonder? Just think about a few Questions down below, you will find why your assumptions are wrong.
Consider, If the deity of Christ was an idea invented by Constantine and completely foreign to Christ’s followers who viewed him as a mere mortal, what explains the “relatively close vote” at Nicaea as Brown claimed? ( actually, it was a landslide victory for traditional belief from the Apostles and Jesus' earliest followers, only 2 out of 318 bishops voted along Arius' errant view. It was not close at all)
If the early records of Jesus’ life are so corrupted and compromised with “countless translations, additions, and revisions,” as Brown claimed, and if “history has never had a definitive version of the book,” from where does Brown derive his reliable, authentic, unimpeachable biographical information about Jesus? How does Brown know that thousands of Jesus’ followers wrote accounts of his life if the great bulk of these records were destroyed? This is the classic problem for conspiracy theorists.
If all evidence was eradicated, how do they know it was there in the first place? How is it physically possible for Constantine to gather up all of the handwritten copies from every nook and cranny of the Roman empire by the fourth century and destroy the vast majority of them?
Now that you ponder the above Qs carefully, let's consider the historical facts below.
The Council of Nicaea was not an obscure event in history. We have extensive records of the proceedings written by those who were actually there: Eusebius of Caesarea and Athanasius, deacon of Alexandria.( And they held two opposite views, Eusebius was in Arius side. So their writings should give us the whole historical picture of the Council of Nicaea) Two things stand out in those accounts that pertain to Brown’s claims.
First, no one at Nicaea considered Jesus to be a “mere mortal ,” not even Arius, whose errant views made the council necessary.
Second, Christ’s deity was the reason for the council, not merely the result of it .After a pitched debate, the orthodox party prevailed. The vote wasn’t close at all; it was a landslide. Of 318 bishops, only the Egyptians Theonas and Secundus refused to concur. The council affirmed what had been taught since the beginning. Jesus was not a mere man; He was God the Son.
Regarding the famous Dead Sea Scrolls, (the first scrolls were discovered in the 1940s, not the 1950s as Brown claimed). Brown claimed that The Dead Sea Scrolls say nothing of Jesus. There were no Gospels in Qumran. Not one shred or shard mentions his name. This is a complete fabrication from Brown.
If you like, you can check the introduction to Dead Sea Scrolls out for yourself.( I have a few books about them even with vivid pictures. We visited the display at Deyang museum and see the intact Isaiah 53 which foretold the coming of Jesus Christ to suffer on the cross for all our sins.
I hope with an open and fair mind, after you consider all these historical facts, you won't claim to me again that it was all Constantine's credits to establish Jesus' God status. Contrary to what you think, Constantine was the one who flip-flaped and went back to support Arius' view after the council as we've already discussed in previous emails.
I pray earnestly that you may shake off your deep bias about these issues.
May God open your eyes to see His Truth!
P.S. I've got so many insight from this book TACTICs.
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