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@ Comte de Sats Germain
2025-05-03 16:14:37
I haven't read it, but it sounds interesting and I'll search it in a moment. Everything I've learned so far has been from internet sources. Most of what I know of Christianity is also from internet sources. I consider myself a Christian, and I think modern Christianity gets enough right, but I want to understand where it came from, and I want Jesus' real teachings - he said explicitly that he taught the disciples directly, but taught the crowds in allegory.
At first, I thought "Orthodoxy" had the original Christianity, but I found too much wrong with it. A lot right... A lot really good, really appealing. But I can't just stop asking questions and blindly submit to some authority, which really is the main proposition.
What I've found is that there were, and still are, Christians who's beliefs go back to hundreds of years before the church. They have a huge spectrum of beliefs and interpretations, which are all collectively labelled as "gnostic." Some of them got pretty wild... But some were also really close to the familiar version in the churches. What became the Orthodox church grew out of some of these original congregations.
The key event, of course, was Constantine's "conversion." He used Christianity for his political ambitions. He did not behave as a Christian. There was nothing noble in his demand for a synod/council to harmonize the gospels - that's Nicea in 325. Political power is built on force, and that's what it was about. As soon as the four gospels were chosen (the reason for four was interesting and based in what we now call astrology, but that's a different thread) he had a legitimate enough pretext to move armies into peaceful Christian communities **_with the full support of the bishops and notables such as Augustine_** and apply political power - that is, ultimatums and murdering people who resist. That's the bloody reality of the origins of the church. 325 years after Jesus' crucifixion, his church was hijacked and rebuilt upon a foundation of mass murder.
I think that's the real agenda - covering that up - behind the career Christians' rejection of anything Gnostic. They can't face the crime they're still complicit in.