There we have it, then. I believe that we can therefore agree that the Nicene Creed irrevocably separates the LDS from mainstream Christianity, since the Nicene Creed is required belief for us.
I do not dispute the influence of the Greeks. At no time, have I ever said that the Orthodox was inferior to the Latin. Not at all. The Orthodox have maintained certain traditions and culture that, sadly because of Protestant influence, the Latin churches have diminished.
I will say, however, that I believe that the Church Fathers, who were left in charge, made the decisions that they were authorized to make; they guided the Church to the point where it is today; they did what they were supposed to do.
The God of the Old Testament didn’t spend much corporal time here. For a Catholic treatise of Arian you may wish to visit http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01707c.htm. It deals with what Arianism is, how it is heretical, who championed it, and how it was put to rest for many centuries. I’d like to know the truth; being here on these forums exposes me to many things that I would otherwise not have seen.
22 And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one:Justin Martyr Who preached that God the Father and Jesus Christ were separate corporeal beings lived 100-165 AD
On the other hand, Justin sees the Logos as a separate being from God and subordinate to him:Hippolytus is supposed to be the Great Grandson of John the beloved, although I have never found proof. Hippolytus wrote a set of books called "A refutation of all heresies" of which many books still survive (I consider this to be nothing short of a miracle, since they were not written in Latin and after Constantine, only things written in, or translated to Latin were actively being preserved by the church.
"For next to God, we worship and love the Logos who is out of the unbegotten and ineffable God, since also He became man for our sakes, that, becoming a partaker of our sufferings, He might also bring us healing" (Second Apology, 13).
"There is, and that there is said to be, another God and Lord subject to the Maker of all things who is also called an Angel, because He announces to men whatsoever the Maker of all things, above whom there is no other God, wishes to announce to them.... I shall endeavour to persuade you, that He who is said to have appeared to Abraham, and to Jacob, and to Moses, and who is called God, is distinct from Him who made all things, I mean numerically, not in will. (Dialogue with Trypho, 56).
Justin speaks of the divine Logos as "another God" beside the Father, qualified by the gloss: ‘other, I mean, in number, not in will’. Justin actually finds fault with the view of hellenized Jews who held that the divine Logos is no more distinct from God than sunlight is from the sun and suggested, instead, that the Logos is more like a torch lit from another. He wanted to do justice to the independence of the Logos.
"Such is the true doctrine in regard of the divine nature, O you men, Greeks and Barbarians, Chaldeans and Assyrians, Egyptians and Libyans, Indians and Ethiopians, Celts, and you Latins, who lead armies, and all you that inhabit Europe, and Asia, and Libya.6 And to you I am become an adviser, inasmuch as I am a disciple of the benevolent Logos, and hence humane, in order that you may hasten and by us may be taught who the true God is, and what is His well-ordered creation. Do not devote your attention to the fallacies of artificial discourses, nor the vain promises of plagiarizing heretics,6 but to the venerable simplicity of unassuming truth. And by means of this knowledge you shall escape the approaching threat of the fire of judgment, and the rayless scenery of gloomy Tartarus, where never shines a beam from the irradiating voice of the Word!This conclusion speech, except for the flowery phrases could easily be taught in Mormon sunday school today.
You shall escape the boiling flood of hell's6 eternal lake of fire and the eye ever fixed in menacing glare of fallen angels chained in Tartarus as punishment for their sins; and you shall escape the worm that ceaselessly coils for food around the body whose scum6 has bred it. Now such (torments) as these shall you avoid by being instructed in a knowledge of the true God. And you shall possess an immortal body, even one placed beyond the possibility of corruption, just like the soul. And you shall receive the kingdom of heaven, you who, while you sojourned in this life, knew the Celestial King. And you shall be a companion of the Deity, and a co-heir with Christ, no longer enslaved by lusts or passions, and never again wasted by disease. For you have become God:7 for whatever sufferings you underwent while being a man, these He gave to you, because you were of mortal mould, but whatever it is consistent with God to impart, these God has promised to bestow upon you, because you have been deified, and begotten unto immortality.7 This constitutes the import of the proverb, "Know yourself; "i.e., discover God within yourself, for He has formed you after His own image. For with the knowledge of self is conjoined the being an object of God's knowledge, for you are called by the Deity Himself. Be not therefore inflamed, O you men, with enmity one towards another, nor hesitate to retrace7 with all speed your steps. For Christ is the God above all, and He has arranged to wash away sin from human beings,7 rendering regenerate the old man. And God called man His likeness from the beginning, and has evinced in a figure His love towards you. And provided you obey His solemn injunctions, and becomest a faithful follower of Him who is good, you shall resemble Him, inasmuch as you shall have honour conferred upon you by Him. For the Deity, (by condescension,) does not diminish anything of the divinity of His divine7 perfection; having made you even God unto His glory!7"
Arius taught that God the Father and the Son did not exist together eternally. Further, Arius taught that the pre-incarnate Jesus was a divine being created by (and possibly inferior to) the Father at some point, before which the Son did not exist. In English-language works, it is sometimes said that Arians believe that Jesus is or was a "creature"; in this context, the word is being used in its original sense of "created being".Interestingly, the conflict was solved by Constantine, basically pulling all the bishops together and ordering them to define God in such a way that all Rome could accept this definition. This was ( The First Council of Nicea later (on his deathbed) Constantine was baptized an Arian. If you read the account in the Catholic encyclopedia online, it is clear that he wanted a political solution to his recently conquered empire, and did not care about "Truth" yet this is where the Nicene creed came from.
Of all the various disagreements within the Christian Church, the Arian controversy has held the greatest force and power of theological and political conflict, with the possible exception of the Protestant Reformation. The conflict between Arianism and Trinitarian beliefs was the first major doctrinal confrontation in the Church after the legalization of Christianity by the Roman Emperor Constantine I.
3 Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;This is why Mormons the world over believe they are part of a restoration of the Gospel, for the Foundation of the church is not Peter, a man, but he revelation that Peter had that Jesus is the Christ. That revelation echoes forward and backward through time as the preeminent even in all of history, and we are mocked and made fun of in this day for affirming it. So be it, for i would suffer anything for my lord, my God, for he has truly suffered everything for me.