[wolfcreek]

“You think the controversies dealt with at Ephesus and Chalcedon were matters of marketing?”

We were talking about modern day *marketing* but, eventhough I’m not real familar with Catholic dogma/history, sure.

I believe the Church leaders were making the religion more palatable to more people.

[Mad Dawg]

This is when the power of Newman's remark about how being "deep in history" supports Catholicism becomes more understandable.

Ephesus: 431. Christianity has been legal for fewer than 100 years.

The Roman empire is divided in two. The Huns have the north of the Black Sea and are pushing Goths, Vandals and others west, so that they threaten the Western Roman Empire in what will later be Austria, Switzerland, and the Balkan states. Visigoths had taken Greece and had moved westward into northern Italy, threatening then sacking Rome (410) , and moving into southern France and Spain.

Chalcedon: 451. Attila has taken most of Germany and is threatening downwards onto Macedonia, advancing into France, and in 452 invading Italy to be bought off with protection money.

The Easter Empire has abandoned Britain, ceded part of North Africa to the Vandals. The Visigoths in 20 years have been compressed into a small part of western France.

TO give an idea of the instability: By 476 or so the Huns have virtually disappeared; France is divided among 7 tribes; All of Italy is under the kingship of Odoacer; the Visigoths have sprung back and taken all but northern and northwestern Spain. The Vandals have Sardinia, Corsica, and part of Sicily. The Slavs, and behind them the Finns, are threatening Europe from the Northeast.

And, to touch on more Churchy matters, by the end of the first quarter of the 500's, Arians control Spain,Southern France, all of Italy and some of the Balkans, as well as the Algerian coast. "Catholic Christianity" is confined to Parts of Britain, Ireland the Northern half of France, and the eastern Mediterranean from Egypt around through Byzantium to Greece.

And Arianism is just the most politically powerful heresy. Monophysitism, Nestorianism, Donatism, Sabellianism, Pelagianism have threatened Christianity from within while manicheism threatened from without.

To think for a minute that the energy, even the violence, that went into the Trinitarian and Christological heresies were part of some wll oiled marketing campaign by ad execs in Rome is just crazy.

These people thought the world was falling apart around them. A few decades of Imperial peace was being lost as tribe after tribe poured into Europe, and pillaged its way to brief mastery.

In the face of the political chaos and internal strife, it is hard to conceive that some priests and bishops are sitting back, puffing cigars, and saying, "Tell you what, boys: We'll put it out there that We're calling Mary the "Mother of God." That ought to pull in the Ephesians and all the mother-goddess cults. Now we can't be too obvious about this. I know, let's pretend we're arguing about the nature of Christ."

Excuse the typos. It's really cold here and my fingers are stiff.

[Cronos]

Ephesus and Chalcedon were marketing??

No

In 325, the first ecumenical council (First Council of Nicaea) determined that Jesus Christ was God, "consubstantial" with the Father, and rejected the Arian contention that Jesus was a created being. This was reaffirmed at the First Council of Constantinople (381) and the Council of Ephesus (431).

The First council of Ephesus in 431 was to debate the serious question "what is the nature of Christ"

It may sound silly to us, but you have to recall that incorrect assumptions led to Arianism and Islam.

Nestorius believed that no union between the human and divine were possible. If such a union of human and divine occurred, Nestorius believed that Christ could not truly be con-substantial with God and con-substantial with us because he would grow, mature, suffer and die (which he said God cannot do) and also would possess the power of God that would separate him from being equal to humans

Patriarch Nestorius tried to answer a question considered unsolved: "How can Jesus Christ, being part man, not be partially a sinner as well, since man is by definition a sinner since the Fall". To solve that he taught that Mary, the mother of Jesus gave birth to the incarnate Christ, not the divine Logos who existed before Mary and indeed before time itself. The Logos occupied the part of the human soul (the part of man that was stained by the Fall). But wouldn't the absence of a human soul make Jesus less human? No, Nestorius answered because the human soul was based on the archetype of the Logos only to become polluted by the Fall, therefore Jesus was "more" human for having the Logos and not "less". Consequently, Mary should be called Christotokos, Greek for the "birth giver of Christ" and not Theotokos, Greek for the "birth giver of God". Cyril argued that Nestorianism split Jesus in half and denied that he was both human and divine.

Then you have Chalcedon with the Eutychian heresy.

[wmfights]

I believe the Church leaders were making the religion more palatable to more people.

No question about it. The growth of this heresy really took off after the Roman Church emerged as the dominant state church in the Roman Empire. The god like status for Mary made it an easier process for assimilation of masses of goddess worshipers. It seems to have died down in the middle ages and then resurfaced as the Reformation approached. Now it seems to be at the forefront of this church and it's main tool for evangelizing in the southern hemisphere.

[MarkBsnr]

We were talking about modern day *marketing* but, eventhough I’m not real familar with Catholic dogma/history, sure.

I believe the Church leaders were making the religion more palatable to more people.

1 Corinithians 9: 19 7 Although I am free in regard to all, I have made myself a slave to all so as to win over as many as possible. 20 To the Jews I became like a Jew to win over Jews; to those under the law I became like one under the law--though I myself am not under the law--to win over those under the law. 21 To those outside the law I became like one outside the law--though I am not outside God's law but within the law of Christ--to win over those outside the law. 22 To the weak I became weak, to win over the weak. I have become all things to all, to save at least some.

Paul was a master salesman; a chameleon, as it were. Paul marketed Christianity to anybody who would listen, using whatever means and abilities he had.