[Shasown]

Originally Posted by ElProximo

also because early church leaders (before Nicea) wrote about them, wrote about where they went wrong and wrote about how they were NOT squaring with the church at large or the leadership,
and
if you ever want confirmation on that then you get Nicea where it starts with almost every representative from every region ALREADY understanding.. as a 'given'... that Jesus is God incarnate.
In fact the 'big debate' is over Arius and a couple of his friends who DONT actually deny anything,
but,
have some nearly 'definition games' over just what exactly 'essence' might mean.

To say "every christian has a different idea of this" is about as wrong as wrong can get.

Get your facts right, the winners decide history in wars and religion, thats why so called heretical gospels were suppressed and the followers were in some cases annihilated.

"Before 325 AD, the "heretical" nature of some beliefs was a matter of much debate within the churches. After 325 AD, some opinion was formulated as dogma through the canons promulgated by the councils. Each phrase in the Nicene Creed, which was hammered out at the Council of Nicaea, addresses some aspect that had been under passionate discussion and closes the books on the argument, with the weight of the agreement of the over 300 bishops in attendance. [Constantine had invited all 1800 bishops of the Christian church (about 1000 in the east and 800 in the west). The number of participating bishops cannot be accurately stated; Socrates Scholasticus and Epiphanius of Salamis counted 318; Eusebius of Caesarea, only 250.]"


So out of 1800 bishops, you have 318 or thereabouts who actually attended Nicaea. Hardly every belief represented. And if you didnt follow the Church of Rome's line, you were a heretic.

The following were supressed christian sects which didnt all believe that Jesus was the Son of God, in some cases they believed that God had sent him, spoke through him or simply he was a very good man whose example should be followed Other heresies believed in the non humanity of Jesus. Others had still differing views about the created of the holy trinity etc.

Gnosticism, Neo-Gnosticism, Agnosticism Marcionites, Tritheism, Modalism, Basidilians, Tertullianists, Origenists, Manicheans, Millenarians, Novatians, Montanism,

Cerintus, , Carpocratians They denied the Divinity and the virginal birth of Christ;

Nestorianism (named for Netstorius) Belief that God was not in Christ and that Mary gave birth only to the human Jesus. Nestorianism teaches that Jesus was filled with the logos, that only the human part of Jesus suffered and died, and that man simply needs an infilling of logos for salvation.

Ebionitism. Belief that Jesus was nothing more that a prophet: a man, but not divine. Named after the Ebionites, a first-century Jewish-Christian sect who emphasized Jewish law and rejected Paul’s teachings

Dynamic Monarchianism claimed Jesus Christ was simply a man, whom God filled with an impersonal power, either at his conception, baptism, or resurrection. This denies Christ taking any personality from God,

Docetism is the belief that Jesus' physical body was an illusion, as was his crucifixion; that is, Jesus only seemed to have a physical body and to physically die, but in reality he was incorporeal, a pure spirit, and hence could not physically die

The Nazareans, or "Jewish-Christians" as some of them were eventually called by the Romanized Christians, did not appreciate this distortion of their Teachers of Righteousness. These Nazareans did not accept the writings and doctrines of Paul, nor did they take much account of the Gospels which found their way into the New Testament bible. Instead, they used the Gospel of Hebrews which denied, among other things, the Roman version of the virgin birth.

Pelagianism - In their view every child was born absolutely innocent, free of what the traditional church called 'the original sin'. In effect this meant that to Pelagius Christ was not a saviour who took Adam's original sin upon himself, but merely a teacher who gave mankind an example of what man should be

All of them were christian all had one thing in common they were declared heretic, their teachings suppressed and they were given the chance to move back into what became the Roman Catholic Church, if not they were surpressed. A few hundred years ago denying the pope would have got you declared heretic and ex-communicated from the church at best.

Incidentally Arius was deemed heretic, welcomed back into the church and then after his death declared heretic again.

To take the line you finished on maybe its me but I understand it to mean if you took a hundred christians regardless of whether they came from the same church or not and questioned them in depth on god, jesus etc you would get 100 different sets of answers.