Early Christian Schisms - The Woes of Constantine - Extra History

I admit, that's mostly just me trying to summarize the episode as accurately as I can in less than 120 characters.

Extra History

Psst. Check above! Your early access to the Council of Nicea awaits. :)

Extra History

It's great to hear and see a more chronological history. Growing up in the faith I've heard bit and pieces and sadly have not taken to time for an in depth history. I am also REALLY looking forward to the Council of Nicea. Great job as usual guys!!

Well, Mask, today your day has come! I hope you enjoy the early access on that one. And I'm going to keep shuffling your commentary along to James because I enjoy the look at how the idea of priesthood changed the stakes in this discussion.

Extra History

Correct, this is the Egyptian Alexandria! It was a hugely significant city in the Roman Empire.

Extra History

<3

Extra History

You all are going to love the Lies episode. :) James intends to dig into Constantine's faith pretty deeply there.

Extra History

Brace yourself, because the real Walpole cameo that comes up later in this series is actually the best Walpole I have ever seen.

Extra History

The "Saints or Sinners" core nature of mankind is an interesting approach, and not a way I'd thought of framing the question before.

Extra History

Yeah, the line about "founding a city in his name" is a shorthand similar to the "pesky priest who nailed a list to the doors of the church" in the last series, where it's meant to be shorthand people will recognize but it's not precisely what happened. Depending on how much else we have to cover in the Lies episode, it may appear just like the Martin Luther reference did!

Extra History

You all are the sadists who voted for it and put us in this position! But we love you for it. <3

Extra History

Not necessarily. Constantine probably thought he could just tweak Roman culture a bit to trick Christians into serving his purpose. Besides, the Christian population was on the rise, as more and more converts were made from witnessing the martyrdom of the faithful. In the end, only the man himself knows his true motives, and he's 1000+ years too dead to ask.

Michael Jebbett

The classic example is the clover. Three leaves, three persons, one plant, one God. Each leaf is distinct from the other two, you can tell them apart, and yet they all merge together at their base. Another example would be a a family. You can have one family, but that family can contain several people. Those are the basics of it, the dice analogy also works.

Mask

Christians made roughly 10% of the empire when he converted, and most of them were the poor. They refused military service because it required them to say the emperor was god. They were the lowest caste of society at several points. It would be completely stupid for him to have seen in them potential to shape a new empire.

Mask

Good episode, guys! Really, great job, there was nothing in this I felt need to correct. I do think a little more detail on the Arian beliefs is important for the Lies episode, so I'll talk a little about them. _______________________________OK, they didn't just think that Jesus was lower in God in a hierarchy, they essentially figured he was more of a demi-god than God. Or rather, they came to figuring that. At first their exact beliefs on the matter were fuzzy, but forced to debate the issue, they started to extremify their concepts. This in turn widened the divide between them and other believers. _____________________________It's sort of a pity that sacraments and priesthood were skipped over. Those are interesting elements in the development of Christianity. The apostles didn't call themselves priests, but "pastors" ("shepherds") and bishops ("overseers"). Priest indicates that you require someone to communicate with God for you, that you can't communicate with him yourself. The creation of this distinction has a big change in the authority of the church, which already desired to be united due to Roman influence. The Radical Reform movement, part of the Protestant Reformation, later would say that churches should be self-governed. ______________________The adoption of priests and sacraments (magic ceremonies, practically), to bring them more into line with other religions of the period, set up the question of if a questionable priest could perform an effective sacrament. It would have been moot, if it had just been pastors performing non-magical ceremonies, as the ceremony was totally symbolic anyway. ______________Other than these points, I see little that needs mentioning. Fantastic work, EH, this was a lot of fun to watch. I'm especially looking forward to the Council of Nicea.

Mask

I didn't... until now. Thanks. Daaa dAAA... dadadada daDAAA... dadadada daDAAA, da da da.

Mask

Oh yeah, good call. So the one and four are different facets of the die?

Laura Galm

Well, I would assume the egyptian Alexandria since the dispute we're talking about had its roots in Africa.

Byron Becker

Which Alexandria was this, as I recall Alexander the Great basically named every city he founded after himself.

Stephen

...Sort of, except that the 1 is the whole die, the 4 is the whole die, but the one is not the 4?

Stephen

The argument of the Holy Trinity is a bit like, forgive for the blasphemy here, the argument of who can and under what conditions one can wield Thor's Hammer Mjolnir (going to use Marvel universe rules here thus doubling down on the Blasphemy but to illustrate the point with rules more familiar and cohesive to everyone). Thor may wield it because he is a pure and also thus a diety, but Vision can also wield the Hammer. Thor touches the strap of Mjolnir, Captain America picks up the hammer. And third case Thor picks up Mjolnir, Hulk picks up Thor, so Hulk thus picked up Mjolnir. One can argue about how of these events are able to happen and what their root cause is but in the end you just have to take it on faith that it DID happen if you're going to believe. This sort of discontent over the how is I feel the root of argument of the Holy Trinity and the why is not important. However people take it too far. There are those who are caught up in rules, where others see them more as guidelines and this also adds to strife. Imagine if you would your two friends arguing about your shared favorite movie and the main character acts clearly and concisely and morally but your friends can't agree about why he acts this way. They can't agree so strongly that they can no longer get along. What should have been a unifying factor becomes a point of violent contention. Anyone tried to argue the mechanics of Magic the Gathering cards with friends. Just imagine if those heated debates were fueled by religious fervor. I can see how all this conflicted started is I guess my point.

Robbie the Gnome

It's as catchy as the Game of Thrones or the Ducktales themes.

Robbie the Gnome

The sheer number of times he goes back-and-forth on Arianism makes you wonder.

Jim McGeehin

And as long as there's only one you, you won't be caught in a schism. When a bunch of people care deeply about something, even the smallest disagreements can get out of hand.

Timothy McLean

Tenkja!

Martin Ockovsky

Twas quite the risk on his part, considering he was supporting a rather fractured cult over the well estabilshed pantheon Romans had worshipped for generations.

Michael Jebbett

When I was learning Church history and doctrine as a wee lass, the Jesuit priest who taught us gave us a convincing argument that Constantine was giving lip service to the Church in order to consolidate his hold on the empire.

Dani McKenzie

You gotta wonder how much faith Constantine really had in this upstart religion, and how much of his motivation was to harness the sheer determination of the faithful for imperial use. I'm saying that he may have seen how these Christians were literally willing to die for their beliefs and thought "if they're that enthusiastic about dying for their God, I wonder if I could get them to die that willingly for my conquests?"

Michael Jebbett

The 'wild guess' at the end of Walpole showed up on screen just as I was starting to eat a snack. I damn near chocked I was laughing so hard. Well done! As to the episode itself? Simply fascinating. In a time when Faith was even more important than now, I can see how these issues could have the huge, empire weakening consequences they did.

Nessf

Despite Arianism's considerably larger impact, I find the Donatist controversy more interesting, because it ties into something I've wondered about considering even modern ideas of morality: Are we Saints or Sinners? By Saint, I mean that mankind are inherently virtuous, that we must not stray from whatever we believe to be moral, and if we do transgress we are lessened. This is pretty much what Donatists believed. For us to be Sinners on the other hand mean that we actively strive to do the right thing, but we are inherently flawed and will make mistakes, and as part of this it's important to recognise when we have erred and make amends where possible. You fall off the horse, but you never stop climbing back on and keep trying to better yourself. As the Traditors - which I believe may be where the word "Traitor" is sourced - might argue, the whole sacrament of penance means we are sinners. We cannot reach perfection, but that doesn't mean we don't try. I'm not going to talk about the modern quandries I was considering when this idea blossomed as we don't need a flame war, but I think it's an interesting question to consider.

RMS Oceanic

Thanks! And this strikes me as an opportunity to share my favorite gif: <a href="https://imgur.com/ZTofSvE" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://imgur.com/ZTofSvE</a>

Extra History

Maybe? I'm not a theologian, although we have a few here who might be able to weigh in. :D The "1 is lesser than 4" would be the Arian doctrine, though.

Extra History

The aim was mainly "get people introduced to the concept" since we're pretty well aware that you can't really explain the trinity in about 30 seconds of cartoon-time. So hopefully we at least managed the modest goal there!

Extra History

Doo doo-doo doo doo doo...

Extra History

Yeah, it can be pretty hard to wrap your head around. But hey! Now at least you have a working familiarity with the concept!

Extra History

I'm Jewish, so although I find this very interesting, I don't really see the big fuss. God is God, man is man.

Discussing religion on the internet? You're braver than I!

Max Hardcastle

The Trinity is one of those things I feel I internally understand but couldn't reliably vocalise, and I'm Catholic. It's like how many people know what "the" or "a" or "of" means but couldn't explain it without examples. Thanks for giving me a way of doing it! Also nitpick/trivia: Constantine did not rename Byzantium Constantinople. He actually wanted to call it New Rome. However Constantinople was an informal name that, much like Istanbul later on, became more popular and then the new official name.

RMS Oceanic

Good job with the Trinity. You explained it as best as anyone could hope to without getting into really deep theology. Don't let the haters get you down! (And much better job this week than last!)

Todd Carter

Would the Trinity argument at 5:35 boil down to a Die being the 1,2,3,4,5,6 but the 2 is not the 1,3,4,5,6? and that the 1 is lesser than the 4?

Laura Galm

I feel the pain of trying to explain the trinity on the Internet. Herculean task and something that's probably gonna start a debate. All I know is that even growing up religious, albeit in one where the trinity is completely separate but equal, it's still a complicated thing to understand.

Aaron hutchinson

Does anyone get stuck with the Actraiser theme stuck in their head for hours after hearing the intro? No? Just me? Ok then...

Dave Hoyt

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeees! And now an edit: I actually got a Catholic friend to explain to me the concept of the Holy Trinity in detail (I'm a Muslim). I wanted to figure out what the deal was. I came out more confused than when I went in.

Hasan Mahmood