Comte de Sats Germain on Nostr: Just found myself reading about "Donatism" - a "heresy" in North Africa during the ...
Just found myself reading about "Donatism" - a "heresy" in North Africa during the time of Augustine.
Their so-called "heresy" was simply that apostates shouldn't be priests. There was a period in which Christians were allowed to return to paganism, and many did so. Then, Constantine became emperor, and the political situation was favorable, so the apostates returned to Christianity. Donatism simply said that they shouldn't be allowed to lead congregations - and I think that makes sense. That makes sense for any group and any set of beliefs. Why would you trust a proven traitor?
But Augustine decided that these donatists were different enough to call them "heretics" and murder them. Here's this carefully worded blurb from wikipedia :
And here's the whole wikipedia page :
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donatism
It is quite obvious that this page has been doctored up to avoid the truth - the early church, during the time of Constantine, was built on the mass murder of Christians. Who is incentived to alter history?
Augustine is the most disgusting early "father" from the early political church. I encourage anyone to dig into this evil character, especially if you are being influenced by a version of a church which venerates him.
This, unfortunately, is the history of the church, in summary :
Christians from the time of Christ until the Council of Nicea had very diverse beliefs, with many interpretations of Christ's words. But Constantine wanted one thing, above all else - casus belli. In 325 AD, he got a perfect, infinitely applicable casus belli. By defining dogma, they could label local variations of Christians as "heretics" and then move against them with force, without opposition from other Christians. Neutralizing Christian opposition was the key to political power - Christians had been aggressively in opposition to Roman power structures. Look into the Christian mob that murdered Hypatia, for a well documented example. The creation of the centralized power structure of "the church" was seen as a victory by most Christians, but the reality is that it was used primarily to murder Christians. What began in 325 AD was a constantly narrowing purity test, where an authority figure redefines spiritual vocabulary and then the congregation must prove their piety by supporting a new level of absurdity - exactly the same process which led modern leftists from opposing state power 30 years ago to now using state power against their enemies and absurd movements like BLM. Same phenomenon. Over 1700 years, the purity tests have continued and moved Christianity so far away from Jesus' teachings that now Christians have zero understanding of Christ or any spiritual concepts, and if you even repeat what Jesus actually said, right after reading it during a bible study, they will scream at you (this happened to me - two screamers simultaneously).
There ya go. In a nutshell... This is why real Christians stay away from churchy people.
Their so-called "heresy" was simply that apostates shouldn't be priests. There was a period in which Christians were allowed to return to paganism, and many did so. Then, Constantine became emperor, and the political situation was favorable, so the apostates returned to Christianity. Donatism simply said that they shouldn't be allowed to lead congregations - and I think that makes sense. That makes sense for any group and any set of beliefs. Why would you trust a proven traitor?
But Augustine decided that these donatists were different enough to call them "heretics" and murder them. Here's this carefully worded blurb from wikipedia :
And here's the whole wikipedia page :
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donatism
It is quite obvious that this page has been doctored up to avoid the truth - the early church, during the time of Constantine, was built on the mass murder of Christians. Who is incentived to alter history?
Augustine is the most disgusting early "father" from the early political church. I encourage anyone to dig into this evil character, especially if you are being influenced by a version of a church which venerates him.
This, unfortunately, is the history of the church, in summary :
Christians from the time of Christ until the Council of Nicea had very diverse beliefs, with many interpretations of Christ's words. But Constantine wanted one thing, above all else - casus belli. In 325 AD, he got a perfect, infinitely applicable casus belli. By defining dogma, they could label local variations of Christians as "heretics" and then move against them with force, without opposition from other Christians. Neutralizing Christian opposition was the key to political power - Christians had been aggressively in opposition to Roman power structures. Look into the Christian mob that murdered Hypatia, for a well documented example. The creation of the centralized power structure of "the church" was seen as a victory by most Christians, but the reality is that it was used primarily to murder Christians. What began in 325 AD was a constantly narrowing purity test, where an authority figure redefines spiritual vocabulary and then the congregation must prove their piety by supporting a new level of absurdity - exactly the same process which led modern leftists from opposing state power 30 years ago to now using state power against their enemies and absurd movements like BLM. Same phenomenon. Over 1700 years, the purity tests have continued and moved Christianity so far away from Jesus' teachings that now Christians have zero understanding of Christ or any spiritual concepts, and if you even repeat what Jesus actually said, right after reading it during a bible study, they will scream at you (this happened to me - two screamers simultaneously).
There ya go. In a nutshell... This is why real Christians stay away from churchy people.