First Council of Nicaea

But Constantine went further than mere tolerance, and he poured imperial funds into church construction and granted clergy tax exemptions.

He also inserted himself into theological disputes like the Council of Nicaea in 325, where he attempted to shape Christianity in a way that made it beneficial to the state.

The old pagan institutions didn't vanish overnight, but they were now competing with a rival that had the emperor's imperial treasury behind it.

Temple revenues were gradually redirected, and pagan priesthoods slowly lost their public funding.

The book of Jude refers to Enoch.

But, of course, Enoch did not get past the Council of Nicaea in the fourth century.

So in the modern canon, you can't find it, although it's easy to find the book.

I've read it several times.

yeah yeah so in the early church interesting

uh the the evidence that we have from the church fathers um the anti-nicene fathers the the the um the leaders of the church whose writings we have, there are other leaders of the church, obviously, whose writings we don't have, but the leaders of the church whose writing we have, writings we have, who were ministering before the Council of Nicaea, which was 325, before about the time the church began to be the endorsed state religion of the Roman Empire.

The church earlier than that tended to be premillennial.

And it was for sure the dominant voice among the church fathers.

And he's Christian.

And what he relies upon to help frame the safe, humane, dignified implementation of AI is this agent that he's developed called based on the Bible and the teachings of the Fathers of the Catholic Church, from Constantine, so the Council of Nicaea, all the way up to the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas.

I'm like, who are you? Are you kidding me? And he said, well, what's funny is we weren't supposed to be on this plane.

We were on another flight earlier in the morning.

But the problem is that you have to have your blinders on to not see the mountain of Catholic doctrines represented, even in just the anti-Nicene fathers.

You know, before the Council of Nicaea is what I like to focus on because everyone likes to say after Nicaea is all corrupted.

But you're like, I can prove it to you with just the first 200 years in the Bible.

You nailed it.

His slogan was, there was when he was not.

In AD 325, the Council of Nicaea condemned that slogan by name as a heresy that to this day is called Arianism.

But Arius, as you may know, is still with us.

Jehovah's Witnesses teach that Jesus is God's first creation, that he's Michael the archangel.

If you want to look into these, you can, right? The early Christological heresies.

But what happens is over the centuries, up until especially 451, the church has a council in 451, has councils before that, the Council of Nicaea is in 325, Council of Constantinople is 381.

And Council of Chalcedon is in 451, where they define very clearly, this is what has happened in the incarnation, in the fact that God has become man.

This is who Jesus is.

So all monastic communities attribute that communal living to Pachomius.

And then, of course, Athanasius, you know, in the Council of Nicaea, you know, defended the whole world from the Aryan heresy, you know, and Contramundo, you know, the whole world is against you, Athanasius, and so I will be against the world.

Yeah.

was attributed to St. Athanasius and St. Cyril of Alexandria.