When did the apostasy begin in early Christianity?

By apostasy, I primarily mean the father and the son, Jehovah and Jesus being one entity? What was the early foundations of the trinity? am currently reading through the supposed "Church fathers" to try to get an idea. I know some members here are very knowledgeable about early Christianity.
 
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The God Pill

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Don't bother...you don't need to, and neither does God Pill....Henry Ford was accused of being ignorant by a Chicago News paper...he took them to court. In an effort to prove he was ignorant, the newspaper's lawyer made a great effort to prove things Henry Ford did not know. Finally Henry Ford said, "I don't need to fill my mind with information I do not know, when I can summon any number of people to my aide, who know the answers to the things I don't know". The point....is knowing what you need to know the answers to, and then getting those answers. It doesn't mean you have to be the one with the answers, especially if you know how to get the answers!

When it comes to the trinity, God made us in his image, God does not suffer from Schizophrenia....or it would not be a mental disorder! Their God is a Schizophrenic! That should explain a lot.
Yes any child would recognize the Trinity corresponds to disassociative identity disorder but somehow it escapes over a billion adults they believe in a mentally ill view of god that's definition violates logic on many levels.
 

The God Pill

Well-known member
The Trinity in general as far as I see it is just a spectrum of modalism every trinitarian is more or less modalistic than one another. Most open modalists are a sect of pentecostals. Modalism means that person believes in one god with three personas rather than three persons that somehow are one god. Since the Trinity is a logically impossible position one cannot really believe it as it's described there mind must deviate at least a bit in the direction of modalism, tritheism or subordinationism since the Trinity itself is to an extent a modal-ization of the father, son and holy spirit unless the trinitarian is in conflict with those pentecostals any doubling down on the Trinity will be in the direction of modalism.

The main difference between Oriental orthodox and the Eastern Orthodox is that the Orientals broke off hundreds of years earlier because they believed that the human and divine natures attributed to Jesus were united so he wasn't some split personality with the man Jesus obeying the god nature in him.This means that while both sides are very wrong the catholic, eastern orthodox and mainstream protestant view of Jesus is even more multiple personality than the oriental churches view. The Catholics and most denominations that emerged after the orientals split stuck to dual nature because this was more convenient in explaining away Jesus praying, saying the father is greater than him, obeying his father etc if it was rationalized as the human personality.

I haven't yet tracked precisely how the cross was widely adopted in Christendom but one of the earliest stages appears to be the Epistle of Barnabas which was written by a Christian in Egypt somewhere after the destruction of the temple in 70 AD and before the bar kohhba revolts in 132 AD. In part of it in discussing parts of the old testament he saw as foreshadowing aspects of Christianity he read way too much in to Abraham having 318 people with him when he went to war and rescued Lot. He following the practice of numerical association of letters and brings out that the Greek letter Tau had the value of 300 and 18 had the value of ΙΗ the first two letters of Jesus in Greek a common abbreviation at the time. This could have been the start of Christians thinking there was something special about the torture stake eventually incorporating the pagan phallic symbol. It appears that people thought there was something special about the number 318 for a while because that was the number of bishops it was alleged attended the council of Nicea.

Another thing that might have contributed to the adoption of the cross was that the first Greek letter of the word Christ in Greek was X which had the Ch sound. An X shape sometimes called "st. Andrew's cross" is a diagonal version of the greek cross and it was one of the four shapes of torture stakes that were allegedly used over the course of history. The story of the vision Constantine claimed to have had before the battle associated with his conversion was told near the end of his life reported by fourth century church historians while the story is used to rationalize use of the cross what Constantine saw if he was not lying was not any version of the cross but the letters X/Chi and Ro which is sort of like a P overlapping. Chi-Ro being the first two letters of Christ in Greek. Since this was a mere abbreviation of the title Christ there is no honest way it could be interpreted as supporting use of the cross in any way. In platonic philosophy the "world soul" was created in the shape of an X by the platonic demiurge. (Very different from the gnostic demiurge)
 

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The God Pill

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The guy in this video explains how dual nature christology trinitarianisms logical conclusion is the first century gnostic heresy of docetism the apostle John was in conflict with and that it negates the ransom.
 

The God Pill

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This thread was probably meant as a discussion I don't want to take over by info dumping in a vacuum input, contributions and engagement for artist, and one another are very welcome. Many of us have a lot to share and express.
 
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The God Pill

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In my apostasy research I read four gnostic text last night and today three in the "Thomas" tradition and the hypostasis of the archons. The infancy gospel portrays Jesus at the age span of 5-12 forming birds from clay that come to life, killing and sometimes ressurecting anyone that annoys him, arrogant towards teachers and generally being out of his parents control. I don't think this was the only one that influenced Islam though because the gospel of Thomas is organized as 114 sayings attributed to Jesus and the Quran has 114 suras it's hard for me to believe that's a coincidence. The fake gospels doctrines are at a pretty early stage of the development of the apostates but there is a hint of the Trinity in one of two sayings so it is fair to say the Simonians had a hand in the early stages of the Trinity entering Christian thought.

Thomas the contender is a much later works with clear references to gnostic mythology and doctrines Iraneus mentions in the late 2nd century.

The hypostasis of the archons is a retelling of Genesis 1-6 morphed to fit the gnostics mythology in it the god that created the world is Yaldabaoth also called Samael (one of several common name for the devil at the time) and after he's abyssed the one of his seven archon offspring that takeover is Sabaoth who is equated with the god of the Jews who proceeds to make four cherubs. The Adam and eve parts of it are very weird to.

I like to call the corruption of Christianity as the development of the inner and outer apostasy the inner being the gradual corruption that led to the Catholic church the outer the endless waves of apostate sects that contending with prompted the main body of Christians to grow more centralized/authoritarian in structure and for doctrines to deviate farther and farther from the original state. Gnosticism was one of the most unrelentingly active manifestations historically of the satanic trademark of inverting everything.
 
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The God Pill

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In the ancient world a power/s meant either a prominent angel/s or an emanation/s of God. This is significant because when you read the book of Acts the Samaritans were calling Simon the sorceror the power of God meaning they saw him as either an incarnated angel, the son of God, an emanation of God or an avatar/incarnation of God. A false Christ of sorts. Church fathers in the second century report he went to Rome some point after Peter's rebuke at Rome he claimed he was a god and his harlot companion a goddess that he created and was convincing enough a statue was made of him that was still around a century later.

You can catch the apostle Paul dismissing this nonsense of Simon's several times in his letters as he calls Christ the power and wisdom of God and says carefully concealed in Christ are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Sophia is the Greek word for wisdom gnosis word for knowledge) paul also refers to the knowledge falsely so called and that knowledge puffs up love builds up.
 
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The God Pill

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On a bright note in tracing all the judaizer sects apparently one of the less dysfunctional ones were still around in the 12th century and while clinging to the mosaic law had retained through all the centuries the correct christology and had not adopted Christendom's hellfire doctrine.

Some of the other ones are pretty
weird for example one jewish christian sect in the 2nd and 3rd century were circulating a book by a man they respected that claimed to have had a vision of the son of God as a 96 mile tall angel (probably reminiscent of Jesus in Revelation 10) and the holy spirit as his sister this faction was preaching that Christ was offering Christians that had committed major sin one time since original baptism a couple year window for a second chance if they repented and rebaptized it sounds like there bizzare message probably lined up with ascension of Isaiah and odes of solomon (on it's odd sort of subordinationist tritheistic view of the holy spirit)and shepherd of hermas (on two strikes and you're out rather than one on major sins and an annointed Christian remaining qualified)

While in rare case sects overlapped usually judaizers and gnostics were opposite ends of the spectrum manifestations of issues and sometimes conflictive prejudices among the Jewish or Gentile Christians. Judaizers were prone to rejecting Paul and exalting Jesus half brother James sometimes rejecting all NT books except Matthew or versions of the gospel of the Hebrews while gnostics tended to elevate Paul and Thomas usually marginalizing the other apostles and rejecting the NT with the exception of Luke and Paul's letters.

Usually when jewish people and gnostics intersected it appears to spring from the subset of John the Baptist followers that weren't enthusiastic about Jesus eclipsing him. Simon Magus and his followers seem to have initially targeted them, the Samaritans, Alexandrians and Romans. The sects of the mandeans and manicheans came from this spin off of the baptist's following. Before becoming a Catholic Augustine of Hippo was a Manichean for almost a decade then a neoplatonist a British bishop alive at his time accused him of his former manichean gnosticism influencing his views. The Mandean's see John the Baptist as superior to Jesus and Jesus as a false prophet. They probably were connected to the Johannites that had a major part in the Knights Templars getting weird.

The hypothesis that the Qumran community were Essenes is likely erroneous and usually rooted in largely circular and presuppositive logic. The Sons of Zadok were probably the community John the Baptist family likely joined when they fled to the desert given Herod's genocide if so John would have led them in adulthood. Older maps from the 19th and begining of 20th century support it. This would explain why archaeology has uncovered that Manicheans in China had a recognizable but highly modified version of the very fragmentary book of the giants that was among the dead sea scrolls.
 
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kirmmy

Well-known member
In my apostasy research I read four gnostic text last night and today three in the "Thomas" tradition and the hypostasis of the archons. The infancy gospel portrays Jesus at the age span of 5-12 forming birds from clay that come to life, killing and sometimes ressurecting anyone that annoys him, arrogant towards teachers and generally being out of his parents control. I don't think this was the only one that influenced Islam though because the gospel of Thomas is organized as 114 sayings attributed to Jesus and the Quran has 114 suras it's hard for me to believe that's a coincidence. The fake gospels doctrines are at a pretty early stage of the development of the apostates but there is a hint of the Trinity in one of two sayings so it is fair to say the Simonians had a hand in the early stages of the Trinity entering Christian thought.

Thomas the contender is a much later works with clear references to gnostic mythology and doctrines Iraneus mentions in the late 2nd century.

The hypostasis of the archons is a retelling of Genesis 1-6 morphed to fit the gnostics mythology in it the god that created the world is Yaldabaoth also called Samael (one of several common name for the devil at the time) and after he's abyssed the one of his seven archon offspring that takeover is Sabaoth who is equated with the god of the Jews who proceeds to make four cherubs. The Adam and eve parts of it are very weird to.

I like to call the corruption of Christianity as the development of the inner and outer apostasy the inner being the gradual corruption that led to the Catholic church the outer the endless waves of apostate sects that contending with prompted the main body of Christians to grow more centralized/authoritarian in structure and for doctrines to deviate farther and farther from the original state. Gnosticism was one of the most unrelentingly active manifestations historically of the satanic trademark of inverting everything.
Some in this thread have talked about Gnosticism, including yourself. I always thought that, at it's core, Gnosticism is simply the belief that we cannot know if there is a God or not. I had a coworker tell me one time that being a gnostic is really the wisest course. Atheists believe there is no God, the religious believe there is a God, Gnostics believe you can't know and therefore take the middle road.

From what you and others have said there is much more to it. Am I confused as to the overarching definition of Gnosticism? Maybe I'm thinking of something else.
 

SusanB

Well-known member
Some in this thread have talked about Gnosticism, including yourself. I always thought that, at it's core, Gnosticism is simply the belief that we cannot know if there is a God or not. I had a coworker tell me one time that being a gnostic is really the wisest course. Atheists believe there is no God, the religious believe there is a God, Gnostics believe you can't know and therefore take the middle road.

From what you and others have said there is much more to it. Am I confused as to the overarching definition of Gnosticism? Maybe I'm thinking of something else.
Gnostics. Aren’t they the guys who invented gnocci? I love that food.
 

The God Pill

Well-known member
Some in this thread have talked about Gnosticism, including yourself. I always thought that, at it's core, Gnosticism is simply the belief that we cannot know if there is a God or not. I had a coworker tell me one time that being a gnostic is really the wisest course. Atheists believe there is no God, the religious believe there is a God, Gnostics believe you can't know and therefore take the middle road.

From what you and others have said there is much more to it. Am I confused as to the overarching definition of Gnosticism? Maybe I'm thinking of something else.
It's a pretty common misunderstanding. Gnostic means you claim some special spiritual knowledge/gnosis is the source of salvation not the ransom. Often includes the notion old testament god is evil and eating the tree of knowledge was a good thing.

Agnostic means someone that is in that grey area when it comes to religion neither an atheist nor a theist they admit a lack of knowledge or conviction on the existence of a personal God. They may either simply not care, genuinely uncertain or be very into "spiritual stuff" or aliens and whatnot the "spiritual but not religious types" just no assertion of god/s
 

kirmmy

Well-known member
It's a pretty common misunderstanding. Gnostic means you claim some special spiritual knowledge/gnosis is the source of salvation not the ransom.
Agnostic means someone that is in that grey area when it comes to religion neither an atheist nor a theist they admit a lack of knowledge or conviction on the existence of a personal God. They may either simply not care, genuinely uncertain or be very into "spiritual stuff" or aliens and whatnot the "spiritual but not religious types" just no assertion of god/s
Ah yes, you are correct. I remember now the term used was agnostic. Thanks GP.
 

The God Pill

Well-known member
One story a bit similar to what happened with our brothers and sisters in Romania is that of the Donatist. The Christians in north Africa were pretty much just as corrupted doctrinally as the Catholic church but they were much less enthusiastic about that Roman government getting involved in the church they had undergone persecution at a level where many priests were martyred if they did not compromise on three levels 1. Renounce there faith 2. Engage in worship of the emperor or pagan gods 3. Hand over there congregations copies of the scriptures to be burned. Naturally the Christians that had not yielded to Rome and survived favored the martyrs over the traitors.

In the fourth century the north African Christians broke into two factions the Donatist those that while accepting repentant priests that had betrayed the faith as members would not permit them to have positions of authority again and would not let Constantine and the Pope impose there choices of Roman empire friendly traitors on them on one end and the half that remained Catholic on the other. The Donatist were persecuted at various times Augustine convinced Emperor Honorius to go against them and "humanely" advocated "nudging" the Donatist to rejoin the Catholic church with oppressive laws and stealing their property funds and buildings rather than supporting the government outright slaughtering them.

While holding higher standards and initially favoring remaining less a part of the world than the church of Rome the donatists Catholic opponents decades after the schism associated them with these bands of violent Christian weirdos the Circumcellions who went around with clubs preaching against usury and slavery and attacking roman soldiers in the hope of getting martyred. I haven't researched it enough to agree or disagree with them being connected to Donatism but with the degree of data I know so far one plausible alternative to that hypothesis is that the agitators were a distant offshoot of the Montanists. (New prophecy sect started in the 2nd century associated with the testament of job that remnants of persisted in north Africa in Augustine's time and all the way to the 8th century in some places) the Montanists believed in a succession of prophets from the daughters of Philip and other ones with the gift of prophecy in the new testament. They started with three prophets, allowed women to serve as prophets believed and encouraged those that didn't have that status to pursue prophecy through prayer and fasting.
 
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The God Pill

Well-known member
The fake book "Apocalypse of Peter" is the origin of Christendom's hellfire doctrine it emerged in the 2nd century and Christians were pretty evenly divided over it for over a century. It was one of the four books in the first two centuries AD that got closest to inclusion into the new testament canon the other three being Epistle of Barnabas, 1 Clement and Shepherd of Hermas. The books that made it into the canon but were closest to being excluded were 2 Peter and Revelation. The most prominent thing about apocalypse of Peter in it's description of hell is how it gives us a picture into how much early Christians loathed abortion and infanticide.

In it women who have abortions are set in a lake formed from the blood and gore from all the other punishments, up to their necks. They are also tormented by the spirits of their unborn children, who shoot a "flash of fire" into their eyes. (Those unborn children are "delivered to a care-taking" angel by whom they are educated, and "made to grow up.")

The story is probably the source of the Catholic doctrine of prayers for the dead also the primary reason the Catholic deuterocanon included 2 Macabees was it's support of the doctrine of prayers for the dead as well as why they cut 70 verses out of 2 Esdras that go against that doctrine.
 

Artist77

Member
What I don't understand about the trinity is that according to there dogma, you have three "persons" in One God, the father, the son and the holy spirit. They have distinct personlities. So who exactly is in charge? Is it the father? If it is the father, then why is Christ emphasised? If one person is in charge, then what is the point of the other two and how can they then be God?. Or do they have a committee to make decisions with majority rule. Do they have democratic elections each time a person prays? I thought a house divided against itself cannot stand, so what happens if they disagree? Are they allowed to disagree? If they are not allowed to disagree, then how can they be distinct personalities? If they do disagree then how can God be one? It makes no sense and boggles the mind. I saw a video of Athanasius himself, Sam Shamoun praying to all three. Its Hindu Christianity. Unbelievable this dogma took hold..

I wonder if the common people really believed this nonsense
 
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SusanB

Well-known member
What I don't understand about the trinity is that according to there dogma, you have three "persons" in One God, the father, the son and the holy spirit. They have distinct personlities. So who exactly is in charge? Is it the father? If it is the father, then why is Christ emphasised? If one person is in charge, then what is the point of the other two and how can they then be God?. Or do they have a committee to make decisions with majority rule. Do they have democratic elections each time a person prays? I thought a house divided against itself cannot stand, so what happens if they disagree? Are they allowed to disagree? If they are not allowed to disagree, then how can they be distinct personalities? If they do disagree then how can God be one? It makes no sense and boggles the mind. I saw a video of Athanasius himself, Sam Shamoun praying to all three. Its Hindu Christianity. Unbelievable this dogma took hold..

I wonder if the common people really believed this nonsense
It’s often a case of people being so smart they are stupid if you know what I mean.
 
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