Yusuf Estes on the Deen Show: Part 4

And so that's how this kicks off, and then the

Nicaea Council offers a resolution on that. Basically, if you don't agree with this, we'll kill you.

It was almost that bad. Was this over the rule of Constantine? Constantine was the one basically who was presiding over the council himself, and yet he was a pagan sun god worshipper.

He was in the cult called Sol Invictus. Sol is sun in Latin. Invictus means invincible.

They believed that the sun was invincible, and they believed that the sun had a sun on earth which was basically the representative of the sun power, etc.

And he considered himself to be that one. And he, only five years before this council, he had actually engaged in a war against some of the people who believed in Jupiter as being the god.

You know the planet Jupiter? And the guy who was the son of Jupiter was killed by him in that war, so he considered himself really the big warrior.

Of course, the vast majority of the over 300 bishops at the

Council of Nicaea did agree that to reject the full and true deity of Christ, which, by the way, was a belief that goes all the way back to the

New Testament. It is traceable through every single generation between the time of the

New Testament straight to the Council of Nicaea. This was not some new belief. This wasn't something, as we're going to hear pretty soon,

Dr. Estes is going to say, this was something that they compromised on to make

Constantine happy. This is completely untrue. They agreed that if you rejected the full deity of Christ, that this separated you from the church, placed you under the very anathema of God, just as the

New Testament had used that terminology to describe those who would preach a false gospel. But in no way did they say, we will kill you.

The state church, and Nicaea was very important in the eventual development of the state church, but that state church did not yet exist.

Remember, until 12 years prior to this, the Roman state had been persecuting the

Christian faith. That had ended over a decade earlier in 313, but still, this was a, shall we say, new situation that existed.

Now Constantine's religious views are much debated to this very day, but since he did not rule over the

Council, and since he did not tell the Council what to decide or what to believe, those views are likewise far more relevant to his political undermining of the

Nicene Council in the decade that followed than anything else. What people didn't realize, and which really demonstrates the ignorance of those who tried to look at Nicaea and say, ah, the

Council of Nicaea did all these things, is that after the Council of Nicaea, for decades on end, the

Nicene faith had to fight for survival, and in fact was a minority view against the

Arians for a couple of decades during that period of time. This was primarily due to political maneuvering on the part of leaders in various places, but still it had to fight for its final establishment, and it did so on the basis of the inspired text of Scripture, not through political maneuverings.

Finally, I have no idea what Eusebius is referring to when he talks about sometime around the year 320,

Constantine is engaged in some battle with followers of Jupiter. I've seen nothing about anything around AD 320 that Constantine was involved with that would be in any way relevant to that claim.

But to come back to this Trinity business, when Constantine convened this

Council, what he was looking for was absolution. He wanted to be rid of his guilt and sin for having drowned his, or actually boiled, boiling his wife and boiled his son, because of the fear that they would try to compete with him for his position.

Talk about insecurity here. Well, in any case, he found a way to get it done.

One sect of Christianity said that if he would say that Jesus was the

Son of God and died for his sins, then they would forgive him of his sins.

And the trade -off was then that the Roman government would now be forced to accept this particular sect of Christianity as the royal or the official church of the realm.

And with that, this gave these bishops a good position.

We are moving farther and farther into the really fanciful, almost conspiracy theory level stuff.

I mean, I know there's stuff on the web where people make stuff up about Constantine and stuff like that, but again, it's not scholarly material.

It gets farther and farther away from anything that can be called scholarly. For example, the story of Constantine's execution of Crispus and Fausta, which was just mentioned, boiling his wife.

It's difficult to know what truly happened. One can adopt the very worst view of Constantine if you wish, and that may well be true.

There are less harsh ways of viewing the events. But the fact of the matter is, for our purposes, since this took place after the

Council of Nicaea, not before it, Estus' claim is simple fantasy.

He presents it as if he's looking for redemption for having done this, and he did it the year afterwards.

So a little bit of a historical problem there. What is more, this idea about, well, he was offered forgiveness of sins, all the rest of the stuff.

Constantine was not even baptized until 337, 12 years down the road, which at the time was a common practice, actually.

But still, it was way down the road. So all of this stuff about trying to get into his mind and know why he wanted to do this, that, or the other thing is just ridiculous.

There is no evidence also, whatsoever, of some kind of a tradeoff, some kind of a political deal, between a particular sect of Christianity and Constantine in regards either to the forgiveness of sins, or the establishment of Christianity as a state religion, or anything of the kind.

Constantine's concern, actually, from scholarly sources, was rather pragmatic.

And that is, the Arian controversy was causing dissension, and he needed a unified

Christian church to help keep peace, especially because Christians made up so many of the lower classes, the slaves, the workers.

And so to have them distracted and maybe even fighting with one another over theological issues while standing out in the field someplace is not a good thing when the emperor wants to have peace in Rome.

And so, once again, we just wonder, where is he getting all of this stuff? And how can he presume to mind -read and, of course, just the error of putting the execution of Fausta before Nicaea, when it was after Nicaea.

The accuracy of this information is really bad. Because prior to that time, you know, the

Roman government was killing people who were Christians and using them for entertainment.

So up until then, if I get this straight, correct me if I'm wrong, I don't want to perverge your mouth, that we had a stream of true monotheism coming from one direction.

Then we had another stream coming from another direction, and it seems that this direction of the

Trinity came over and Romanized Christianity, with all their traditions that were going on.

No, I don't think so. I don't think that's what we're saying here. The more you study this, I don't think you'll see that Christianity became influenced by that.

Once again, we have to remind the viewer that Constantine had actually ended the imperial persecution of Rome in 313, 12 full years before the

Council of Nicaea. Any theories that, well, he was holding persecution over the head of the

Christians and reinstituting it, which, interestingly enough, does start later. Truly, in the apostate, you have some issues at that point.

But that's not an issue in regards to Constantine at this particular point in time. Though, the involvement of the

Roman Empire into the affairs of the church that starts with the Council of Nicaea is monumental indeed.

What it would eventually develop into, no one at that time could possibly have guessed. What would eventually be seen in the papacy of the 11th or 12th century, or something like that.

But it was the very first step. And it's good to hear Eusebius deny the very common

Islamic view, the very common Islamic claim, that you have this one pure monotheistic strain and then paganism coming in.

Christianity has always been monotheistic. You can deny it all you want, but if you're doing so on the basis of your religion, then your religion is forcing you to lie, to believe a lie, to speak an untruth.

Christianity is monotheistic. At its core, at its foundation, that's what's definitional of the

Christian faith. And so to say otherwise is to misrepresent the truth, and no one should have to do that to maintain their own religious beliefs.