Proper Christian living in a multi-religious context

Originally posted by Conrau K
Well, I can be patient. When you decide to use it, maybe then post.

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
i have been using my powers of reason throughout, you are content to rehash fourth century dogma, when you decide to look at the text objectively, then you may have recourse to your own powers of reason.

I think it is quite obvious that Eusebius meant Easter. Eusebius was writing during the time of the Council of Nicaea which wrote this:

We further proclaim to you the good news of the agreement concerning the holy Easter, that this particular also has through your prayers been rightly settled; so that all our brethren in the East who formerly followed the custom of the Jews are henceforth to celebrate the said most sacred feast of Easter at the same time with the Romans and yourselves and all those who have observed Easter from the beginning.

Originally posted by Conrau K
Sure, Robbie, use your powers of reason. I have never asked you to put aside your intellect. I have asked you to be intellectually honest. A few posts ago I put forward six reasons why your interpretation makes no sense; you did not answer them. I at least want you to explain how you know that when Eusebius wrote 'paschal feast' you know that he means 'Lord ...[text shortened]... If your conclusion is based on reason, such an answer should be persuasive to me as well.

In obedience to this Scriptural mandate, true Christians held this observance 9lords evening meal) every year on the 14th of Nisan. However, in time, people also began to celebrate Jesus resurrection. The New Encyclopædia Britannica explains that the [b]“earliest Christians celebrated the Lords Passover at the same time as the Jews, during the night of the first (paschal) full Moon of the first month of spring (Nisan 14-15). By the middle of the 2nd century, most churches had transferred this celebration to the Sunday after the Jewish feast.”[/b]

The book Seasonal Feasts and Festivals says: “It was apparently not until towards the end of the fourth century in Jerusalem that Good Friday and Easter Day were kept as separate commemorations.”

Some scholars believe that because of the growing enmity between professed Christians and the Jews, some leaders of Christendom did not want their most important holiday to correspond exactly in date with the most important Jewish holiday. This attitude led to a change. In time most of Christendom began to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus on the first Sunday after the full moon that follows the spring equinox and made this its most important religious celebration. In effect they downgraded to a lower position the celebration of Jesus’ death.

What does the Bible have to say about Easter? Of course, the Scriptures give ample testimony to the fact that Jesus was resurrected. The resurrection of Christ is a basic doctrine of true Christianity. The apostle Paul clearly believed this. He said: “If Christ has not been raised up, our preaching is certainly in vain, and our faith is in vain. Further, if Christ has not been raised up, your faith is useless; you are yet in your sins.”—1 Corinthians 15:14, 17.

Nonetheless, nowhere does the Bible even hint at an annual celebration of Jesus resurrection. The historian Socrates Scholasticus admitted: “The Saviour and his apostles have enjoined us by no law to keep this feast: nor in the New Testament are we threatened with any penalty, punishment, or curse for the neglect of it.”

More recently The Christian Century magazine stated in an article on Easter: ‘Early Christians began celebrating the resurrection in the second century.’ Hence, Easter was introduced well after the death of all the apostles and after the Bible was completed.

Originally posted by robbie carrobieIn obedience to this Scriptural mandate, true Christians held this observance 9lords evening meal) every year on the 14th of Nisan. However, in time, people also began to celebrate Jesus resurrection. The New Encyclopædia Britannica explains that the [b]“earliest Christians celebrated the Lords Passover at the same time as the Jews, during the nig r was introduced well after the death of all the apostles and after the Bible was completed.[/b]

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
it is my evaluation Conrau, i do not expect you to agree with it, it has persuaded no one but me., nor can it. i have stated time and again why i feel the text cannot mean that the Asiatic church celebrated the lords evening meal, the Eucharist as you term it every day, i really dont want to have to do it again. if that is dishonesty to you, then s ...[text shortened]... evaluation, as for me, well, i have a clean conscience in that i stated what was evident to me.

Originally posted by Conrau K
Now you are just playing with words. There is a difference between 'the Lord's evening meal' and 'the Lord's feast'. Eusebius does not say that the issue concerned the former. A feast is not a meal. It is clear that the Asiatic church did celebrate the Eucharist outside the pascha because Polycarp quite happily celebrated it and there is no suggestion of fo ...[text shortened]... f other major quartodecimans, Melito and Polycrates for example, celebrated the Eucharist.

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
he did not quite happily celebrate it, now you are being silly, it was a token gesture, others of a more sensitive conscience refrained, also you will note the above reference to the new encyclopaedia Britannica, not a Jehovahs witness publication, which also states that the early christians celebrated the lords evening meal on the day of the Jewish passover.

Originally posted by Conrau K
The Britannica does not mention the 'Lord's evening meal', only you do. You are making stuff up. All the Britannica says is that this issue concerned the date of the Lord's passover. I suspect that if the full article were posted, there would be a mention of Easter just like all the every other online encyclopedia.

Again, I find it hard to imagine that ts and deacons which he claimed was taught by the apostle John. Yet do the JWs have that?

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
what are the chances of this fact percolating into the depths of your psyche and bestirring a mechanism of understanding? remote? the lords evening meal, is as i have been saying for the past ten thousand posts, the lords passover. why you cannot understand this simple statement i do not know. i think it must have something to do with lack of spi ...[text shortened]... hey were very caring to say the least, quite different from the ones in the U.K i hasten to add.

then my dear Conrau, you must take it upon trust, from one whose qualification issues forth from God 🙂 actually Conrau, almost every reference that i have researched on line equates the lords passover with the lords evening meal, which seems quite convincing, given the similar points of reference, what else could it be? it certainly cannot be Easter, for there is no mandate given and therefore none would have been handed down by the apostles.

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
then my dear Conrau, you must take it upon trust, from one whose qualification issues forth from God 🙂

Another major point is that Eusebius says that the quartodecimans did not have the apostolic tradition, as he wrote:

A question of no small importance arose at that time [A.D. 190]. For the parishes of all Asia . . . held that the fourteenth day of the moon, on which day the Jews were commanded to sacrifice the lamb, should be observed as the feast of the Savior's Passover. . . . But it was not the custom of the churches in the rest of the world to end it at this time, as they observed the practice which, from Apostolic Tradition, has prevailed to the present time, of terminating the fast [of Lent] on no other day than on that of the Resurrection of our Savior.

You quoted Socrates Scholasticus above and so I have furrowed through his work to see his comments on the quartodecimans. If Robbie really regards Socrates as an authority, then this extract should be very compelling:

In Asia Minor most people kept the fourteenth day of the moon, disregarding the sabbath: yet they never separated from those who did otherwise, until Victor, bishop of Rome, influenced by too ardent a zeal, fulminated a sentence of excommunication against the Quartodecimans in Asia. Wherefore also Irenæus, bishop of Lyons in France, severely censured Victor by letter for his immoderate heat; telling him that although the ancients differed in their celebration of Easter, they did not desist from intercommunion. Also that Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, who afterwards suffered martyrdom under Gordian, continued to communicate with Anicetus bishop of Rome, although he himself, according to the usage of his native Smyrna, kept Easter on the fourteenth day of the moon, as Eusebius attests in the fifth book of his Ecclesiastical History. While therefore some in Asia Minor observed the day above-mentioned, others in the East kept that feast on the sabbath indeed, but differed as regards the month. The former thought the Jews should be followed, though they were not exact: the latter kept Easter after the equinox, refusing to celebrate with the Jews; 'for,' said they, 'it ought to be celebrated when the sun is in Aries, in the month called Xanthicus by the Antiochians, and April by the Romans.' In this practice, they averred, they conformed not to the modern Jews, who are mistaken in almost everything, but to the ancients, and to Josephus according to what he has written in the third book of his Jewish Antiquities. Thus these people were at issue among themselves. But all other Christians in the Western parts, and as far as the ocean itself, are found to have celebrated Easter after the equinox, from a very ancient tradition.