From Bart Ehrman's Lost Christianities pages 251-2
Quite a useful little book - especially for blind xtians who think their shit was handed down "from god" instead of massaged by men!
Quote:This is not to say, however, that proto-orthodox Christians were absolutely successful in producing a consensus on every important point of faith and practice. Indeed, as soon as the major theological issues of the second and third centuries were more or less resolved, others appeared to take their place. The battles fought in later centuries were no less harsh, and the polemic against “false teachers” was no less vitriolic. Quite the contrary, as the options narrowed, the debates intensified.
To take one example: Once proto-orthodoxy had established that Christ was both human and divine, the relationship between his humanity and divinity still needed to be resolved. How could Christ be both a man and God? Was it that Christ had a human body but that his human soul was replaced by a soul that was divine? If so, then how was he “fully” human? Or was it that the incarnate Christ was two separate persons, one divine and one human? If that were the case, would that not mean he was half divine and half human, rather than fully both? Or was it that he was one solitary person, but that within that person he had two natures, one fully divine and one fully human? Or does he have just one nature, that is at one and the same time both fully divine and fully
human? All of these options were proposed and hotly debated over the course of the fourth and fifth centuries.
Quite a useful little book - especially for blind xtians who think their shit was handed down "from god" instead of massaged by men!
