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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Ferred (talk | contribs) at 01:01, 7 November 2016 (→English language change in "The First Council of Nicaea"). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Template:Vital article


Rfc: Did Constantine and Licinius legalize Christianity?

NAC: Consensus is that the RFC is invalid because it does not ask a question about what the article should state, and that a new RFC is needed for any questions about the wording of the article. Robert McClenon (talk) 06:59, 6 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Was Christianity legalized throughout the Roman Empire by Constantine or Galerius?Ocyril (talk) 16:39, 20 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for commenting. The source for the Edict of Toleration, Lactantius (cited in the wiki article you mention), attributes the Edict to Galerius...there is no mention of Licinius or Constantine. The wiki article says, "The Edict of Toleration by Galerius was issued in 311 in Nicomedia by the Roman Tetrarchy of Galerius, Constantine and Licinius, officially ending the Diocletian persecution of Christianity" but I have no clue why they would attribute it to Galerius, Constantine, and Licinius (it doesn't say this in Lactantius). On the other hand i wouldn't be surprised if it was actually issued in the name of the Tetrarchy (which would include Maximinus also, not just Licinius, Constantine, and Galerius) and Lactantius just left that fact out. But this would just be because a law would be promulgated in the name of all four emperors (as was usually the custom in the tetrarchy). In actual fact the law was issued by Galerius, on his own initiative. I appreciate you pointing out the article on the Edict of Toleration; the fact that the article makes no sense is discouraging me however...Wikipedia is riddled with errors.Ocyril (talk) 19:24, 24 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Can you elaborate, especially in the light of the discussion of on this talk page. HOW did he "legalize" it, for instance...what law did he pass, that changed the legal status of Christianity in the Empire?Ocyril (talk) 00:39, 10 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Invalid RFC: Per WP:V and WP:NOR policies, this does not appear to be a valid WP:RFC. The question is a matter for source research, not something for the WP editing community to make up it's own consensus about. If someone's just curious, this question belongs at the WP:REFDESK; RFCs are for editorial not content-factual matters. Good examples of RfC topics are article focus, reliability issues surrounding a source, whether original research is happening, etc.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:00, 12 November 2014 (UTC) Clarification: I wrote imprecisely (RFCs can address content: "Requests for comment (RfC) is an informal process for requesting outside input concerning disputes, policies, guidelines, article content, or user conduct..."). RFCs are not for Wikipedians to engage in their own process of consensus about the facts; that's original research. When RFCs are about content they're about whether the content is relevant, whether it accurately reports what the reliable sources say, whether it is citing actually reliable sources, etc. What you have at this article appears to be sources disagreeing, and the solution to that is to note in the article that sources disagree, and how, not try to come to some kind of wiki-tribunal decision as to what the facts are. Only external sources can tell us what the facts are.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  16:15, 15 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thanks for responding. I understand and agree with what you are saying about the purpose of an RFC. I think the article should reflect what the sources say, and the relative value of those sources. How is the RFC "invalid"? The article currently does not reflect disagreement in the sources and I am citing sources that cannot be left out of the article. Please look at the edits and discussion if you have a chance, thanks.Ocyril (talk) 00:14, 16 November 2014 (UTC) comment moved here from User talk:SMcCandlish by same.[reply]
      • The RFC doesn't pose a question about what sources are being used, but a question about the facts of who legalized Christianity throughout the Roman Empire, ergo invalid RFC. I would suggest closing it and re-opening a properly formulated question about the apparent dispute over what sources are being used. Or maybe just open a regular talk page discussion about that; it need not be an RFC unless resolution here among the article's everyday editors proves intractable. I'm not trying to berate you for opening an RFC or anything; it's just that this particular RFC doesn't ask the right kind of question. If you believe that valid sources are being excluded for PoV-pushing or OR-pushing reasons, there are WP:NOTICEBOARDS available for dispute resolution. The article should certainly be based on the available, reliably-published sources, and appropriate, not WP:UNDUE, weight given to the hypotheses presented in them, based on their relative reliability.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:20, 18 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Where to put Thalia quotes and extracts

Hi, I just did a rearrangement of sections without deleting any content. The extended quotes of translations of the Thalia were under "Arius' Doctrine," which should instead be reserved for summaries of what Arius believed. Then there was another section called "Extant writings," and there was a paragraph on the Thalia, but the quotes from the Thalia were not there. So I moved the whole section on the Thalia to "Extant Writings," putting the old paragraph from Extant Writings on the Thalia at the top of this new section. There may now be some duplication requiring style editing. This should create the appropriate space for further quotes and translations from the Thalia.Jroo222 (talk) 18:08, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I have added a long quote from the Thalia in ancient Greek, copied from Hans-Georg Opitz' edition, which is now available online. I inserted the translation by Aaron West, currently online. Since the quotes that were already on the page were also directly from West's translation, I deleted these to avoid duplication, but I retained the previous editor's comments on the content of the Thalia in a fused sentence. The only information I deleted was the previous editor's introduction to the quotes, which stated that the citations came from the Discourses Against Arians; the quotes in fact come from De Synodis. I also fused the introductions into one and eliminated duplicate statements, for example folding all glosses of the word Thalia into one parenthesis.

I am carefully copyediting my Ancient Greek and making sure the English glosses are beneath the correct corresponding lines. Apologies for any errors that may have crept in, I will attempt to double-check from time to time and try to be as accurate as possible. Original sources (Opitz, West) are online. Jroo222 (talk) 21:40, 16 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Good job! 97.95.125.122 (talk) 01:22, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. Appreciate the encouragement. Jroo222 (talk) 21:13, 18 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

ΟΚ. Ι just finished copyediting the ancient Greek, taken from the Opitz edition available at present through the Internet Archive. The first time I typed it in I was a bit hasty and there were errors on every line, mixed up lines, mismatched Greek and English lines, missing lines, every error imaginable. I think it is fixed up now; as far as I can tell the Ancient Greek of the extract of the Thalia from Athanasius' De Synodis is exactly as it is in Opitz' edition down to the accents.Jroo222 (talk) 21:49, 17 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You did a good job in this article :)--Anẓar (talk) 02:07, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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English language change in "The First Council of Nicaea"

I did 1 change in section "The First Council of Nicaea", 3rd paragraph: "But Athanasius is seen as doing the legwork and concluded [...] that the Son was of the same essence (homoousios) THAN the Father" to "But Athanasius is seen as doing the legwork and concluded [...] that the Son was of the same essence (homoousios) AS the Father", as "of the same essence than" was a strange English formulation. That strange formula containing "of the same essence than" also appears in the referenced work: Matt Perry - Athanasius and his Influence at the Council of Nicaea - QUODLIBET JOURNAL.

Now English is not my first language, so I am not aware of all the implications of the formula "of the same essence than", as compared to "of the same essence as". Maybe the former one has some meaning. Maybe someone who is proficient and knowledgeable in the English language may give more information here. Ferred (talk) 17:13, 6 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]


I changed it again to "that the Son was of the same essence (homoousios) WITH the Father". This is motivated by the fact that the formula "with the Father" seems to be preferred in many texts; firstly in the Nicene Creed, also in the article on Homoousion, but also in Athanasius, Discourse 1 Against the Arians, part 9, http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/28161.htm : "Very Son of the Father, natural and genuine, proper to His essence, Wisdom Only-begotten, and Very and Only Word of God is He; not a creature or work, but an offspring proper to the Father's essence. Wherefore He is very God, existing one in essence with the very Father". This formula may carry a significant meaning.

A quote from the original source would be better. Does the Athanasian Trinitarian defense refer to Athanasius' "De Decretis"? This is not clear. Ferred (talk) 23:47, 6 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]


Further quotes from Athanasius, De Decretis, http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2809.htm :

part 19: "For neither are other things as the Son, nor is the Word one among others, for He is Lord and Framer of all; and on this account did the Holy Council declare expressly that He was of the essence of the Father, that we might believe the Word to be other than the nature of things originate, being alone truly from God"

part 20: "But the Bishops [...] were again compelled on their part to collect the sense of the Scriptures, and to re-say and re-write what they had said before, more distinctly still, namely, that the Son is 'one in essence ' with the Father: by way of signifying, that the Son was from the Father, and not merely like, but the same in likeness , and of showing that the Son's likeness and unalterableness was different from such copy of the same as is ascribed to us, which we acquire from virtue on the ground of observance of the commandments. For bodies which are like each other may be separated and become at distances from each other, as are human sons relatively to their parents (as it is written concerning Adam and Seth, who was begotten of him that he was like him after his own pattern Genesis 5:3); but since the generation of the Son from the Father is not according to the nature of men, and not only like, but also inseparable from the essence of the Father, and He and the Father are one, as He has said Himself, and the Word is ever in the Father and the Father in the Word, as the radiance stands towards the light (for this the phrase itself indicates), therefore the Council, as understanding this, suitably wrote 'one in essence,' that they might both defeat the perverseness of the heretics, and show that the Word was other than originated things. "

part 30: "the Word is the Father's Image, and one in essence with Him" Ferred (talk) 00:37, 7 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]


The meaning of "[the Son was of the same essence (homoousios) with the Father, and] was eternally generated from that essence of the Father" is not very clear with respect to the word "eternally". Ferred (talk) 00:57, 7 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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