How do I learn Christianity as Jesus taught it? It is proven fact that the Bible as we know it was created during the council of nicaea from papers written after Jesus death. I want to learn what Jesus taught, not what a they decided I should learn.
The New Testament was written by the Apostles of Christ, as He commissioned them to do. You learn about Christ from His emissaries.
And before you tell me that its just stuff written after His death, we know these key facts from both secondary sources and the documents themselves:
a) Some of the writers relied on their own notes written during Jesus’ ministry. The one who was not there (Luke) did extensive research with the people who were there, to create his Gospel. For instance, we know that he interviewed Mary, Jesus’ mother, and several of the other women, personally. We also know that he, or one of the other disciples did on his behalf, captured the genealogy of Jesus through Mary’s lineage prior to the destruction of the Temple. That speaks to an early date. Probably many years before Paul’s final visit to Jerusalem; because after Paul’s visit, the Temple authorities were much less willing to cooperate with the emerging Christian church. So, it would have been nearly impossible for someone to research Jesus’ genealogy after that.
b) All of the teachings coincide with the Prophetic Gospel as written in the Old Testament. Paul relies extensively on this, and commends those who searched the OT writings to validate his message (see Acts 17:11). Paul also tells us that he had direct revelation from Jesus himself, during his years of solitude between the Damascus experience and when he went to Jerusalem to present himself later.
c) The sheer volume of the copies of the New Testament documents dwarfs anything else in antiquity – and were so widespread that archeologists continued to find copies, and even fragments, for centuries. These of course were in places that were demolished by war and changes of occupation over the centuries, so that we can approximate very well that those documents were in wide circulation well before Nicea.
So, let’s stop all of this dishonest revision about Nicea. Nicea’s contribution is that it codified what was known and passed down from the Apostles through faithful men, because some church leaders had begun to make up divergent theologies. It was NOT imposed by Constantine; rather it was authorized by Constantine to help the Bishops forge a united faith now that they were no longer underground due to persecution. Christianity is not an invention of Rome, in fact the best we can say about Roman Catholic Christianity is that it is a divergent form of Christianity from the rest of the Christian world – which by itself proves that global Christianity was not imposed by them.
So, you learn Christianity from the Bible; and in community with others who believe and practice the faith that is given there.
