Neo, these paragraphs below explain how Constantine and the Catholic Church suppressed all alternative forms of Christianity to unify the empire for POLITICAL POWER, not truth! What this means is that YOUR version of Christianity was canonized for POWER and POLITICS, NOT TRUTH! That's what you keep missing and forgetting and ignoring!
https://beezone.com/adi-da/esoteric_christianity.html
The Triumph of Pseudo-Christianity
If you watch a TV history of Christianity or read a Protestant or Roman Catholic account of the early church, Christianity’s becoming the official religion of the Roman state during Constantine’s reign is considered a great victory. The only measure of success for these moderns is whether or not a tradition triumphed over all its competitors. Never mind what distorting of the original message had taken place or what atrocities the Church committed. If a particular religion came out on top, it’s to be considered the best.
On the contrary, the formal religion that became known as the Holy Roman Church was and is nothing but a vast repository of false teachings and practices. At the present time, orthodox Christianity, in all its Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant guises, is a horrible deformity of Jesus’s original teachings. Constantine presentint the Nicene heresy for Jesus' blessing
“The Emperor Constantine who, having become a convert to Christianity, soon made his new faith the official religion of the Roman Empire, which he ruled from ancient Byzantium, renamed Constantinople. And so, at about 320 A.D. the Church not only came to glorious power but was given a clearly God-sent opportunity to revenge itself on the descendants of those who had persecuted it for almost three hundred years. Unleashing a reign of terror on those pagans who stubbornly refused the new faith, Constantine and the Church waded deep in blood and apparently enjoyed the experience, for the lions enjoyed pagans as much as they had Christians and the crosses now carried different victims.” - Donovan Joyce. The Jesus Scroll
Whereas the people Jesus befriended were the poor and outcast of society, the bureaucratized “church” began to direct its attentions to the wealthy and politically powerful. Already by the end of the first century C.E., Christians in Rome included members of the Emperor’s household. As Paul, Clement, Marcion, Valentinus, and Origen made clear, the essence of Jesus’s teaching was the esoteric initiation of a select number into the mysteries of the “new being.” Within a hundred years Jesus’s original teachings had been perverted into an ecclesiastical power system: the “triumph” of pseudo-Christianity.
“Christianity, which had been the religion of a community of equal brothers, without hierarchy or bureaucracy, became ‘the Church,’ the reflected image of the absolute monarchy of the Roman Empire.” - Erich Fromm. “The Dogma of Christ
The counterfeit interpretation of Jesus’ teachings became the official, orthodox dogma and the congregations (those called together) became a monolithic “church,” a sacerdotal monstrosity supported by the corrupt Roman emperor Constantine. Constantine had adopted Christianity merely to provide support for his conquest and rule, so he was furious that there were squabbling factions within his adopted faith.
The Nicene Heresy and the Canon
So, in 325 C.E. three hundred and twelve bishops were ordered by Emperor Constantine to work out a creed that would put a stop to theological bickering. The emperor himself, dressed in a purple gown and with a silver diadem, opened the council. The Council of Nicea made it clear that Christianity was to be clearly distinguished from the pagan Platonic heresy. All Christians were henceforth required to believe that Jesus Christ was of the same substance as God (in other words, a god) and only Christ could bring about humankind’s salvation through a person’s belief in his sacrifice for their sins. As the doctrinal orthodoxy decreed by such Councils as Nicea became the official ideology of the Romanized church, the genuine teachers of Jesus’ original message of transformation found it necessary to go underground. This hidden tradition is what we now call Esoteric Christianity.
“Catholicism has long been hostile to the notion of any spiritual power or illumination apart from what is conferred by its own rites. The official view is that the sacraments are both necessary and sufficient for salvation; any talk of higher truths or initiatic knowledge, however circumspect or deferential to Catholic doctrine, is considered subversive. The church tends to regard the esoteric inner circle not as a deeper dimension of the external church but as an inimical fifth column.” - Richard Smoley, Inner Christianity
Even though the Holy Roman Church dictated what dogmas were official, there was still the difficulty of a large number of writings about Jesus which painted very different pictures of him. As the Roman Empire took over the outer, distorted husks of Jesus’ teachings and turned the church into a tyranny, it selected only those writings which would support its autocratic power. In the fourth century C.E., the Roman Catholic Church decreed which books would constitute the Official Scriptures–the Canon. At that point, the books outside the Official Scriptures were known as non-canonical scriptures.
Clement of Alexandria, Marcion, Valentinus, Origen, and other genuine followers of Jesus’ teaching created their own “Gospels,” the good news 5 about Jesus, selecting writings which they felt were central to the original teachings of their master. They included material which was not in the orthodox New Testament (as the official scripture came to be called). During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a large number 6 of non-canonical Christian writings were discovered in the Middle East. Many of these writings come from the non-orthodox tradition of Christianity, especially from the Gnostic strain. If we are to understand the esoteric tradition in Christianity, it is essential that we take into consideration these extra-canonical sources.
“The Lord did everything in a mystery. . . He said, ‘I came to make the things below like the things above, 7 and the things outside like those inside. I came to unite them.'” - The Gospel of Philip (Nag Hammadi Library)
Many parts of the New Testament are dogmas added by later sectarians to support their personal prejudices. For example, many references to Jesus’ actions as fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies were added by persons trying to prove that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah-King. As we examine the New Testament discerningly we discover elements which do not ring true, certain supposed “miracles” and mythological events that cast Jesus in an unfavorable light. It is our responsibility to determine what is genuine and what is counterfeit in the early Christian writings, just as we must discriminate in regard to all teachings. Some of the New Testament and other early writings constitute a record of spiritual experiences which are reproducible in our lives. This is especially true of the central teaching of all these writings: rebirth into a higher consciousness.
“The real Gnosis. . . is a mystical knowledge and experience transcending that appearance of things which the ordinary individual accepts as the only ‘reality.'” - William Kingsland. The Gnosis or Ancient Wisdomin the Christian Scriptures