super-theolibs and theological conservatives alike dont want you to understand that most of the major groups condemned as heretical genuinely were wrong but that agreeing with them doesnt make you evil and there are far worse things to be than a heretic

@lizzie I may be a heretic but you're MEAN and that's WORSE

arianism forgets the greatest wonder of the faith and genuinely better lends itself to authoritarianism. pelagianism fails to see the active presence of God in every good thing. it is, however, still better to be a pelagian and fail to see than to be a calvinist augustinian who still fails to see love and instead imagines tyranny

@lizzie i'm just learning that calvinism is also heretical (and so surely that's why theyre wrong) (joke)

@ikeWren i wish lmao

@lizzie does arianism demonstrably better lend itself to authoritarianism? for instance, did the german arian kingdoms in the mid-first-millennium demonstrate more religiously-motivated authoritarianism than the nicene christians? my impression is that it tended to be the opposite, although there *was* arian authoritarianism, such as under the Vandal king Huneric. but i would attribute both nicene and arian authoritarianism far more to political factors than creedal ones

@lillian yeah political factors do drive political actions more than anything else. i think the fact that it misses the beauty of the incarnation is way more relevant.

ig i hadn’t really though v hard abt that end of things and had rolled with an idea id heard

@lizzie i find this stuff kinda agonizing. creedal definitions on all sides are wrapped up in ancient politicking, and the theological aesthetics that grow out of those creeds can develop in a million ways. like, there's a sense in which Incarnation is taken as God giving up power to become a servant, a friend, and a fellow creature. it can also be the opposite, replacing the inexpressible God in boundless light with a fixed historical body spoken for by an institutional church. often it's both!

@lizzie you get the same thing with monophysitism, for example, where on the one side monophysites were fierce advocates of "God suffered for us on the Cross" when nicene christians still called that damnable heresy, but monophysites have also most thoroughly denied the animal reality of Jesus as having a body like ours. these doctrinal definitions feel less like discrete objects to me and more like broad aesthetic movements, played around with by animals for hate, power, love, & everything else

@lillian
> these doctrinal definitions feel less like discrete objects to me and more like broad aesthetic movements, played around with by animals for hate, power, love, & everything else

this is a lot of why i take a softer position on heresy. it fundamentally is a matter of this, however i do think there is a genuine pursuit of God within these broad aesthetic movements and i think it is good to find oneself traveling within the stream of the community of the church stretching through time since i think there is a general animating guidance of God. it is however better to diverge for the sake of loving better than to follow and love less.
kind of a tangent but this isnt to say that i dont think there is an animating guidance of God in other religions either. i wonder if my thoughts on the distinction between lying within and drinking wisdom from has more to do with christian conceptions of dogma. idk hmm