Jumpstarter 1 of 10

Direct Answer Based on David Bercot’s teaching, the “saving” moves became destructive when Nicene leaders tried to protect Christ’s deity but ended up promoting false doctrines and explaining away Jesus’ clear commands, leaving Christianity “thoroughly corrupted.”

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• Athanasius, “in his eagerness to magnify the deity of Christ,” titled Mary “Mother of God,” followed by an “explosion in veneration of Mary.”
• Augustine supported “false teachings” that Mary was “perpetually a virgin” and “lived a sinless life,” and even called deniers “heretics.”
• The church later taught Mary was “bodily assumed to heaven” and “ruled as Queen of heaven,” and “not one word of protest came from the lips of the Nicene theologians.”
• Augustine reinterpreted “do not swear at all” into “unless by necessity,” which Bercot summarizes as making Jesus’ command “a mere suggestion.”
• On retaliation, Augustine said Christians aren’t “precluded from inflicting such vengeance,” so long as it is done “in love” for “correction.”
• Even while they “ably defended the eternal begetting of the Son” and rooted out Arianism, Bercot concludes Christianity then “bore only a faint resemblance” to apostolic faith.