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nydus/A Short History of the WorldPublic
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Table of Contents

XXXVIII THE DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINAL CHRISTIANITY

MOSAIC OF SS. PETER AND PAUL POINTING TO A THRONE, ON GOLD  BACKGROUND
MOSAIC OF SS. PETER AND PAUL POINTING TO A THRONE, ON GOLD BACKGROUND From the Ninth Century original, in the Church of Sta. Prassede, Rome (In the Victoria and Albert Museum)

St. Paul familiarized his disciples with the idea that Jesus, like Osiris, was a god who died to rise again and give men immortality. And presently the spreading Christian community was greatly torn by complicated theological disputes about the relationship of this God Jesus to God the Father of Mankind. The Arians taught that Jesus was divine, but distant from and inferior to the Father. The Sabellians taught that Jesus was merely an aspect of the Father, and that God was Jesus and Father at the same time just as a man may be a father and an artificer at the same time; and the Trinitarians taught a more subtle doctrine that God was both one and three, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. For a time it seemed that

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