This was the other objection
Actually the Council of Carthage book with the heavenly witness quote was done by four bishops only:
Januarius of Zattara (Kef Benzioune),
Villaticus of Casae Medianae,
Boniface of Foratiana and
Boniface of Gratiana.
[Victor of Vita: History of the Vandal Persecution, Translated with introduction and notes by JOHN MOORHEAD, p.63]
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And a third
You also might want to address my other point, which is that the
Liber Fidei Catholicae is essentially a synopsis of Vigilius’s (extreme) Latin Trinitarian propaganda, and so doesn't represent a consensus of the orthodox, and is unlikely to have been admitted or read by the Arians, who forbade Latin representation at the Council of Cathage.
https://forums.carm.org/threads/jer...gate-new-testament.10317/page-23#post-1586752
https://forums.carm.org/threads/jer...gate-new-testament.10317/page-23#post-1584462
However one thing seems apparent : The
Liber Fidei Catholicae appears to be linked to Vigilius's (a then African Bishop) contemporaneous fictionalized book (the dialogues in it are fictionalized), "Dialogue against the Arians, Sabellians and Photinians" written in North Africa around that time. Vigilius was by all accounts, a hyper-trinitarian fanatic, and so your conclusion that all the hundreds of African bishops had even read the
Liber Fidei Catholicae, let alone subscribed to it (or its purposed Johannine Comma), seems very far-fetched.
"In spite of its central conceit, the
Dialogue against the Arians, Sabellians and Photinians is not part of the feverish doctrinal wrangling of the Constantinian Greek East. Rather, it belongs to the Vandal Africa of its author Specifically, this text must predate another work by Vigilius, probably written circa 470-482. Vigilius is listed as the most recently consecrated bishop in the province of Byzacena in the Register of 484. At some point soon after 484, the new bishop of Thapsa reworked the text of the Dialogue, adding the historical preface, a third book, which extends the head-to-head between Athanasius and Arius, and a judicial sententia, which summarizes all four debaters’ arguments and hands the victory to the bishop of Alexandria. This is an imaginary dialogue, drawing on the resources of past church conflicts to help its readership make sense of pressing present-day issues."
.
"the Dialogue spoke directly to the interests of Vigilius’s ecclesiastical contemporaries. The doctrinal talking points of his Athanasius and Arius overlap extensively with those laid out in the
Book of the Catholic Faith at the Conference of Carthage in 484. Vigilius’s Athanasius and his Nicene contemporaries focused on the question of the Incarnation, arguing that Christ was not generated from anything external to God and that the divine power was unconstrained by “natural necessities” in that generation. When called upon by Huneric to defend their faith against Homoian accusations of heresy, the bishops marshaled the same arguments that “Athanasius” used against “Arius.” Given the similarities of both versions of the Dialogue, a reciprocal relationship seems likely.
The first edition, written perhaps only a few years before the conference, likely influenced the authors of the Book of the Catholic Faith. Vigilius may have been present at the conference to hear it read out********: his second edition, written a few years after, shows knowledge of the edict that resulted from the conference. The curiosity of the Dialogue’s origin and format should not obscure its significance. Vigilius’s text acts, quite self-consciously, as a definitive statement of Nicene Christianity."
******** It seems highly unlikely the
Book of the Catholic Faith was read out at the AD 484 conference, as the presiding Arian "patriarch" had declared "nescio latine" (I don't know Latin), upon which the proceedings didn't get very far.
Source pp. 69-73 "Being Christian in Vandal Africa, The Politics of Orthodoxy in the Post-Imperial West," Robin Whelan, 2018.
Robin Whelan
Being Christian in Vandal Africa investigates conflicts over Christian orthodoxy in the Vandal kingdom, the successor to Roman rule in North Africa, ca. 439 to 533 c.e. Exploiting neglected texts, author Robin Whelan exposes a sophisticated culture of disputation between Nicene (“Catholic”) and...
books.google.com
And
Being Christian in Vandal Africa investigates conflicts over Christian orthodoxy in the Vandal kingdom, the successor to...
dokumen.pub
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TWOGIG p. 228-236
But our people had foreseen this and wrote a short work concerning the faith, composed quite fittingly and with the necessary detail. They said:”If you wish to know our faith, this is the truth we hold."36
p. 230
Confession of the 460 Bishops Read Aloud
And so that we may teach the Holy Spirit to be of one divinity with the Father and the Son still more clearly than the light, here is proof from the testimony of John the evangelist. For he says: 'There are three who bear witness in heaven, the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one.'47
Surely he does he not say 'three separated by a difference in quality' or 'divided by grades which differentiate, so that there is a great distance between them?' No, he says that the 'three are one.'
At last the first of February arrived, and no fewer than 461 Catholic bishops had appeared at Carthage, as is shown by
the list of them which is still extant.3 [fn. 3. In Mansi, t. vii. 1156; Hardouin, t. ii. p. 869. Sixteen sees were then made empty, or the bishops sent into exile, so that the Vandal kingdom counted 447 Catholic bishops
Victor Vitensis maintains (p. 683) that Cyrila had met the Catholic bishops with better preparation and more boldly than he had expected; but that they
had taken the precaution of drawing up a confession of faith in writing of which he gives a copy (lib. iii.), and which is also given in Mansi and Hardouin. 1 [fn. 1. Mansi, t. vii. p. 1143; Hardouin, t. ii. p. 857.] Tillemont shows (p. 797) that, in the subscription of this formula, xii. Kal. Mart. instead of Mai. must be read
p. 235
Brownlee
The Quarterly Review, Mr. Editor, to get rid of this testimony, tried to impeach the authority of Victor Vitensis. But the able refutation by bishop Burgess has shown that Victor is sustained by the most unexceptionable authority—from that of the
Emperor Justinian,
even unto Gregory the Great. (
Bp. Burgess's Vindication of 1 Jo. v. 7. p. 52. And Horne, vol. iv. p. 448.)
Dr. Marsh supposes that the Arians did not stay to reply—or to reason the point. They resorted instantly to violence. But the Arians did reply—not at first by blows—not immediately by cutting out their tongues, but”with the most tumultuous clamours.
” They insisted that these words did not prove the point in debate. They insisted that they could not find, in as many words, in the scriptures, the very word — the homoousian — which was the word used by both antagonists in the Arian controversy. (See Kettneri, p. 105.) Hence they did not deny our text — but they denied that the homoousian was contained in the Verse.
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Questions
in the subscription of this formula, xii. Kal. Mart. instead of Mai. must be read
Burgess has shown that Victor is sustained by the most unexceptionable authority—from that of the
Emperor Justinian,
even unto Gregory the Great.
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Typos and ** may be cjab text
At some point soon aft er 484, the - typo
may have been present at the conference to hear it read out********: his second
his second edition, written a few years aft er, shows
******** It seems highly unlikely the
Book of the Catholic Faith was
AD484
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