Christ and the Council: Conflict, Politics, Theology, and the Outrageous, Extraordinary Story of the Church's First Creed

How do Christians decide what is true? And what do centuries of church tradition, the first Christian emperor, a wannabe cabbage farmer, hordes of arguing clergy, and a seventeen-century-old creed have to do with that process? Today's church conflicts are nothing new. Christians have been fighting since the church was founded. Few controversies were as consequential as that surrounding the Council of Nicaea, in which the early church affirmed the full divinity of Jesus Christ and condemned all dissenters as heretics. The aftershocks of that decision impacted the church's doctrine and history, the relationship between church and state, divisions between East and West, and even the renowned physicist Sir Isaac Newton. Christ and the Council tells the complex story of the Nicene controversy in accessible language, making the riches of early church scholarship available to the ordinary reader. Beginning with the history of the church at the dawn of the fourth century, the book walks readers through the tumultuous days leading up to the Council of Nicaea and the equally tumultuous years that followed it. With good humor and keen insight, the book unveils Nicaea's meaning for the fourth century—and the twenty-first.