Veracity

Robin Lane Fox is one of the world’s preeminent historians of the classical world. A few years ago, I read his The Classical World: An Epic History from Homer to Hadrian, which I would recommend reading, if you want an in-depth epic history of that cultural time period. I kept turning back to Fox’s work on a trip to visit friends in Sicily, back in 2022. I was in Sicily for only a few days, but I visited both the Valley of Temples and Syracuse, two ancient sites from the classical world which Fox covered in his book.

Having an interest in Saint Augustine, I grabbed a copy of Fox’s Augustine: Conversion to Confessions, and finished reading it not too long ago. Though captivated by Fox’s story of the classical world, I was curious to know of his take on Augustine, considering the fact that Fox is a professed atheist, with little interest in Christianity aside from scholarship. I was bracing myself for some occasional crudities in Fox’s writing style. To be sure, Fox is as entertaining as he is erudite. In describing Augustine’s pre-Christian life as a follower of the Persian philosopher, Mani, Fox whimsically and colorfully concludes:

Manichaeism is the only world religion to have believed in the redemptive power of farts (Fox, p. 180).

Here is the second of a two-part blog series covering Robin Lane Fox’s book, which examines roughly the first half of Augustine’s remarkable life. We pick up the story after Augustine returns to North Africa. A few years earlier, Augustine had become a Christian, under the preaching of bishop Ambrose in Milan. In North Africa, Augustine’s career as a rhetorician had started to gain him an audience when he debated opponents of the historically orthodox Christian church. In this latter part of Fox’s work, we learn more about how Augustine read, and at times, misread, certain passages of the Bible…. and why…. glimpsing into how such readings/misreadings have reverberated throughout later Christian history, particularly in the West.

Robin Lane Fox’s Augustine: Conversion to Confessions examines roughly the first half of the great Christian saint’s life, leading up the Augustine’s most famous written work, Confessions.

Augustine as a Parish Priest

Augustine had survived becoming a priest in 391, after having only received baptism four years earlier. Augustine’s career as a churchman was now in full swing. This was ten years after the second great ecumenical council met, the Council of Constantinople (381), where the Nicene Creed, which was originally drafted in 325, was finally completed. By the end of the decade, Augustine is thought to have finished his most well-known work, the Confessions.

Among the other great church leaders Augustine corresponded with, Augustine wrote Jerome, the polyglot ascetic scholar a few years older than Augustine, who was working on a new translation of the Bible, the Vulgate, from the Hebrew where it was warranted, into Latin. Augustine quarreled with Jerome primarily over two subjects. First, Augustine was not in favor of Jerome’s efforts to translate the Old Testament directly from Hebrew, preferring the Greek Septuagint instead, the primary Old Testament translation used by Greek-speaking Christians. Augustine was concerned that various Latin translators had difficulty trying to render the Hebrew into Latin accurately, and Augustine wondered if Jerome would make the same kinds of errors. Jerome, who certainly knew the ancient languages much better, was not impressed with Augustine’s objection.

Augustine also was concerned with Jerome’s interpretation of Galatians 2:11-21, where Paul in his anger rebuked Peter. Peter had refused table fellowship with Gentile believers, preferring to eat only with Jewish Christians, an act which infuriated Paul.

Jerome was persuaded that Paul was merely pretending to be angry with Peter. Jerome did not find an “angry Paul” to be consistent with his image of a pious Paul at such odds with Peter. Jerome supposed that Paul employed a display of an “angry Paul” in order to teach to the Galatians a theological point. Augustine, on the other hand, believed that Jerome’s view suggested that Paul was being deceptive, and that this was unbecoming to think that this form of lying could be found within the text of God’s Word (Fox, p. 667ff).

Augustine’s engagement with Jerome on this helped to spark what would become Augustine’s last book he wrote as a priest, On Lying. The Bible has several incidents whereby people lie, but then are praised for their deception. Fox notes that in Exodus, the Egypt midwives told lies in order to protect newborn sons of the Hebrews, and yet God caused them to prosper (Fox, p. 653). Rahab in the Book of Joshua lies to her fellow Jericho people, telling them that the Hebrew spies left a long time ago, all while they hid in her house, and yet Rahab is praised as a hero of faith in Hebrews 11:31. In John 7:8-10, Jesus himself says to his brothers that he was not going up to the festival, but later on he went anyway in private.

Fox observes that Augustine believed that “if lies and pretence are once admitted in the scriptures, they will spread far and wide. Like destructive moths or worms, he now says, they will consume whole chests of clothing until nothing but shreds remain” (Fox, p. 757). But considering that Augustine acknowledged that even Jesus did not tell the whole truth to his disciples, Augustine reread his text and found it “thorny,” and so never published it with his other works (Fox, p. 653). Augustine was perhaps right to call out Jerome on his peculiar view of Paul’s dispute with Peter in Galatians, but even Augustine never felt completely satisfied with his own answer to Jerome on the question of deception in Scripture.

Augustine was continuously wrestling with other challenges he found within the text of Scripture. Until 395, Augustine had pretty much accepted the common view based on the Book of Revelation that a one thousand reign of Christ on earth will follow Christ’s return, prior to God’s final judgment. Christians today would call this view of the future “premillennialism,” that the return of Christ will precede an earthly millennial kingdom. However, Augustine changed his mind on this, believing that there would be no such earthly millennial period. This millennial period was more figurative, and that the peace and rest a believer would experience would be delayed until after God’s final judgment (Fox, p. 670). This gave birth to the idea that the reign of Christ, symbolized by the millennium, was actually the age of the church, a view typically known today as “amillennialism.”

Augustine also wrestled with how to interpret God’s hatred of Esau and love for Jacob in Romans 9. Originally, Augustine believed that God simply foreknew whether Esau and Jacob would freely choose faith. But Augustine came to reject this interpretation, thinking that this still made salvation dependent to a certain degree on human effort, something that went contrary to his understanding of the workings of God’s grace (Fox, p. 675). Yet Fox acknowledges that Paul’s treatment of Esau and Jacob in Romans 9 had to deal with the calling of Israel and the Gentiles. It had nothing to do with Esau and Jacob as individuals and their relationship to Adam and the fall. Fox believes that Augustine misread Paul in Romans 9, as Augustine was preoccupied with questions about grace and human freewill, in his wrestling with his Manichee past (Fox, p. 678). A number of believing Christian scholars today concur with Fox’s conclusion.

Augustine as the Bishop of Hippo

Bishop Valerius saw that Augustine was more than quite capable in his rhetorical skills, and Valerius had become quite elderly and needed someone to succeed him. So he had Augustine promoted to bishop as well there in Hippo in 396. Less than a year later, Augustine began working on his most famous and influential literary work, Confessions.

The Confessions of Saint Augustine serve as the terminus for Fox’s biographical narrative of Augustine’s life. In the Confessions, Augustine admits of his sins which had kept him from knowing God. Much of the Confessions is an exploration into the deeper meaning behind one of Augustine’s most memorable quotes:

“Great You are, O Lord, and greatly to be praised… You have made us so as to turn to You and our heart is restless until it finds rest in You” (Quoted in Fox, p, 710-711).

In the Confessions, Augustine finds deeper meanings found within the opening chapters of Genesis. For example, whereas the text of Scripture teaches that humans are to “be fruitful and multiply,” this was difficult for someone like Augustine who was now committed to his celibate ideals. Instead, he interprets Genesis on this point to command that one should “multiply” fruitful meanings while pondering on Scripture (Fox, p. 740). Instead of holding to the help of Mani, the “Paraclete,” his former mentor, to reveal the meaning of the Scriptures, he holds to “the true Holy Spirit,” in discerning the “allegorical meanings in the text” (Fox, p. 748).

Augustine continued to be troubled by Manichaean attempts to dismiss what was considered to be rather crude statements found in the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament. As a result, Augustine continued to accept Ambrose of Milan’s allegorical method of interpretation as a satisfying apologetic for Christianity. But such allegorical readings have had their downsides, as in Augustine’s belief that the closure of a gate in Jerusalem spoken of by the prophet Ezekiel symbolized the perpetual virginity of Mary.

Augustine as a Biblical Interpreter

Fox points out that Augustine had a habit of overreading certain allegorical interpretations into biblical texts in ways that strain at credulity. Augustine took the “tunics of skins” (Genesis 3:21) which Adam and Eve were given after the fall in the garden to symbolize human mortality. When Genesis 1:1 says that: “In the beginning, God made heaven and earth,” Augustine read this as saying that this “in the beginning” should be read as “in Christ” (Fox, p. 543).

But such allegorical and other misreadings were not entirely his fault. The Latin translations of the Bible Augustine were depending on were flawed at certain points. Psalm 4:8 reads like this in many modern translations:

“In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety” (ESV).

Yet in Augustine’s Latin translation, it read as:

“In peace in ‘it itself‘ I will go to sleep and take my slumber. You, O lord, set me in hope.”

The phrase “it itself” was a Latin mistranslation of a Hebrew word often omitted in modern translations to simply mean “at once” (the Lexham English Bible being a notable exception which includes the phrase: “In peace I will lie down and sleep at once“). But Augustine took the Latin rendering to be a reference to God, to make it read as “In peace, in God I will go to sleep and take my slumber.” Augustine uses this interpretation of the Latin mistranslation to mean “God” some 1700 times in his writings.

This just goes to show you that simple, inconsequential misreadings of the Bible can have a ripple effect in how we read the Bible. Let that be lesson for all of us who read and take the Bible seriously!

Furthermore, the last word of the verse in Augustine’s Latin, “hope,” was yet another Latin mistranslation of a Hebrew word preserved in our modern translations as “safety.” “Hope” and “safety” can have overlapping meanings, but the two concepts are not identical. Fox comments that if Jerome, who undertook a major effort to produce an authoritative Latin version of the Bible, the Vulgate, had read Augustine’s commentary, “he would have acidly dismissed it as based on a Latin translator’s cluster of errors” (Fox, p. 458-459).

The three lusts, an important part of Augustine’s theology of sin, are described in 1 John 2:16:

“For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.” (NASB).

The Greek word translated as “boastful,” in the third lust, was mistranslated in Augustine’s Latin Bible as “curiosity.” But Augustine’s Latin better fit the three lusts which delayed his own conversion: “the pleasure of the flesh, misplaced curiosity and worldly ambition.”

Augustine was certainly “curious” in his sinful misdeeds, but to be “curious” is not the same as to be “boastful.”

Another example of Augustine working with poor Latin translations of the Bible is found in Romans 7:24-25a. In an modern translation like the ESV, we read:

“Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

However, in Augustine’s Latin translation, which Augustine never bothered to check in Greek because his knowledge of Greek was so poor, the “thanks” at the beginning of verse 25 was rendered “grace,” as in the “grace of God through Jesus Christ” would deliver him from this body of death (Fox, p. 557). This was a case of the right teaching derived from the wrong verse.

Sandro Botticelli, Sant’ Agostino nello studio (Saint Augustine in the studio), Fresco, Chiesa di San Salvatore in Ognissanti, Florence.

Augustine’s Misstep on Original Sin

The most egregious example is from Augustine’s Latin mistranslation of Romans 5:12, which has led other interpreters astray as well. In certain modern translations, like the ESV, the text correctly reads:

“Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—”

Correctly translated, “death” is the subject of the phrase “death spread to all men because all sinned.”

Augustine’s Latin version which he used mistook the “because” to be “in whom.” In this mistranslation, the subject is misplaced and thought to be a reference to the “one man,” namely Adam, “in whom all sinned“:

“Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men in whom all sinned—”

This gives the wrong impression that not only do we inherit a proclivity towards sin, due to Adam’s example, we are also declared guilty of Adam’s sin. Augustine’s dispute against Pelagius depended a lot on this notion of imputed guilt, not simply a proclivity towards sinful actions, being bestowed on all humans following Adam. Not only are we responsible for our own sin, we are also made responsible for Adam’s sin, a misinterpretation of the Bible which has been passed down through the ages (Fox, pp. 667, 677).

When coupled with Augustine’s belief about the sacraments, in his dispute with the Donatists, Augustine’s doctrine of original guilt has cast a shadow over the Western church. The Donatists had made it a habit to rebaptize orthodox Catholics who had received their original baptism from a discredited priest. Since the Bible taught that there is only one baptism (Ephesians 4:4-6), to be rebaptized by anyone was considered a grave sin.

Anyone growing up in a Christian tradition where infant baptism is normally practiced will surely wrestle with this if they encounter friends who hold to the doctrine of “believer’s baptism;” that is, baptism should only be administered to someone who has made a profession of faith, which therefore excludes infants from being candidates for baptism. This issue can trouble the conscience of a believer, whether or not any teaching on “baptismal regeneration” is in view.

Augustine’s response was that the moral disposition of the priest performing baptism could not invalidate the sacrament of baptism, assuming the baptism was done correctly: if it was administered by water, if it was performed in a Trinitarian matter of being baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and if it was done with the intention of performing the sacrament.

So if a Donatist were to baptize someone, who had not been baptized before, and that person was received back into the orthodox Catholic church, that person need not undergo a rebaptism. It was the act of baptism that mattered, not the one administering the baptism, which corresponds to the Latin formula: ex opere operato. However, in conjunction with the doctrine of original sin/guilt, as Augustine understood it, this meant that any unbaptized child would effectively be damned if that child died before they received baptism. For Augustine, baptism was considered to be the means by which grace was given to the person, a fundamental idea in Augustine’s theology of sacraments, which eventually became a flashpoint in the 16th century dispute between Protestants and Roman Catholics.

Augustine developed much of his doctrine of grace in his later years with his dispute with Pelagius. However, since the dispute with Pelagius came after writing of the Confessions, Fox does not explore this in Augustine: Conversion to Confessions.

Critical Reflection on Fox’s Augustine: Conversion to Confessions

Veteran evangelical scholar Gerald Bray assesses Fox’s work on Augustine in a manner similar to how I portray it in my own blogging about the book:

Lane Fox knows an enormous amount about the ancient world and brings his vast learning to bear in an eloquent and fascinating way. Digression is his strength, as whole chapters are taken up with studies of Manichaeism, Neo-Platonism, and the like. These descriptions are worth the price of the book.

In reading Fox’s Augustine: Conversions to Confessions, you will discover a wealth of information about the ancient world, a treasure that has helped to get me hooked on learning more about ancient history. This is spectacular. Nevertheless, Bray concludes that Fox’s work on this first half of Augustine’s life is not without fault:

But it’s when we come to the heart of the matter that Lane Fox lets us down most. His account of Augustine’s conversion contains an extended examination of the possible meaning of “tolle lege,” which led Augustine to take up Paul’s letter to the Romans. This is followed by an equally lengthy examination of the possible meanings of the text that moved his heart to turn to Christ. In the end, he concludes Augustine got it all wrong but remained convinced God had spoken to him anyway. His life was turned around, but only by mistake!

I read that section of Fox’s narrative and walked away from it like Bray has done. Fox offers some cogent critiques of Augustine’s interpretations of the Bible, but not all of his critiques work as well. As a committed non-believer, Robin Lane Fox’s presentation of Christianity as articulated by Augustine in his Confessions is vulnerable to critique.

For example, Fox claims that Augustine “evades the word ‘all’” in 1 Timothy 2:3-4, which says that “God our Saviour… wills that all men should be saved.” For Augustine, this “all” means “many” or “all sorts,” as in “all kinds” of people will be saved (Fox, p. 674).

Presumably, Fox’s assertion that when Augustine “evades the word ‘all’,” Fox means that the plain reading of 1 Timothy 2:3-4 is teaching a doctrine of universal salvation, a doctrine that Augustine does not accept. After all, Augustine was one of the most influential of the church fathers to teach the doctrine of eternal conscious torment. In Augustine’s mind, the experience of an eternal hell was not simply a psychological or sociological kind of torment, but it was a physical one as well. As New Testament scholar Paula Fredriksen says in her epic work, Augustine and the Jews, reviewed elsewhere on Veracity, Augustine actually envisioned that the number of the saved within the whole of humanity would actually be very few.

But leaving aside those weightier concerns about the ultimate fate of non-believers, Augustine’s interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:3-4 is not necessarily an evasion as Fox argues, as other contemporary commentators suggest that Augustine might be at least somewhat correct here, even if the text itself is not entirely clear. Many translations today take the forceful edge off of God being the one who “wills” that all individuals be saved and indicate that it is God’s “desire” that all individuals be saved, a less deterministic posture. Here is how the ESV renders the passage:

This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

Fox’s assumptions about what the Bible actually teaches does not end there. Fox dismisses the story of creation as told in Genesis is “untrue,” from the viewpoint of modern science (Fox, p. 224). Fox claims that the Old Testament “predicted nothing about Christianity” (Fox, p. 228). Fox adds that “critical readers nowadays recognize no such harmony in the Gospels,” which reconciles the differences between those Gospels (Fox, p. 270).

These claims are no surprise as coming from an author who in 1991 wrote the book, The Unauthorized Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible, where the publisher’s description of the book says Fox :

“….introduces us to a Bible that came late to monotheism, propounded a jumble of conflicting laws, and whose authors wrote under assumed name.”

Robin Lane Fox: Historian vs. Biblical Interpreter

While Fox, as an historian, has read enough biblical studies to offer some various fair and accurate critiques of Augustine, he apparently has not read enough to address some of these more broad-minded claims he makes against historic orthodox Christian faith in general. The evolutionary model of an Old Testament that morphs from polytheism into monotheism over time falls short when compared to the careful analysis of how progressive revelation actually works in the Bible. Scholarship on the Book of Leviticus, and other priestly material in the Old Testament, over the last fifty years, demonstrates a type of coherency of laws that is often missed by casual readers of the Bible. And finally, various claims made about forgeries existing in our New Testament have been met with resistance by other capable scholars.

This should suffice to say, that not all biblical scholars engaged in historical criticism come to the same conclusions Fox finds so compelling, as readers of the Veracity blog will know (see particularly the review of Jesus Contradicted, by Michael Licona). Augustine sought to harmonize discrepancies which he acknowledged existed in the Bible. But as New Testament scholar Michael Licona has shown, Augustine saw some limits to common harmonization techniques. When Augustine ran into such difficulties, he would look for a deeper spiritual meaning found within the text of Scripture.

For example, according to Michael Licona, Augustine recognized a discrepancy between Mark’s version of Jesus’ baptism and Matthew’s version of Jesus’ baptism. When the voice from heaven speaks, Mark 1:11 reads:

And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” (ESV)

Yet in Matthew, the same verse reads (Mathew 3:17):

And behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” (ESV)

It is as though in Mark the voice is speaking to Jesus himself, whereas in Matthew the voice is speaking to the crowd that was listening in.

A persistent harmonizer might conclude that the voice said both of these statements, once to Jesus and then once to the crowds, or vice-versa. But Augustine thought that this was a more improbable way to interpret the text, and taking harmonization way too far. For some might be tempted to say that the entire narrative about Jesus’ baptism happened multiple times. However, such a judgment would be far fetched, as the Gospels consistently portray Jesus’ baptism as a once in time event.

Instead, Augustine concluded that perhaps Mark is giving us a verbatim account of what was said, whereas Matthew is reframing the heavenly speech in order to instruct the crowds, suggesting a more spiritual dimension. The meaning of what the text is saying is preserved across the Gospels, regardless of how the Gospel author articulates the exact verbiage of the voice. Augustine’s approach to this text offers an improvement over his typical Ambrosian tendency to look for an allegorical interpretation, when faced with such difficulties.

As Augustine put it in his Harmony of the Gospels, the Gospel authors intentionally introduced such differences, while preserving the meaning:

…. At the same time, while preserving the sense intact, they use different modes of expression in reproducing the terms of the voice which came from heaven.

While Augustine at times shook off a strict kind of harmonization as unnecessary, he nevertheless found the Gospels to be compatible with one another, sharing the same essential message, even with a more nuanced understanding of what constitutes “harmony.” This would go against Fox’s inclination towards skepticism, which suggests that there is “no such harmony” between the Gospels.

While I do not share in Dr. Fox’s ultimate conclusions regarding Christianity, I still find him to be a compelling and fascinating writer. I have the Kindle version of Augustine: Conversions to Confessions, but I was primarily engaged in the Audible version, read by Michael Page. On a long road trip to Indiana last year, Augustine: Conversions to Confessions, clocking in at 25 1/2 hours, made for a good companion that kept me alert the whole way.

It remains to be seen whether or not Robin Lane Fox will continue with another book examining the life of Augustine following the Confessions. Augustine was roughly 43 years old when he worked on the Confessions. He would go on to live another 33 years of service as a Christian bishop in Hippo, until his death. After enjoying Augustine: Conversions to Confessions, I hope that Dr. Fox might continue on and complete this biography of this extraordinary and influential Christian leader and thinker of the early church.

For other Veracity blog posts about Augustine, see the following:

Augustine on Infant Baptism
Augustine on Learning to Disagree Well, among other Christians with differing views
Augustine and the Jews, pushing back on at least some of the prevailing anti-Jewish views of his day
Why Augustine Changed His Mind on the Millennium
Augustine on the Literal Interpretation of Genesis

Leave a comment | tags: Augustine, inerrancy, michael licona, original sin, robin lane fox, saint augustine | posted in Witnesses

January 30, 2026

Augustine: Conversion to Confessions, by Robin Lane Fox, A Review, Part One

By Clarke Morledge

Saint Augustine of Hippo is the most influential early church father of the Western church. Numerous church doctrines, such as original sin, have the indelible stamp of the late 4th / early 5th century North African bishop imprinted upon the minds and hearts of millions of Christians down to the present day.

Roman Catholics look to Augustine for understanding the theology of sacraments, while all of the major magisterial Protestant leaders of the 16th century owe a debt to Augustine. Martin Luther himself was an Augustinian monk when he nailed his famous 95-theses to the Wittenberg church door. Even the Eastern Orthodox look to Augustine as one of the primary doctors of the church.

During his long tenure as the bishop of Hippo, Augustine was known to be a writing machine. At one point he employed two full time secretaries which allowed him to dictate the books he was writing. To date, there are still works by Augustine that have not been translated into English. The man was a towering intellect, impacting a great deal of Western thought that even non-Christian scholars and other readers come back generation after generation to study.

Pope Boniface VIII in the 13th century named him one of the four great Doctors of the Church, alongside Ambrose, Jerome, and Pope Gregory the Great. Augustine wrote what many believe is the first Western autobiography, the Confessions, chronicling his journey as a rebellious teenager and libertine, to become a stalwart defender of historic orthodoxy Christianity.

Augustine almost single-handedly shifted all nearly all of Christendom away from the doctrine of a literal 1,000 year future millennium, following Christ’s return (the premillennial return of Christ) to a more symbolic view, which essentially equated the millennium with the church age, a view which remained supreme unit the era of the Reformation. Practically all of Christendom accepted his view of infant baptism for that same time period, lasting ironically about one thousand years. In the early church debate regarding the afterlife, Augustine’s specific perspective known as the doctrine of eternal conscious torment, became the dominant view of hell until the modern era.

Much of what many Christians today take for granted as to “what the Bible says” stems back to the life and mind of this North African Christian. How did this former sex-addict turned bishop of the church become so influential?

Leave a comment | tags: Ambrose, Augustine, Origen, original sin, robin lane fox, saint augustine | posted in Witnesses

January 16, 2026

Bart Ehrman’s Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium, A Review

By Clarke Morledge

From the Christianity Along the Rhine blog series…

The Veracity blog is normally not a high-traffic website. I am well-aware that long-form blogging does not really generate lots of “clicks.” Social media, like Facebook and Instagram, is way too time consuming and life-draining for me to deal with, anyway. But back in mid-September of this past year (2025), I was shocked to discover that Veracity received over 80 thousand views in just a matter of days.

80,000 views???

I had written a blog post about the supposed “rapture” prediction that caught the attention of secular media algorithms, with lots of Facebook and Instagram pages promoting the idea that Jesus will come to take the church out of the world sometime around September 23-24. A South African YouTuber Joshua Mhlakela had “prophesied” that Jesus would return, telling listeners that he was “one billion percent” sure that the prophecy would become true.

I published my blog post about it on September 20, and somehow Google picked it up as the 3rd or 4th highest ranking Internet resource world-wide on the topic. Never before has something I have written gone so viral before.

We had 80,000 hits in just a matter of days, for a blog that gets just a tiny fraction of that on a typical day. Pretty wild for a blog with less than 200 subscribers.

As one might reasonably conclude, Jesus did not come back during the September 23-24 window. Shockers of shockers, Mhlakela was not deterred, and he ended up reformulating yet another prediction that Jesus would return during another window on October 7-8.

Alas again, October 7-8 passed without any fanfare. No rapture happened. The last I heard, he came up with yet a third date prediction, perhaps October 16-17, that of course, failed again. “Rapture Talk” since then morphed into “Rapture Fatigue.” Date-setting for Jesus’ return is a peculiar hobby that keeps on going despite the obvious, with its popularity waxing and waning over time.

If you completely missed this whole story, and want more detail on it, I highly recommend YouTube apologist Mike Winger’s resources on this topic, where he goes into great and fascinating detail about the lunacy.

In September, 2025, many end-times enthusiasts were waiting for the “rapture” of the church by Jesus…. a “rapture” that never came. What was all the fuss about?

3 Comments | tags: Albert Schweitzer, apocalyptic, Bart Ehrman, end times, eschatology, John Dominic Crossan, rapture | posted in Topics

December 30, 2025

The Council of Nicaea Demythologized: Reviewing the Cambridge Companion to the Council

By Clarke Morledge

Alas, another year is passing by, and 2025 is just about over. For this last blog post of 2025, I have few introductory comments as we look forward to the New Year, before I address the topic at hand…..

For 2026, I have a few more blog posts scheduled for the “Christianity Along the Rhine” series, a kind of travelogue reflecting on some of the places visited by my wife and I this past October in Europe.

Recently, I have been listening to Barry Strauss’ fascinating new book, Jews vs. Rome: Two Centuries of Rebellion Against the World’s Mightiest Empire. Wow! The backstory to Rome’s relationship to the Israel of Jesus’ day is something I rarely ever hear about in church…. and its connection to contemporary news events in Gaza brings more depth to the daily news. But wow, I am hooked on the story! I want to learn more!!

Plus, I have been doing a lot of thinking about “penal substitutionary atonement” over the past year and a half. The topic of Christ’s death on the cross comes up nearly every week at our church, either through a talking point in a sermon or a song sung in worship, affirming some version of “penal substitutionary” theory, which probably sounds like a bunch of blah-blah-blah intellectual talk to most Christians. However, the topic has been becoming quite controversial in evangelical circles lately, and a lot of the controversy has to deal with newer scholarship dealing with ancient Jewish understandings of Levitical law and, in particular, how Jesus thought about it. I have been doing some reading on this and related topics, which I hope to blog about (more) in 2026.

Also, coming soon in 2026 will be some blogging focus on Augustine of Hippo, perhaps the most influential father of the early church.

Oh, and one more thing: Why do I still bother with long-form blogging, when it seems to have gone out-of-fashion in favor of pithy Instagram and Facebook posts? Well, sometimes in takes some effort to get the truth right, in a world where misinformation seems like the norm these days. I mean, sometimes it just feels pointless having to deal with such wacky stuff out there on the Interwebs. No one can fix it all. But perhaps what I write might have a positive impact on some people, even if just a handful, and if all else fails, it gives me a chance to learn and grow.

I have already commented recently on bizarre conspiracy thinking which has taken hold of certain corners of right-wing evangelicalism (who would have expected an ideological implosion at the Heritage Foundation ???). But you also hear a good bit of nonsense from outside of the church.

For example, on Christmas Eve, Dan Snow at History Hit had an interview with biological anthropologist and U.K. television personality Alice Roberts. Yet the topic was not in Roberts’ field of expertise, but rather on the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire, which is relevant to the subject of this blog post: the Council of Nicaea. I normally like History Hit, but this interview just seemed off ….. (Was Constantine merely interested in Christianity and trying to resolve the Arian controversy in Alexandria, Egypt, simply because Egypt supplied nearly all of Rome’s needs for wheat??? Was it all about politics and grain, and nothing to do with knowing God??).

Thankfully, I wandered over to Tim O’Neill’s History for Atheists blog, and Tim has a lengthy, thorough, and scathing review of Roberts’ book, which sets the record straight. As Tim writes, Alice Roberts made her name in television through her biological anthropology work, particularly with the BBC, and has effectively become an “influencer,” as they say. So, apparently some publisher decided to cash in on Roberts’ “influencer” status and promote her as an “historian,” which is outside of her lane. Roberts’ new book Domination obviously is taking a swipe at Tom Holland’s excellent history book, Dominion, reviewed elsewhere here on Veracity.

Alice Roberts grew up in a Christian church, but became a humanist as she questioned the truthfulness of the Christianity she was taught, something which I wrestled with as a teenager as well (though I finally came to know Christ towards the end of my years in high school). Yet like a lot of secularist critics, Roberts has since been taken into the “Christianity is all about power and identity politics” woke and deeply cynical mantra (hence the “Domination” book title) that has become quite popular even in certain academic circles. While I do not share Tim’s skepticism for historic orthodox Christianity, I am grateful that someone like him took the time to correct Alice Roberts‘ serious errors. I just wish more of my fellow Christian brothers and sisters had a more serious devotion to truth as I find with atheists like Tim O’Neill.

What is most terribly scary is that the wide acceptance of misinformation will only become worse once artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more deeply embedded in our digital lives, despite certain advantages of AI. Merriam-Webster named the term “slop” the word of the year for 2025; defined as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence”….. But that is another topic for a later time.

The Veracity blog here is my humble attempt to try to set the record straight in at least my circle of evangelical Christianity. I know I do not get everything right, but at least I am trying: We as followers of Jesus can do better.

But now is the time to wrap up the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, which gave us the church’s most influential creed, summarizing the basics of Christian belief (Read up on Nicaea from these previous blog posts). Time now for one more nerd-out, deep-dive blog post to end off the year!!

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Most Christians are taught that the doctrine of the Trinity is about believing in one God, made up of three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They might even know that this doctrine was first formally taught this way, going back to a famous church meeting of the 4th century, the Council of Nicaea. At Nicaea, a summary of what Christians believe was formulated, becoming what is known as a “creed.” But the details often get fuzzy. So, what was the story of the Council of Nicaea really about?

A lot of “fake news” gets promulgated on the Internet about the Council of Nicaea. Forget the nonsense about the New Testament canon being formulated at the Council, or Constantine bullying the bishops to abide by his theologically-driven will to make Jesus into God. Forget about all of the garbage floating around for the past twenty years resulting from Dan Brown’s The Davinci Code, about the Council of Nicaea being some corrupt conspiracy to keep people in the dark about the supposed “truth” of Christianity’s failures. The actual history about this famous meeting, which gave us Christianity’s most important summary of belief 1700 years ago, is far more interesting.

As Christians around the world commemorate the 1700th anniversary of what took place in an ancient city in Turkey in 325, I decided to read The Cambridge Companion to the Council of Nicaea, part of the Cambridge Companions to Religion series. Edited by Young Richard Kim, the Cambridge Companion takes a deep dive into the historical context of Nicaea’s famous council. In this review, I hope to report on some of the highlights found in the valuable essays of this book written by top-notch scholars. The Cambridge Companions to Religion series can get pretty beefy and technical (and like most academic books, ridiculously expensive in hardcover form), but there is a lot of fascinating history here that is hard to find elsewhere all in one place. In this book review, as we close out the year of the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, I will try to summarize the highlights.

The Cambridge Companions to the Council of Nicaea, edited by Young Richard Kim, is a scholarly collection of essays by skilled historians examining the history of the most important church council ever held. The Nicene Creed summarizes what all historically orthodox Christians (Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox) believe about who God is.

A Deep Dive into the History of Christianity’s Most Important Church Council

Through all of the mythological hype about the Council of Nicaea, one bit of truth stands out. It was not a foregone conclusion that the doctrine of the Trinity Christians have inherited today would have won out during the Christological debates of the 4th century. Christians since Tertullian in the second century debated the exact details of the relationship between the Father and the Son, particularly as it pertained to the divinity of Jesus, as the Son of God. In many ways, what eventually became the Nicene view of the doctrine of the Trinity was actually a minority position among a wide variety of understandings of the Godhead in the centuries leading up to Nicaea.

What made the Council of Nicaea into a watershed moment in the history of the church was the controversial claim made by Arius of Alexandria, a presbyter (church elder) who claimed that Jesus was divine, but only in the sense that Jesus as the Son was a divine creature, created by the uncreated Father. While many Christians before Arius were willing to accept some kind of “subordinationism” with respect to the Son subordinated to the Father, it was the Arian insistence that the oneness of God prevented the Son from being of the same uncreated divine essence as the Father that precipitated the theological crisis which led to Nicaea.

The Background to the Council of Nicaea

In the first essay of The Cambridge Companion to the Council of Nicaea, historian Raymond Van Dam surveys the historical backdrop to the controversy, stemming from Emperor Diocletian’s imperial edict to persecute Christianity in the early 4th century. Diocletian had become emperor in 284, and he retired in 305, thus ending the worst of the persecutions. But by the time of his retirement, order had broken down as to who was the rightful emperor of the Roman empire. By 308, there were some six claimants to the position of emperor: Constantine, Licinius, Galerius, Maximinus, and even the former emperors, Maximian and Diocletian. It was a confusing mess of Roman politics for the upcoming years.

Despite the persecution of Christianity, the influence of the Christian church, though far from being in the majority yet, continued to increase, resulting in rival views among the competing emperors. Constantine had his famous vision of the sign of the cross, which precipitated his victory over Maxentius, another claimant to being emperor, at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, in 312. The following year, Constantine granted religious toleration to the Christians, with the Edict of Milan. But it was not until 324 when Constantine finally pushed Licinius aside to become the supreme and sole emperor of Rome.

However, trouble was brewing in Alexandria, Egypt, the second largest city behind Rome in the Roman Empire. Christians believed that the Son was divine, but in what sense did that mean? Arius was teaching that there was a time when the Son was not. Arius was concerned that by elevating the divine status of the Son to be equal with the Father would undercut the Christian monotheistic conception of God. The bishop of Alexandria, known as Alexander, responded by saying: “Always God, always Son; at once God, at once Son.” Alexander charged that Arius’ position that the Son was a creature diminished the rightful divine status of Jesus as the Son of God.

Constantine was concerned that the rift in Alexandria was splitting the church apart. As emperor, he wanted to rule an empire with a united church, not a divided one, so he called and convened a meeting of bishops from across the empire to meet in Nicaea in 325, in what was then Asia Minor, to resolve the matter.

But the question about the divinity of Christ was not the only subject on the docket at Nicaea. Christians across the empire celebrated the Resurrection of Jesus on different days. Constantine wanted a unified calendar system: One church, one doctrine of God, one calendar, one emperor.

Historian Rebecca Lyman examines the roots of the Arian controversy. For Lyman, Athanansius, the successor to Alexander’s bishopric in Alexandria, Egypt, used the controversy over “Arianism” to respond to a wider theological crisis across the whole of Christendom. As a result, the story of Arius himself gets blurred by the later rhetoric employed by Athanasius to combat critics of Nicene orthodoxy. In other words, what began as a theological dispute about the teaching of Arius down in Egypt mushroomed into a huge, complex controversy, involving several parties, all across the whole Roman Empire.

A Digression…. An Incredible Tale: Athanasius and His Bitter Opponents

The controversy got very wild at times. It is worth taking a digression and recalling an enthralling story I read from The National Review, by John D. Hagen, Jr., from the November, 2025 issue, “Lessons from the Fight for the Nicene Creed.” Hagen tells the story of Athanasius being challenged by the supporters of Arius, who had been effectively humiliated at the Council of Nicaea. In the following years, Athanasius had risen to become the most ardent defender of the Nicene Creed, and his opponents saw an opportunity to try to discredit bishop Athanasius, as a means of trying to regain favor with the emperor.

Emperor Constantine was so befuddled by the situation that he called a synod to meet in Tyre to investigate Athanasius. The campaign to try to discredit Athanasius was so outlandish that it is best to quote the story which Hagen tells…. how could anyone make this stuff up?

Supporters of Arius accused “Athanasius of sorcery, of arrogance and violence, and of consorting with treasonous persons” …. This led to “the tale of Arsenius’s hand.”

“Arsenius, a schismatic bishop in Egypt, hid himself in an Arian plot. The Arians accused Athanasius of murdering him and amputating his hand to use in magical pursuits. The plotters obtained a human hand, which they brandished on suitable occasions to lend credence to the tale.”

“Athanasius’s deacon flushed Arsenius out of hiding and was able quietly to arrest him at Tyre. This gave rise to a scene of high drama: The Arians bring their charges, histrionically brandish “Arsenius’s hand,” and demand Athanasius’s condemnation. Athanasius appeals for order. He calls for those who knew Arsenius to identify themselves, which several bishops promptly do. Then he brings in Arsenius, exposes his hands one by one, and challenges the Arians to show where the third hand had been cut off. The synod erupts in consternation, and one of the plotters runs away…”

Yep. I would call that high drama.

Now back to the book review! …..

The Practical Details of the Council of Nicaea

Ine Jacobs writes about some of the logistical challenges associated with the Council of Nicaea. Nicaea was chosen by Constantine as the meeting place for the council, primarily due to its location, though some recent scholarship suggests that politics may have played a more significant part. The city is located near a lake, Lake Iznik, and along a Roman highway.

The Council of Nicaea was actually not the first church council that Constantine had called, but it was the first council he had attended. As noted by H. A. Drake in his essay, these earlier church councils, more regional in character, held at places like Rome (313) and Arles (314), sought to resolve various controversies in the church, but with little success. By the time Constantine had removed his brother-in-law Licinius from power in 324, he felt it was finally time to tackle the Arian controversy head on with an empire wide council.

Nicaea was not that far from Nicomedia, where Constantine had an imperial palace. In some ways, it would have made more sense to meet at Nicomedia. But Nicomedia had also been the seat from where Licinius had reigned, and the bishop there, Eusebius of Nicomedia, had been more aligned with Licinius against Constantine, as well as being a supporter of Arius.

The cost of travel for the bishops to Nicaea was covered by the state. Counting all of the bishops who attended, and their related staff persons, some 1200 to 1900 might have descended upon Nicaea for the meeting. According to Eusebius of Nicomedia, the meeting was held not in a church but in an imperial palace, though it is likely that this palace was made into a church later.

Historian David M. Gwynn reports that there are no transcript records of the official proceedings, so there is a bit of guesswork required to figure out how the council met. Some 318 bishops were reported to have traveled from across the Roman empire to attend this ecumenical council. However, most of the attendees came from the Greek-speaking East and not the Latin West. Modern scholarship estimates that the number of attendees was actually lower, between 200 to 250.

There was an opening ceremony, which the emperor Constantine presided over, and a final imperial celebration banquet at the conclusion of the council. But it was the bishops who largely led the discussions while the council met. Aside from the Arian controversy, other matters were attended to, the most prominent being the controversy over the date of Easter. Practices for celebrating the date of Easter varied across the church, but the council sought to work towards uniformity. A common date was sought, but the council ruled that the dating method must not derive from the Jewish dating of the Passover.

The story of Santa Claus originated from legends associated with Saint Nicholas of Myra, a 4th century church father who was tortured for his faith during the persecution under Emperor Diocletian. Nicholas attended the Council of Nicaea, but stories about him slapping Arius, the arch-heretic of the council, in the face, arose centuries after Nicaea, so most historians believe these stories are legendary tales about this popular Christian leader.

Nicaea Was Not Just About the Controversy over Christ’s Divinity

The other major topic at Nicaea was to address the schism which resulted from the Great Persecutions under Diocletian, commonly known as the Donatus controversy, named after a controversial bishop in Carthage. Melitus, a bishop in Egypt, sympathetic towards Donatus of Carthage, had insisted that only those presbyters who had remained faithful during the Great Persecution of Emperor Diocletian could properly administer the sacraments, whereas the treatment of lapsed Christians in the rest of the church was far too lenient. Melitus wanted a pure church, but the Nicene fathers concluded that Melitus was too divisive. Melitus was able to retain his position in Egypt, but otherwise he was strongly rebuked by the Council of Nicaea for promoting schism in the church.

H. A. Drake notes that Constantine was surely the “elephant in the room” when it came to the discussions at Nicaea. While modern people today can be quite dismayed over the sorry history of church and state relations in Christian history, it could well be argued that Constantine’s role in urging the bishops to resolve such controversies helped the Roman empire to survive for another thousand years.

Mark J. Edwards corrects a common misinformed idea concerning the “Apostles Creed,” which I grew up thinking went straight back to the first century apostles. Instead, the so-called “Apostles Creed” has its roots in a Latin creed that came into use in the 3rd century in Rome, what some call the “Old Roman Creed.” Because of its Latin origins, the “Apostles Creed” is not recited in Eastern churches.

Interestingly, the most primitive form of the “Apostles Creed” does not include the descensus clause; that is, the phrasing that after the crucifixion of Jesus, he “descended to the dead” or “descended to hell,” as other modern versions put it. Christians in the early church commonly accepted the idea of Jesus’ descending into the realm of the dead, following his crucifixion, but it is curious that this descensus clause was not originally in the “Old Roman Creed.” Historians are not sure when the descensus clause was integrated into the “Apostles Creed,” but that creed as we largely have it today has been in common use among Christian churches since about the 6th century (See my earlier Veracity article on the Apostles Creed for more about the controversial descensus clause.)

The essay by Andreas Weckwerth explains the twenty canons of the Council of Nicaea. Aside from the Arian controversy, and the Donatus controversy, the assembled bishops discussed twenty rulings regarding canon law within the church. For example, the Council of Nicaea forbade those who had castrated themselves from becoming members of clergy. This Canon 1 was designed to discourage various kinds of hyper-asceticism in the church, including a practice which some say that Origen of Alexandria inflicted upon himself (I’ll just leave it that!!). Canon 2 from the Council restricted newly baptized Christians from being too quickly elevated to become members of the clergy. Canon 19 mentioned that the church honored the practice of having women as deaconesses among the clergy. While having women as presbyters was discouraged, it is evident that both men and women served as deacons/deaconesses. Long after Nicaea, some regions of the church made various claims of additional canons passed at Nicaea which actually were never discussed, thereby misusing the authority of the Council of Nicaea to promote certain church laws in those regions. Canon 20 urged Christian worshippers not to kneel on Sundays and during Easter time. Instead, during such times of Christian worship, they should remain standing.

Most Christians figure out when Easter is by looking at a calendar, and trusting what it says. But the calculations for determining the date for celebrating Easter was fraught with controversy during the period of the early church. The controversy stemmed from different ways of recalling the date when Jesus was crucified, and then figuring out the day for celebrating Easter from there. The topic was dealt with at the Council of Nicaea, in 325.

Dating Easter: The Quartodeciman Controversy

Daniel McCarthy writes about the discussion at Nicaea regarding the celebration of Easter, known as “Pasch” in the ancient world. Today, we take it for granted that Easter comes at the time specified by our physical wall calendars, or whatever Google or Microsoft digital calendars tell us. But for several hundred years during the early church period, figuring out when to annually celebrate the resurrection of Jesus (if at all) was a highly contested matter. For many during the 4th century, it was thought that the Council of Nicaea settled the dispute.

Three problems standout as to why dating Easter became so contentious. First, there is the astronomical difficulty, as the solar and lunar calendars are difficult to get in sync with one another. The Old Testament tended to favor the lunar calendar, but the Jewish community over the centuries has had to insert an additional lunar month into the calendar every so often in order to get the Jewish calendar in sync with the solar year. Even the ancient Jews were not universally in agreement, as we know that the community at Qumran favored the solar calendar at the expense of the lunar calendar.

Secondly, there was the issue as to how the timing of the Jewish Passover was linked to the crucifixion of Jesus. John’s Gospel explicitly links the death of Jesus to the date of Passover, treating Jesus as the Passover lamb who was sacrificed. However, the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) dated the crucifixion on the day after Passover (though some have attempted to resolve this difficulty with revised chronology). Those who favored John’s date eventually rubbed against the tradition which was less concerned about linking the date of the crucifixion with the date of the Jewish Passover, typically associated with the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

Thirdly, the dispute was further complicated by considering which event should be focused on the most: the crucifixion of Jesus or the resurrection of Jesus. The practical consideration had to deal with when to break a fast that eventually became the hallmark of Lent. Christians would abstain from eating certain foods, and various Christian communities did this together, and then break the fast together, as an act of celebration. But what was the focus of the celebration, the death of Jesus or the raising of Jesus from the dead?

The tradition had been that Jesus was resurrected on the third day after the crucifixion, but with a moving date for the Passover every year, this did not place the remembrance of the resurrection always on Sunday. If the celebration was primarily focused on Christ’s crucifixion, the celebration tended to line up with the Jewish Passover. But if the celebration was primarily focused on Christ’s resurrection, the timing of the Jewish Passover was less significant.

Different areas of the church therefore used different methods of calculating the date of Easter, which prompted the bishops at Nicaea to come up with a uniform method for assuring that Christians celebrate Easter on the same day. Church historians typically refer to this as the Quartodeciman Controversy. The Quartodecimans, meaning “fourteenth” in Latin, observed the crucifixion of Jesus on the 14th of the Hebrew month Nisan, following the Jewish Passover tradition, which could have been any day of the week. The other side insisted that the resurrection of Jesus was always to be celebrated on Sunday, the “Lord’s Day.”

Since all four Gospels unanimously placed the resurrection of the “first day of the week;” that is, Sunday, this tradition eventually won out, and the direct dependence upon the dating of the Jewish Passover took lesser priority. It was a messy affair which led one bishop of Rome, Victor, at the end of the 2nd century, to excommunicate all of the Quartodecimans, who did not accept the uniform date for Easter on Sunday. But coming up with a clean way of celebrating Easter (or Pasch) on a consistent year-to-year basis, given the difficulties between the lunar and solar calendars was still tricky to resolve. But with emperor Constantine looking on, insisting on a unified solution for all the churches, the bishops at the council sought to resolve the controversy once and for all, giving us the formula for dating Easter which we mostly take for granted today.

Over the following centuries, theologians constructed tables to precisely date Easter, but every now and then, conflicting calculation methods still led to variations as to when Easter would fall, though it now always fell on a Sunday, as the Council of Nicaea ruled. The situation was further complicated when the Gregorian Calendar was adopted in 1582, as the Julian calendar had slipped so much over the centuries. But not everyone agreed with the decision made by Pope Gregory, particularly Eastern Christians who did not recognize the authority of the Western bishop of Rome, and even the English colonists in North America prior to the 1750s.

Prior to the 1750s, many Christians in the American colonies associated with Puritanism never bothered with celebrating Easter, as the celebration of Easter was thought to be “too Catholic,” or even of pagan origin! The confusion was only alleviated in 1752 when the English Parliament formally adopted the Gregorian Calendar, a ruling that was extended to the American colonies, which eventually led to consistent yearly celebrations of Easter in America.

Hilary of Poitiers (about 300 – 367 AD), otherwise known as the “Hammer of the Arians,” for his efforts to defend the doctrine of the Trinity. Hilary was to the Western church as Athanasius was to the Eastern church, by encouraging a revival of pro-Nicene thinking, when it looked like the church would capitulate to anti-Nicene ideologies.

The Aftermath of the Council: And the Formulation of the Nicene-Constantinople Creed

Contributor Aaron Johnson tells the reader about how the Council of Nicaea was narrated by those who reported on it. There were no minutes of the sessions recorded as they happened, so we are dependent upon later interpreters to recall the events and topics discussed. Eusebius of Caesarea, the first great historian of the early church, made the most significant contribution to how Christians remember the Council meeting today.

Sara Parvis describes the aftermath of Nicaea up through the year 360, in how the efforts at Nicaea were effectively reversed in those years after the meeting. Arius’ exile was revoked in 327 by Constantine, just two years after the Council concluded. The controversial word homoousios, which defined the Son as being of the same divine “substance” or “essence” as the Father, was banned from the creed by 360. The great defender of the original creed, the bishop Athanasius of Alexandria, was sidelined by Constantine’s son, Constantius, the subsequent Roman emperor. As bishop, Athanasius was effectively forced into exile perhaps a half a dozen times, resulting from his defence of Nicaea.

The defense of Nicaea made a comeback after 360, as a pro-Nicene alliance eventually emerged. Historian Mark Delcogliano shows how the efforts of Athanasius, who died in 373, were taken up by those like the Cappodician fathers, particularly Basil of Caesarea. When the new emperor, Theodosius, came to the throne, he called yet a new council to meet in Constantinople, to finish the work begun at Nicaea and solidify the historically orthodox, pro-Nicene view of God. What we commonly call the “Nicene Creed,” should more properly be called the “Nicene-Constantinople Creed.”

As an aside, ….. historian Philip Jenkins recently wrote an article about one early church father of the time, another Eusebius (apparently a very common name!!), but this time a Eusebius of Samosata, who was an ardent supporter of the Nicene Creed, against those who were either fully Arian or semi-Arian in rejecting the creed of Nicaea. Eusebius of Samosata was interestingly martyred for his pro-Nicene position, in that he was killed by an anti-Nicene woman, one of the few anti-Nicene lay persons of the day that we know about, who dropped a roof tile on Eusebius’ head, fatally wounding him in a city street. The article is an interesting read!

The early church father Apollinarius, who was known to be an avid defender of the original creed formulated at Nicaea, took an unexpected turn which alarmed his friends. According to Kelly McCarthy Spoerl’s essay, Apollinarius affirmed the incarnation of the Son, in that Jesus had a human body and soul, but he denied that Jesus had lacked a rational human mind. Critics of Apollinarius argued that he was dismissive of the full human nature of Christ. Apollinarius had made statements that the Son was a mixture of humanity and divinity, possessing a divine mind and not a human mind. While the pro-Nicene party was largely unified regarding retaining the language of homoousios to speak of the Son in terms of his divine nature, tensions within that party would eventually require another great council to meet at Chalcedon, in 450, to find a resolution, regarding how to understand the precise relationship between the divine and human natures of Christ.

While Christians have probably heard of the Council of Nicaea (325), and perhaps the follow-up Council of Constantinople (380-381), few know that a number of regional councils were held during the intervening years, dealing with controversies which arose after Nicaea. As historian D. H. Williams observes, the Council of Nicaea did not solve all of the problems regarding the Arian controversy. Instead, new problems arose which led to new councils, few which had any lasting effect. For example, in the 340s, Photinius of Sirmium revived a popular idea known from the second century, the heresy of adoptionism, which according to critics maintained that the Son did not exist until his birth in Bethlehem. Jesus was only adopted as God’s Son, only becoming God at the incarnation.

Constantine’s son, Constantius, while not an Arian by conviction, was driven by political concerns to force the churchmen to more permanently resolve the Nicaea controversies. While Nicaea championed the concept of homoousious, that the Son was of the same divine substance as the Father, others, known as the “Homoian” (or Semi-Arian) party, argued for a kind of middle-way between Arius and Nicaea, that of homoiousios, that the Son was of like substance as the Father, with the insertion of the letter “i” in the word. A council held at Seleucia in the East, and a council held at Arminium, now known as Rimini, in modern day Italy, sought to formalize the Homoian solution, in 359/360.

However, a pro-Nicene movement arose which opposed the Homoian solution, known by historians as the “Dated Creed.” Many pro-Nicenes charged that a number of the bishops at Seleucia and Arminium signed off on the Homoian solution under false pretenses. The death of Constantius left the “Dated Creed” in an uncertain status, and Nicaea champions, particularly Athanasius of Alexandria, sought to revive the Nicene Creed as the official standard for the orthodox Christian church. Within twenty years, the pro-Nicene party triumphed over the Homoian party at the Council of Constantinople, even though Arian and even Semi-Arian (Homoian) confessions persisted into the 5th century. As Williams’ concludes,”It was not inevitable that the Nicene Creed or faith would become the post-fourth-century church’s way of confession.”

The Impact of the Council of Nicaea Down Through the Centuries

This Cambridge Companion concludes with two chapters on the long reception since Nicaea over the centuries. Paul L. Gavriluk discusses the reception history of Nicaea in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, while Geoffrey Dunn discusses Nicaea’s reception in the Western Catholic tradition. The big conflict between the East and the West arose over the filioque clause, whereby the Latin filioque “and the Son,” as added by Western churches to Nicene-Constantinople Creed to say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father “and the Son,” as the phrase “and the Son” was not included in the version confirmed at Constantinople. However, proponents of the filioque in the West contend that some Eastern church fathers had endorsed the concept of the filioque, as a defense for the change to the creed.

The story of the filioque clause insertion dates back to the late 6th century, when the Visigothic king Reccared replaced the old Roman Creed, either the predecessor to the Apostles Creed, or close to it, with the Nicene Creed, with the filioque clause inserted. Reccared’s intention was to bring the Spanish church inline with Nicene Christianity, as an intentional rejection of Arianism. In later centuries, Emperor Charlemagne believed that it was the Eastern church which intentionally removed the filioque from the original creed, which is historically not the case. The Nicene Creed with the filioque insertion was ratified by the Council of Toledo (589).

While all of this may sound rather nit-picky and obtuse to many Christians today, the controversy over the filioque continues to stir up discussion even today. The new Pope Leo released a statement acknowledging the filioque was not part of the original creed, and in a recent trip to Turkey to commemorate the Council of Nicaea, the Roman papal leader did not include the filioque in prayers given, while accompanied by Eastern Orthodox church leaders. Will we see a solution to the filioque controversy within our lifetime? Personally, I welcome it!!

It should be noted that what is known today as the “Nicene Creed,” as formulated finally at the Council of Constantinople, was not formally recorded until the Council of Chalcedon in 451. In the Christian East, no fewer than 18 councils offered creedal alternatives to Nicaea. But what was clearly established at Constantinople, in 381, was an imperial decree:

“The throngs of all heretics must be restrained from unlawful congregations. The name of the One and Supreme God shall be celebrated everywhere; the observance, destined to remain forever, of the Nicene faith, as transmitted long ago by Our ancestors and confirmed by the declaration and testimony of divine religion, shall be maintained. The contamination of the Photinian pestilence, the poison of the Arian sacrilege, the crime of the Eunomian perfidy, and the sectarian monstrosities, abominable because of the ill-omened names of their authors, shall be abolished even from the hearing of men.”

The first recorded usage of the Nicene Creed in the worship liturgy of the church was at Antioch, in the late fifth century. In the Christian West, recitation of the creed in the liturgy was not uniform until perhaps as late as the 11th century. When Emperor Henry II asked Pope Benedict VIII in 1014 why the Nicene Creed was not a standardized part of the liturgy across the entire Christian West, the pope’s reply was that Rome was not subject to the corruption of heresies and had no need for the use of the creed in the liturgy. Nevertheless, the Nicene Creed eventually became the central identity marker of historic orthodox Christianity across the Christian East and West, and it remains that way today.

Even though many churches today only make casual, if any, reference to Nicaea today, the influence of the Council of Nicaea remains the shaping doctrinal statement that unites all of Christendom. While Christians across the globe disagree on many things, including which books should be included in the Bible, etc., at least the Nicene Creed (even despite the filioque controversy) remains the one confession of faith which all believers can profess … and it all began at a meeting of church leaders and a Roman emperor in a lakeside town in what is now modern day Turkey. The Cambridge Companion to the Council of Nicaea is an authoritative scholarly source which articulates the history behind this all influential council and its famous creed.

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December 23, 2025

The First Thousand Years, by Robert Louis Wilken: A Look at the First Half of Christian History (from Europe… and Beyond!)

By Clarke Morledge

From the Christianity Along the Rhine blog series…

How did Christianity grow during the first thousand years, since the time of Christ?

During a recent trip to Europe featuring a river cruise down the Rhine River, my wife and I got to explore a lot a history. From cities like Basel, Strasbourg, Mainz, to Trier (up on the Moselle River), you can essentially travel back in time through the centuries, imagining what it was like to witness the destruction of World War 2, to walk along the cobblestone streets of the medieval period, and even to envision how the Romans built their fortifications some 2,000 years ago. One archaeological site I saw in Mainz from the Roman period has been dated to within a few decades of Christ’s birth, an event which we will celebrate within a few days at Christmas. So I decided to read a book which covered a good chunk of this history, much of it focused on events which took place in the Holy Roman Empire, where the Rhine River was a major thoroughfare.

Historian Robert Louis Wilken is a professor emeritus of Christian history at the University of Virginia. Back in 2013, Wilken wrote The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity, a fine survey into the first half of the Christian movement’s history. Wilken has a general audience in mind (no footnotes!!), and is great to listen to as an audiobook.

Two factors standout for The First Thousand Years, as compared to other similar histories. First, while my main interest was in the European part, Wilken’s book is very much a “global” history of the Christian movement, a story which often ignores the contribution of the Christian East, in other history retellings. Secondly, Wilken includes several chapters regarding the growth of Islam and its impact on Christianity, going into detail more than other texts generally do. The closest book that I know of which covers a lot of the same type of material is Philip Jenkins’ The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia–and How It Died, another book that I can highly recommend which I read more than a decade ago, before I started blogging.

Wilken’s work is chock full of scholarly insights into significant moments of church history, without getting too technical. Here is one section of the story that I liked a lot: I had been reading Wilken throughout 2025, the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea giving us the Nicene Creed. Wilken fills out a lot of details that are often missing in popular presentations about the Nicene Creed.

For example, in the early 4th century, when Constantine became one of the emperors of Rome, he built an assembly hall in today’s Trier, Germany, which eventually became a Christian church. My wife and I had the privilege to visit this Basilica of Constantine when we visited Trier. The Basilica lost its roof during the bombing of Trier in World War 2, but since then it has been beautifully restored.

It was through the influence of Constantine when Christianity essentially began to take over the whole of the Roman Empire, within a few hundred years. I was amazed to think that part of this Christian influence spread as far north in Europe as Trier, Germany, at such an early time in European history.

Inside the Basilica of Constantine, which Constantine established in Trier, Germany, in the early 4th century. Part of the brick work in the church has survived since that early Roman period. I could imagine that the Nicene Creed was recited here within a couple hundred years of the Council of Nicaea. My photo from October, 2025.

Robert Louis Wilken on the Story of the Nicene Creed

But all was not without controversy in the Christian movement in those days. This is where the story of the Nicene Creed which Wilken describes in The First Thousand Years comes into play.

When emperor Constantine finally vanquished his last competitor to the claim of emperor, Licinius, in 324, he had learned of an uproar in Alexandria, Egypt. Over the past few years, a controversy was brewing between the local bishop there, Alexander, and a nearby presbyter, Arius. Arius was teaching that while the Son of God was indeed divine, the Son was actually a creature created by the Father.

Alexander believed this to be heresy. The rumors of heresy were spreading across Christian communities in the Roman empire, and it had the emperor worried that the political fallout of such a theological controversy would make it difficult for him to govern effectively. Constantine, on the other hand, considered the whole matter to be “small and trivial” and the dispute an “idle question.” Constantine called the great Council of Nicaea, involving a little over 200 bishops from all over the Roman empire, to settle the matter and restore peace in the Christianity community of the imperial realm (Wilken, p. 90-91).

Constantine thought the controversy had ended once the meeting at Nicaea was over. But for the next several decades, Christians debated one another about the content of the creed, as the matter was far from settled, contrary to Constantine’s expectations. The Arian controversy and the Nicene proposal dominated imperial politics for several decades, involving several Roman emperors.

When Theodosius, who was friendly to the pro-Nicene party, became emperor in 379, he deposed an Arian bishop, Demophilus, from his office as bishop in Constantinople. Apparently, in many Roman cities at this time, you could find both an Arian (or Semi-Arian) and a Nicene bishop, a situation which brought great confusion to ordinary Christians (Wilken, p. 95).

Advocates of the Nicene Creed saw the ascension of Theodosius as an opportunity to reassert the orthodoxy of the Nicene formulation. Theodosius then called yet another council in 379-381, to be held this time in Constantinople, to reaffirm the creed from 325, and bring some resolution to issues that had caused contention over the creed, during the intervening years. Though the Council at Constantinople is considered to be an ecumenical council, all of the bishops who attended were from the Christian East, as opposed to the Council of Nicaea, which drew bishops from both the East and West (Wilken, p. 96).

Interestingly, the final text of the Nicene Creed formulated at Constantinople has not survived from that meeting. What we know of as the Nicene Creed today was actually recorded at the Council of Chalcedon, some seventy years later, as preserved in the minutes from that council in 450.

Wilkens is careful to note at Constantinople, the language of the Son being “begotten of the Father” (John 1:14, 1:18, 3:16, 3:18; Hebrews 1:5; 1 John 4:9) and the Spirit who “proceeds” from the Father (John 15:26) helped to establish the difference between the Son and the Holy Spirit. The original creed at Nicaea, in 325, merely mentioned the Holy Spirit, but gave no details as to how a Christian was to think about the Spirit, as the Spirit related to the Father and the Son. However, the controversial phrase regarding the Son as being of the “same substance” (homoousion) as the Father, used at Nicaea, was not used to speak of the Holy Spirit at Constantinople. Wilkens reports that 36 bishops at Constantinople argued that the Spirit should not be worshipped as God in the same way Christ is worshipped, though both were considered to be divine. The final creed is explicit in saying that the Spirit is to be worshipped and glorified “with the Father and the Son.” This gives us the doctrine of the Trinity as we know it today (Wilken, p. 97).

Porta Nigra is one the best preserved Roman gate to the city of Trier, Germany. The gate dates back to 170 CE, before Christianity had thoroughly spread across the Roman Empire. My photo from October, 2025. The link here is a then-and-now shot comparing the World War 2 look with today.

Other Nuggets of Church History Gold from the First Thousand Years

Loads of other anecdotes fill out the narrative of the growth of global Christianity during this period. I will just highlight a few more which stuck out for me.

Wilken explains why the Quartodeciman controversy, concerning how to determine the exact date for the yearly celebration of Christ’s resurrection, was so difficult to resolve (Wilken, p. 38…. I will have a future blog post which will dive into the Quartodeciman episode in a more detail).

Wilken has a whole chapter dedicated to Origen of Alexandria, perhaps one of the greatest Christian intellectuals of the early church era, who often gets dismissed by Christians today because of his universalistic doctrine, whereby he argues from 1 Corinthians 15:28 that all of humanity will ultimately be reconciled to God, thus emptying hell (Wiken, p. 61). Origen dropped the ball with his teaching on universalism, but in other respects, Origen was one of the first great towering intellectuals of the early church.

Origen was a master of multiple languages, one of the few early church fathers after the first century who made a concerted effort to understand the Hebrew language, the original language of the Old Testament. The Hebrew version of Genesis 2:4 reads: “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created,” whereas the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, reads: “This is the book of the generation of heaven and earth when they were made,” adding the work “book,” which is missing in the Hebrew. Origen supposed that the Jewish Greek translator added the word “book” since the same phrase “the book of the generations” appears in Genesis 5:1. This inspired Origen to make a learned study of the Hebrew language. The church remains indebted to Origen’s scholarship, despite having been censured for his views of universalism, a few centuries after his death (Wilken, p. 59).

Little did I know that Constantine’s famous “Edict of Milan” was actually a misnomer. The “Edict of Milan” was not an “edict” but rather a “letter” posted by the rival of Constantine, Licinius, who wrote the letter from his residence as emperor in Nicomedia, in modern day Turkey, but that the contents of the letter reflected the thought of Constantine as well (Wilken, p. 85).

Wilken is far from painting the early church as faultless. He acknowledges that the highly esteemed Bishop Ambrose of Milan was one of the greatest doctors of the church. In 388, a group of Christians set fire to a Jewish synagogue, at the border military town of Callinicum, on the Euphrates River. Emperor Theodosius ordered the local bishop of Callinicum to rebuild the synagogue out of the bishop’s own funds. Yet Ambrose intervened against the emperor, urging that the synagogue not be rebuilt, citing that the synagogue was “an abode of unbelief, a house of impiety, a shelter of madness under the damnation of God Himself.” Ambrose argued that it would be wrong for Christians to rebuild a Jewish synagogue. Theodosius relented. Scholars have debated the morality of this controversial act, on the part of Ambrose (Wilken, p. 134). Yet in my mind, it casts a shadow over the great bishop’s otherwise remarkable legacy. For if the arsonists were let off the hook for their actions, then it would not be just.

Wilken dedicates whole chapters focusing on architecture and art (with some helpful photos in the book), music and worship, and a history of how the bishopric of Rome became “pope.” Through this I learned that the Christian calendar actually arose much later than I originally thought. A late 5th/ early 6th century monk in Rome, Dionysius the Short, took the traditional Julian calendar, which was linked to the reigns of Roman emperors, and anchored the Christian calendar (or at least attempted to do so) to the birth of Jesus, anno Domini, “in the year of our Lord.” The Synod of Whitby in England in 664 formally approved of the new calendar, but it still took a few more centuries for it to be adopted across the Christian world (Wilken, p. 180).

Wilken clearly favors the influence of Saint Augustine of Hippo, describing him by saying “that during his lifetime [Augustine] was the most intelligent man in the Mediterranean world” (Wilken, p. 183). Augustine is known in the West for his conflict with Pelagius. But what I did not know is that charges of heresy against Pelagius were dropped by a council of Eastern bishops in Palestine in 415. Augustine was not satisfied by that judgment, and finally persuaded the Roman emperor Honorius to issue a condemnation of the Pelagians in 418 (Wilken, p. 192). Apparently, Augustine was not afraid of mixing church affairs with the affairs of the state, a mistake in my view, but one that became very common during the medieval era.

Whereas the early church largely grew organically, from neighbor to neighbor, worker to worker, family member to family member, the latter half of the first millennium was marked by a more top-down approach to church growth. Without the support of the king of a region, Christianity made little to no headway in expanding. Wilken relates the story of how Christianity spread to various places, particularly in the east, among the Ethiopians, the Slavs, and as far away as China. In each case, the regional king played a pivotal role in the global development of Christianity.

The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity, by Robert Louis Wilken, tells the story of the first half of the history of the Christian movement, much of it which took place in Europe, but not only in Europe. Much of the forgotten story about the first thousand years of the church happened elsewhere around the world.

A Global History

Yet it was a risky endeavor, as sometimes Christianity took off and remained vibrant, whereas in other cases the church stagnated and even declined, as in the case of China. Christianity managed to reach China in the 7th century, growing quickly, before fizzling out within a few more centuries. The whims of the ruler often proved decisive.

Wilken dedicates a lot of attention to the emergence of Islam. The author shows how Christianity in some cases survived and even thrived under Muslim rule, as with the Copts of Egypt, and where it declined, as in the case of Asia Minor, known now as modern day Turkey.

The story overall of the first thousand years of Christianity is one of remarkable growth followed by decline, particularly in the Christian East. Only once the growth of Islam was challenged did Christianity grow again, and the future of that growth was in the Christian West. But that is the story of the next thousand years of Christian history.

Robert Louis Wilken’s historical survey of the first thousand years of church history is a “must-read” for those interested in learning about the history of the first half of Christianity’s existence.

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Augustine: Conversion to Confessions, by Robin Lane Fox, A Review, Part Two

Augustine as a Parish Priest

Augustine as the Bishop of Hippo

Augustine as a Biblical Interpreter

Augustine’s Misstep on Original Sin

Critical Reflection on Fox’s Augustine: Conversion to Confessions

Robin Lane Fox: Historian vs. Biblical Interpreter

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Augustine: Conversion to Confessions, by Robin Lane Fox, A Review, Part One

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Bart Ehrman’s Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium, A Review

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The Council of Nicaea Demythologized: Reviewing the Cambridge Companion to the Council

A Deep Dive into the History of Christianity’s Most Important Church Council

The Background to the Council of Nicaea

A Digression…. An Incredible Tale: Athanasius and His Bitter Opponents

The Practical Details of the Council of Nicaea

Nicaea Was Not Just About the Controversy over Christ’s Divinity

Dating Easter: The Quartodeciman Controversy

The Aftermath of the Council: And the Formulation of the Nicene-Constantinople Creed

The Impact of the Council of Nicaea Down Through the Centuries

Share this:

The First Thousand Years, by Robert Louis Wilken: A Look at the First Half of Christian History (from Europe… and Beyond!)

Robert Louis Wilken on the Story of the Nicene Creed

Other Nuggets of Church History Gold from the First Thousand Years

A Global History

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Feel free to share our book…

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