History: Nicea-Constantinople
(Eusebius, Constantine) (Chadwick, Chapters 8 and 9)

Church History I: The Establishment of Christianity (312 – 381 AD)

“Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” (Matt. 22:21)

Constantine the Great (r. 306 – 337)

• Passed over for succession by Diocletian, Constantine was acclaimed emperor in 306
• He fought for mastery of the Western Empire until 312
• In 312 he had a vision and converts to Christianity on the eve of the battle that gave him control over half of the Roman Empire (the Battle of the Milvian Bridge)
• In 313 he and his co-Emperor Licinius issued a edict officially tolerating Christianity (the Edict of Milan)
• In 324 Constantine defeated Licinius and became sole Emperor of Rome
• In 325 he called together the first ecumenical council at Nicaea to unify the church by settling the Arian controversy and establishing one date for the celebration of Easter
• From 325 to 337 Constantine was actively involved in building churches, arbitrating Christian disputes, and passing laws in favor of Christianity. He was baptized and died in 337.

Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 260 – c. 340)

• The first church historian, Eusebius chronicled the early history of the church and the Great Persecution from first-hand experience
• He found himself on the wrong side of the Arian controversy for a brief period but modified clarified his language and modified his views
• He became Constantine’s official eulogist and biographer and was enthusiastic about an age in which a Christian held supreme secular power

The Arian Controversy after Nicaea

• Constantine himself had some doubts about the Nicene Creed and his sons who ruled after him were Arian. This became as much a political issue as it was a theological one and was involved in imperial power plays for most of the 4^th c.
• Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 296 – 373) was a staunch defender of Nicaea. Exiled five times he spent much of his life in the west and revealed growing differences between Christians in the two halves of the Empire.
• Julian the Apostate (r. 361 – 63) was the only emperor after Constantine who was not a Christian. His short reign is famous as the last gasp of paganism.
• Two doctrinal parties splint into several, which in turn reconsolidated
• A new, Nicene, Emperor named Theodosius called a second ecumenical council at Constantinople and it re-affirmed Nicene orthodoxy while elaborating on the position of the Holy Spirit and he declared Christianity to be the only legal religion in Rome in 380