1. New Encyclopedia Britannica, 1979, Trinity, Vol. X, p.126
2. Encyclopædia Britannica, 1971, Constantine, Vol. 6, p. 386
3. New Encyclopedia Britannica, 1979, Christianity, Vol. 4, p.485
4. New Encyclopedia Britannica, 1979, Christianity, Vol. 4, p.480
5. New Encyclopedia Britannica, 1979, Constantine the Great, Vol. 5, p.71
6. New Encyclopedia Britannica, 1979, Arianism, Vol. I, p.509

"Trinity, the doctrine of God taught by Christianity that asserts that God is one in essence but three in "person," Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Neither the word Trinity, nor the explicit doctrine as such, appears in the New Testament, nor did Jesus and his followers intend to contradict the Shema in the Old Testament: "Hear, 0 Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord" (Deut. 6:4). The earliest Christians, however, had to cope with the implications of the coming of Jesus Christ and of the presence and power of God among them-i.e., the Holy Spirit, whose coming was connected with the celebration of the Pentecost. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were associated in such New Testament passages as the Great Commission: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them mi the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Matt. 28:19); and in the apostolic benediction: "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all" (II Cor. 13:14). Thus, the New Testament established the basis for the doctrine of the Trinity. The doctrine developed gradually over several centuries and through many controversies. Initially, both the requirements of monotheism inherited from the Old Testament and the implications of the need to interpret the biblical teaching to Greco-Roman paganism seemed to demand that the divine in Christ as the Word, or Logos, be interpreted as subordinate to the Supreme Being. An alternative solution was to interpret Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as three modes of the self-disclosure of the one God but not as distinct within the being of God itself. The first tendency recognized the distinctness among the three, but at the cost of their equality and hence of their unity (subordinationism); the second came to terms with their unity, but at the cost of their distinctness 'as "persons" (modalism). It was not until the 4th century that the distinctness of the three and their unity were brought together in a single orthodox doctrine of one essence and three persons. The Council of Nicaea in 325 stated the crucial formula for that doctrine in its confession that the Son is "of the same essence [homoousios] as the Father," even though it said very little about the Holy Spirit. Over the next half century, Athanasius defended and refined the Nicene formula, and, by the end of the 4th century, under the leadership of Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus (the Cappadocian Fathers), the doctrine of the Trinity took substantially the form it has maintained ever since." (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1979, Trinity, Vol. X, p.126)

"Constantine: On June 15, 313, he issued at Nicornedia (Izmit) an edict (often misleadingly called the edict of Milan) proclaiming the common policy, agreed between the two emperors at Milan, of full toleration for all religions and restitution of wrongs done to the Christians. Constantine himself went further, making lavish donations to the churches and granting immunities to the clergy. Conversion- The reasons for Constantine's conversion to Christianity have been much debated. Some believe that it was an astute stroke of policy, designed to win the support of the Christians, or a wise act of statesmanship aimed at buttressing the decaying fabric of the empire with the strength of the Christian church. Neither view is very likely, for the Christians, especially in the west, were a small and unimportant minority and the churches weak and divided. Constantine's motives can be best divined from his voluminous letters and edicts on religion, whose authenticity has been proved. From these it appears that from 313 he regarded himself as the chosen servant of the "Highest Divinity" (whom he identified with the God of the Christians), who had given him victory over his enemies and raised him to supreme power, and believed that the prosperity of the empire and of himself, to whose care it had been committed, would be increased by God if his worship were properly conducted, and would be endangered if God were moved to wrath by its neglect. This belief is most simply explained by the story Constantine himself many years later told his biographer Eusebius of Caesarea and confirmed upon oath. When he was contemplating his attack on Maxentius and considering whence he should obtain divine aid, he saw a cross of light superimposed upon the sun. This vision, whatever its nature, was decisive in his conversion, evidenced in the favours he henceforth showered on the Christian church. During the decade following his conversion Constantine's legislation shows many signs of Christian influence. For example, he repealed the legislation of Augustus that penalized celibates, legalized bequests to the church and gave full validity to manumission performed in a church. He even gave powers of jurisdiction to bishops, allowing either party to transfer a suit to the cognizance of a bishop, whose verdict should be final and executed by the civil authority. He also made Sunday a public holiday according to Christian practice, although he emphasized its sacredness to the sun. It was probably at this period that he built and lavishly endowed the Basilica Constantiniana and its baptistery, the Fons Constantini, in the palace of the Laterani in Rome. Religious Policy. Constantine was soon involved in ecclesiastical controversy, in particular that associated with Donatus (see DONATISTS). In 313 a group of African bishops led by Majorinus, who claimed to be bishop of Carthage, submitted to him charges against Caecilian, the rival bishop of Carthage, and asked him to appoint judges to decide the dispute. Constantine was already aware of the schism and on the suggestion of his ecclesiastical adviser, Ossius, bishop of Cordoba, he had confined his benefactions to Caecilian's party, but he accepted the petition of the other group and appointed as judges the bishops of Rome, Arelate (Arles), Augustodunum (Autun) and Colonia (Cologne). The bishop of Rome, having called in 15 Italian bishops in addition, pronounced in favour of Caecilian, but the defeated party, now led by Donatus, Majorinus' successor, appealed. Constantine summoned a larger council of bishops at Arles (314), and they again decided in Caecilian's favour. The Donatist party now appealed to Constantine himself. He eventually agreed to hear the case, and again condemned the Donatists. When they remained recalcitrant, he endeavoured to suppress them by force, but they welcomed martyrdom. In 321 he ended the persecution, announcing that he would leave the dissidents to the judgment of God. Constantine was convinced, doubtless by Ossius, that dissension in his church was deeply displeasing to God. It was the traditional duty of the emperor to maintain the pax deorum, and Constantine assumed that he had to win and retain for the empire the favour of God. He used the bishops as experts to pronounce on the religious issue, as his pagan predecessors had used the pontifices or the augurs, but he himself selected and summoned the bishops, received appeals on their decision and took what executive action he thought fit, Victory over Licinius and Foundation of Constantinople.Constantine and Licinius were soon at variance. In 314-315 there was a war in Pannonia in which Constantine on the whole gained the upper hand: Licinius had to cede to him the two dioceses of Pannonia and Moesia as the price of peace. In 317 Constantine's two elder sons, Crispus and Constantine, were jointly given the title of Caesar with Licinius' son Licinius, but relations gradually deteriorated. Licinius, uncertain of the loyalty of his Christian subjects. began to persecute them, and Constantine in a war against the Goths violated Licinius' territory in Thrace. In 324 Constantine attacked, and, fighting under the protection of the labarum, his armies were victorious at Adrianople (modern Edirne) in Thrace (July 3) and on Sept. 18 at Chrysopolis (Oskiidar), situated opposite Byzantium across the Bosporus. Licinius surrendered and in 325 he was executed for an alleged attempt at revolt. Soon after his victory Constantine began to rebuild Byzantium on a magnificent scale, renaming it Constantinople (q.v.). He spent great wealth on his new foundation, and to adorn it robbed many pagan shrines of their statues and columns; the city was formally dedicated on May 11, 330. It symbolized a break with the pagan past which was identified with Rome, and heralded the beginning of a new Christian empire. Constantine states in one of his laws that he founded the new city "by the command of God," and he doubtless conceived it as a memorial and thank offering for the final victory whereby God had granted him rule over the whole empire. As such it was from the start a Christian city, unsullied by pagan sacrifice and amply endowed with magnificent churches. Coin types suggest that it was regarded as a sister to Rome, and it may have been called New Rome from the beginning. But it did not share Rome's constitutional privileges under Constantine. It had no prefect of the city until 359 and no senate. but was primarily an imperial residence. Arianism: Council of Nicaea and its Consequences. Immediately after his victory over Licinius Constantine had redressed the wrongs inflicted on the Christians during the recent persecutions and supplied funds for enlarging and rebuilding the churches in all the eastern provinces. He remembered from his youth that the church was far larger and more flourishing in the east than in the west, and he had hopes that the eastern bishops would be able to resolve the intractable Donatist problem. It was therefore with dismay that he discovered that the eastern churches were divided by a much more widespread dispute, the doctrinal controversy between Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, and one of his priests, Arius (see ARIUS; ARIANISM). Not understanding the theological points at issue Constantine first sent a letter to the two parties rebuking them for quarreling about minute distinctions, as he believed them to be, about the nature of Christ, and urging them to agree to differ, as did pagan philosophers. Ossius, who carried this letter to Alexandria, soon discovered that the dispute was too serious to be thus resolved, and summoned a large council of Syrian bishops at Antioch (325). They condemned Arius, but before they had concluded their deliberations, Constantine decided to convoke a still larger council at Ancyra (Ankara) in Galatia. Shortly afterward he resolved to hold a universal (ecumenical) council of all, the churches at Nicaea in Bithynia: this city was chosen as being more convenient for the bishops of Italy and the west who had been summoned, and for the emperor himself, who intended to be present. The Council of Nicaea met on May 20, 325. Constantine himself presided, actively guiding the discussions, and personally proposed (no doubt on Ossius' prompting) the crucial formula expressing the relation of Christ to God in the creed issued by the council, "of one substance with the Father" (see CREED). Overawed by the emperor, the bishops, with two exceptions only, signed the creed, many of them much against their inclination. The council also dealt with a number of lesser schisms and heresies, laying down the conditions on which their adherents might be readmitted to the church; endeavoured to settle the date of Easter; and regulated various questions of ecclesiastical precedence and organization. Constantine banished Arius and his partisans, confiscated the Arian churches and banned the cult of recusant schismatics and heretics. Constantine regarded the decisions of Nicaea as divinely inspired. As long as he lived no one dared openly to challenge the creed of Nicaea, but the expected concord did not follow. Those who disliked the Nicene formula took every opportunity of attacking its principal adherents and succeeded in condemning several of them on charges of doctrinal error or uncanonical conduct. Their chief victim was Athanasius, who became bishop of Alexandria in 328 (see ATHANASIUS, SAINT). At first Constantine supported him, acquitting him of several charges, but he eventually lost patience. The emperor's cherished aim was to reconcile Arius with the church, but Athanasius stubbornly refused to accept Arius' vaguely worded submission. At last, in 335, Constantine summoned a council of bishops at Tyre to investigate various charges against Athanasius and ordered him to appear. The council condemned him; he appealed to Constantine himself, who banished him to Gaul. In the same year at a council at Jerusalem Arius was readmitted to communion. During the last decade of his reign Constantine became increasingly pious. He devoted more and more of his time to completing his religious education, reading the scriptures and theological works supplied by Eusebius of Caesarea, listening to sermons and himself delivering homilies to his court. He continued to spend lavishly on building churches, at Rome, Constantinople, Antioch and the holy places in Palestine. He showed marked favour to Christians, thereby causing a flood of interested conversions. At the same time his attitude to his pagan subjects became more severe. Shortly after his victory over Licinius be issued an edict urging all his subjects to adopt the Christian faith, but at the same time he confirmed his policy of toleration to paganism (although in contemptuous language) and forbade overzealous Christians to disturb the pagan cult. He nevertheless destroyed three famous temples, at Aegae in Cilicia and at Apheca and Heliopolis in Phoenicia, and in 331 confiscated all the temple treasures, even stripping the cult statues of their gold; he probably also seized the temple endowments. Before the end of his reign he may even have banned sacrifice." (Encyclopædia Britannica, 1971, Constantine, Vol. 6, p. 386)

"The Holy Trinity: The basis for the doctrine of the Trinity: The Christian doctrine of the Trinity has its ultimate foundation in the special religious experience of the Christians in the first communities. This basis of experience is older than the doctrine of the Trinity. It consisted of the fact that God came to meet Christians in a threefold figure: (1) as Creator, Lord of the history of salvation, Father, and Judge, who revealed himself in the Old Testament; (2) as the Lord who, in the figure of Jesus Christ, lived among men and was present in their midst as the "Resurrected One"; and (3) as the Holy Spirit, whom they experienced as the power of the new life, the miraculous potency of the Kingdom of God. The question as to how to reconcile the encounter with God in this threefold figure with faith in the oneness of God, which was the Jews' and Christians' characteristic mark of distinction over against paganism, agitated the piety of ancient Christendom in the deepest way. It also provided the strongest impetus for a speculative theology-an impetus that inspired Western metaphysics throughout the centuries. In the first two centuries a series of different answers to this question stood in juxtaposition; at first none of them was thought through speculatively. The diversity in interpretation of the Trinity was conditioned especially through the understanding of the figure of Jesus Christ. According to the theology of the Gospel According to John, the divinity of Jesus Christ constituted the departure point for understanding his person and efficacy. The Gospel According to Mark, however, did not proceed from a theology of incarnation but instead understood the Baptism of Jesus Christ as the adoption of the man Jesus Christ into the Sonship of God, accomplished through the descent of the Holy Spirit. The situation became further aggravated by the conceptions of the special personal character of the manifestation of God developed by way of the historical figure of Jesus Christ; the Holy Spirit was viewed not as a personal figure but rather as a power and appeared graphically only in the form of the dove and thus receded, to a large extent, in the Trinitarian speculation. Introduction of Neoplatonic themes. In the Johannine understanding, Christ as the Logos, under the influence of Neoplatonic Logos philosophy, became the subject of a speculative theology; there thus developed a speculative interest in the relationship of the oneness of God to the triplicity of his manifestations. This question was answered through the Neoplatonic metaphysics of being. The transcendent God, who is beyond all being, all rationality, and all conceptuality, divests himself of his divine transcendence; in a first act of becoming self-conscious he recognizes himself as the divine nous (mind), or divine world reason, which was characterized by the Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus as the "Son" who goes forth from the Father. The next step by which the transcendent God becomes self-conscious consists in the appearance in the divine nous of the divine world, the idea of the world in its individual forms as the content of the divine consciousness. In Neoplatonic philosophy both the nous and the idea of the world are designated the hypostases (essences, or natures) of the transcendent God. Christian theology took the Neoplatonic metaphysics of substance as well as its doctrine of hypostases as the departure point for interpreting the relationship of the "Father" to the "Son" in terms of the Neoplatonic hypostases doctrine. This process stands in direct relationship with a speculative interpretation of Christology in connection with Neoplatonic Logos speculation (see also PLATONISM AND NEOPLATONISM). The assumption of the Neoplatonic hypostases doctrine meant from the beginning a certain evaluation of the relationships of the three divine figures to one another, because for Neoplatonism the process of hypostatization is at the same time a process of diminution of being. In flowing forth from his transcendent source, the divine being is weakened with the distance from his transcendent origin. Diminution of being is brought about through approach to matter, which for its part is understood in Neoplatonism as non-being. In transferring the Neoplatonic hypostases doctrine to the Christian interpretation of the Trinity there existed the danger that the different manifestations of God-as known by the Christian experience of faith: Father, Son, Holy Spirit-would be transformed into a hierarchy of gods graduated among themselves and thus into a polytheism. Though this danger was consciously avoided and, proceeding from a Logos Christology, the complete sameness of essence of the three manifestations of God was emphasized, there arose the danger of a relapse into a triplicity of equally ranked gods, which would displace the idea of the oneness of God. - Attempts to define the Trinity. The Arian controversy. By the 3rd century it was already apparent that all attempts to systematize the mystery of the divine Trinity with the theories of Neoplatonic hypostases metaphysics led to ever new conflicts. The high point, upon which the basic difficulties underwent their most forceful theological and ecclesiastically political actualization, was the so called Arian controversy. Arius (died 336) belonged to the Antiochene school of theology, which placed strong emphasis upon the historicity of the man Jesus Christ. In his theological interpretation of the idea of God, Arius was interested in maintaining a formal understanding of the oneness of God. In defense of the oneness of God, he was obliged to dispute the sameness of essence of the Son and the Holy Spirit with God the Father, as stressed by the theologians of the Neoplatonically influenced Alexandrian school. From the outset, the controversy between both parties took place upon the common basis of the Neoplatonic concept of substance, which was foreign to the New Testament itself. It is no wonder that the continuation of the dispute on the basis of the metaphysics of substance likewise led to concepts that have no foundation in the New Testament such as the question of the sameness of essence (homoousia) or similarity of essence (homoiousia) of the divine persons. The basic concern of Arius was and remained disputing the oneness of essence of the Son and the Holy Spirit with God the Father, in order to preserve the oneness of God. The Son, thus, became a "second God, under God the Father"-i.e., he is God only in a figurative sense, for he belongs on the side of the creatures, even if at their highest summit. Here Arius joined an older tradition of Christology, which had already played a role in Rome in the early 2nd century-namely, the so-called angel-Christology. The descent of the Son to Earth was understood as the descent to Earth of the highest prince of the angels, who became man in Jesus Christ; he is to some extent identified with the angel prince Michael. In the old angel-Christology the concern is already expressed to preserve the oneness of God, the inviolable distinguishing mark of the Jewish and Christian faiths over against all paganism. The Son is not himself God, but as the highest of the created spiritual beings he is moved as close as possible to God. Arius joined this tradition with the same aim-i.e., defending the idea of the oneness of the Christian concept of God against all reproaches that Christianity introduces a new, more sublime form of polytheism. This attempt to save the oneness of God led, however, to an awkward consequence. For Jesus Christ, as the divine Logos become man, moves thereby to the side of the creatures-i.e., to the side of the created world that needs redemption. How, then, should such a Christ, himself a part of the creation, be able to achieve the redemption of the world? On the whole, the Christian Church rejected, as an unhappy attack upon the reality of redemption, such a formal attempt at saving the oneness of God as was undertaken by Arius. The main speaker for church orthodoxy was Athanasius of Alexandria (died 373), for whom the point of departure was not a philosophical-speculative principle but rather the reality of redemption, the certainty of salvation. The redemption of man from sin and death is only then guaranteed if Christ is total God and total man, if the complete essence of God penetrates human nature right into the deepest layer of its carnal corporeality. Only if God in the full meaning of his essence became man in Jesus Christ is deification of man in terms of overcoming sin and death guaranteed as the resurrection of the flesh. Augustine, of decisive importance for the Western development of the Trinitarian doctrine in theology and metaphysics, coupled the doctrine of the Trinity with anthropology. Proceeding from the idea that man is created by God according to his own image, he attempted to explain the mystery of the Trinity by uncovering traces of the Trinity in the human personality. He went from analysis of the Trinitarian structure of the simple act of cognition to ascertainment of the Trinitarian structure both of self-consciousness of man and of the act of religious contemplation in which man recognizes himself as the image of God. The Trinity as successive phases of revelation. A second model of Trinitarian doctrine-suspected of heresy from the outset-which had effects not only in theology but also in the social metaphysics of the West as well, emanated from Joachim of Fiore. He understood the course of the history of salvation as the successive realization of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in three consecutive periods of salvation. This interpretation of the Trinity became effective as a "theology of revolution," inasmuch as it was regarded as the theological justification of the endeavour to accelerate the arrival of the third state of the Holy Spirit through revolutionary initiative. The Athanasian concept of the Trinity. The final dogmatic formulation of the Trinitarian doctrine in the so-called Atbanasian Creed (c. 500), una substantia-tres personae ("one substance -three persons"), reached back to the formulation of Tertullian. In practical terms it meant a compromise in that it held fast to both basic ideas of Christian revelation-the oneness of God and his self-revelation in the figures of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit-without rationalizing the mystery itself; In the final analysis the point of view thereby remained definitive that the fundamental assumptions of the reality of salvation and redemption are to be retained and not sacrificed to the concern of a rational monotheism. Characteristically, in all periods of the later history of Christendom in which a rationalistic philosophy was achieved and the history of salvation aspect of the Trinitarian question receded, anti-Trinitarian currents returned. Many, to some extent, consciously rejoined ties with Arius: the Humanist Enlightenment of the 16th century, and the so-called anti-Trinitarians of the Italian Renaissance. A direct connection exists between anti-Trinitarianism and 18th-century research into the life of Jesus. The oldest life of Jesus researchers in the 18th century, such as Venturini, Karl Bahrdt and Reimarus, who portrayed Jesus as the agent of a secret enlightenment order that had set itself the goal of spreading the religion of reason in the world, were at the same time anti-Trinitarians and pioneers of the radical rationalistic criticism of dogma. The Kantian critique of the proofs of God contributed further to a devaluation of Trinitarian doctrine. In the philosophy of German Idealism, G.W.F. Hegel, in the framework of his attempt to raise Christian dogma into the sphere of the conceptual, took the Christian Trinitarian doctrine as the basis for his system of philosophy and, above all, for his interpretation of history as the absolute spirit's becoming self-conscious. In more recent theology, the doctrine of the Trinity has been actually supplanted by a monochristism, which was achieved among the followers of dialectical theology in Europe and North America. In the so-called theology of death of God of the 1960s, the faith in a transcendent God, and thereby faith in the Trinity as well, were depreciated. Christian dogma was interpreted purely anthropologically and was reduced to the idea of human togetherness-a delayed victory of a philosophy of religion over Christian dogma, which for-got or gave up its own foundations. The transcendence of God, however, has been rediscovered by science and sociology; theology in the 1970's has endeavoured to overcome the purely anthropological interpretation of religion and once more to discover anew its transcendent ground. Theology has thereby been confronted with the problem of Trinity in a new form, which, in view of the Christian experience of God as an experience of the presence of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, cannot be eliminated. (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1979, Christianity, Vol. 4, p.485)

GOD THE SON: Dogmatic teachings about the figure of Jesus Christ go back to the spontaneous faith experiences of the original church. The faithful of the early church experienced and recognized the incarnate and resurrected Son of God in the person of Jesus. The disciples' testimony served as confirmation for them that Jesus really is the exalted Lord and Son of God, who sits at the right hand of the Father and will return in glory to consummate his Kingdom. Different interpretations of the person of Jesus: The Antiochene school. From the beginning of the church different interpretations of the person of Jesus have existed alongside one another. The Gospel According to Mark, for example, understands Jesus as the man upon whom the Holy Spirit descends at the Baptism in the Jordan and who is declared the Son of God through the voice of God from the clouds. All later Christological attempts of the theological school of Antioch have followed this line of interpretation. They proceed from the humanity of Jesus and view his divinity in his consciousness of God, founded in the divine mission that was imposed upon him by God through the infusion of the Holy Spirit. The Alexandrian school. Another view is expressed by the Gospel According to John, which regards the figure of Jesus Christ as the divine Logos become flesh. Here, the divinity of the person of Jesus is understood not as the endowment of the man Jesus with a divine power but rather as the result of the descent of the divine Logos- a pre-existent heavenly being- into the world: the Logos taking on a human body of flesh so as to be realized in history. This view was adopted by the catechetical school of Alexandrian theology. Thus it was that the struggle to understand the figures of Jesus Christ created a rivalry between the theologies of Antioch and Alexandria. Both schools had a wide sphere of influence, not only among the contemporary clergy but also in monasticism and among the laity Characteristically, Neaorianism (a heresy founded in the 5th century), with its strong emphasis upon the human, aspects of Jesus Christ arose from the Antiochene school, whereas Monophysitism (a heresy founded in the 5th century), with its one-sided stress upon the divine nature of Christ, emerged from the Alexandrian school of theology. The Christological controversies. The many suggestions for resolving the, Christological problem, with which the history of dogma is minutely occupied, cannot be enumerated because of the limitations of space. This is because new intermediate solutions constantly were proposed between the two extreme positions of Antioch and Alexandria. As in the area of the doctrine of the Trinity, the general development of Christology has been characterized by an astonishing plurality of views and formulations. Also, the creeds of the major churches have by no means agreed with each other word for word. After Constantine, the great ecumenical synods occupied themselves essentially with the task of creating, in ever new drafts, uniform formulations binding upon the entire imperial church. Even the Christological formulas, however, do not claim to offer a rational, conceptual clarification; instead they emphasize clearly three facts in the mystery of the sonship of God. These are: first, that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is completely God, that in reality "the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily" in him (Col. 2:9); second, that he is completely man; and third, that these two "natures" do not exist beside one another in an unconnected way but, rather, are joined in him in a personal unity. Once again, the Neoplatonic metaphysics of substance offered the categories so as to settle conceptually these various theological concerns. Thus, the idea of the unity of essence (homoousia) of the divine Logos with God the Father assured the complete divinity of Jesus Christ. Thus, the mystery of the person of Jesus Christ could be grasped in the formula: two natures in one person. The concept of person, taken from Roman law, served to join the fully divine and fully human natures of Christ into an individual unity. Christology is not the product of abstract, logical operations but instead originates in the liturgical and charismatic sphere of prayer, meditation, and asceticism. Not being derived primarily from abstract teaching, it rather changes within the liturgy in ever new forms and in countless hymns of worship- as in the words of the Easter liturgy: 'The king of the heavens appeared on earth out of kindness to man and it was with men that he associated. For he took his flesh from a pure virgin and he came forth from her, in that he accepted it. One is the Son, two-fold in essence, but not in person. Therefore in announcing him as in truth perfect God and perfect man, we confess Christ our God.'" (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1979, Christianity, Vol. 4, p.480)

Constantine the Great: Constantine I the Great, the first Roman emperor to profess Christianity, initiated not only the evolution of the empire into a Christian state but also provided the impulse for a distinctively Christian culture that prepared the way for the growth of Byzantine and Western medieval culture. He was born on February 27 of an unknown year, but probably in the later AD 280s, at Naissus (modern Nig in Yugoslavia) in the province of Upper Moesia, on the strategic road leading from Pannonia through Sirmium and Singidunum. (Belgrade) to Byzantium. He was a typical product of the military governing class of the later 3rd century, the son of Flavius Valerius Constantius, an army officer, and his wife (or concubine) Helena. In AD 293, when Constantine was still a boy, his father was raised to the rank of Caesar, or deputy emperor, and was sent to serve under the Augustus (emperor) Maximian in the west. At the same time he had to separate from Helena in order to marry a stepdaughter of Maximian; and Constantine was brought up in the Eastern Empire, at the court of the senior emperor Diocletian at Nicomedia (modern Izmit in Turkey). Constantine was seen as a youth by his future panegyrist, Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, passing with Diocletian through Palestine on the way to a war in Egypt; later, as a young officer, Constantine took part in a successful campaign on the lower Danube. Career and conversion. Constantine's experience as a member of the imperial court a Latin speaking institution in the eastern provinces left a lasting imprint on him. Educated to less than the highest literary standards of the day, he was always more at home in Latin than in Greek: later in life he was in the habit of delivering edifying sermons, which he would compose in Latin and pronounce in Greek from professional translations. Christianity he encountered in court circles as well as in the cities of the east; while from 303, during the great persecution of the Christians that began at the court of Diocletian at Nicomedia and was enforced with particular intensity in the eastern parts of the empire, Christianity was a major issue of public policy. It is even possible that members of Constantine's family were Christians. Constantine himself was said to have converted his mother: his father's conduct in Britain during the persecution is uncertain; but the name of a half-sister of Constantine, Anastasia, has been thought to show Christian influence. In 305 the two emperors, Diocletian and Maximian, resigned, to be succeeded by their respective deputy emperors, Galerius and Constantius. The latter were replaced by Maximinus Daia in the east and Severus in the west, Constantine being passed over. Constantius now requested his son's presence from Galerius: this was grudgingly conceded, and Constantine made his way through the territories of the hostile Severus to join his father at Boulogne. They then crossed together to Britain and fought a campaign in the north before Constantius' death at York in 306. Immediately acclaimed emperor by the army, Constantine now threw himself into a complex series of civil wars in which Maxentius, the son of the old Western emperor Maximian, rebelled at Rome, with his father's help suppressing Severus, the deputy emperor, who was replaced by Licinius. When Maximian was rejected by his son, he joined Constantine in Gaul, only to betray him and be forced to commit suicide (310). Constantine, who had in 307 married Maximian's daughter Fausta as his second wife, invaded Italy in 312 and after a lightning campaign defeated his brother-in-law Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge near Rome. He then confirmed an alliance that he had already entered into with Licinius (Galerius having died in 311). Licinius, after defeating his rival Maximinus Daia, became Eastern emperor but lost territory in the Balkans to Constantine in 316. After a further period of tension, Constantine attackea Licinius in a second war of 324, routing him at Adrianople and Chrysopolis and becoming sole emperor until his death in 337. Throughout his life, Constantine ascribed his success to his conversion to Christianity and the support of the Christian God. The triumphal arch erected in his honour at Rome after the defeat of Maxentius ascribed the victory to the "inspiration of the Divinity" as well as to Constantine's own genius. A statue set up at the same time showed Constantine himself, holding aloft a cross and the legend, "by this saving sign I have delivered your city from the tyrant and restored liberty to the Senate and people of Rome." After his victory over Licinius in 324, Constantine wrote that he had come from the farthest shores of Britain as God's chosen instrument for the suppression of impiety, and in a letter to the Persian king Shapur II, he proclaimed that, aided by the divine power of God, he had come from the borders of the ocean to bring peace and prosperity to all lands. Constantine's adherence to Christianity was closely associated with his rise to power. He fought the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in the name of the Christian God, having received instructions in a dream to paint the Christian monogram on his troops' shields. This is the account given by the Christian apologist Lactantius; a somewhat different version, offered by Eusebius, tells of a vision seen by Constantine during the campaign against Maxentius, in which the Christian sign appeared in the sky with the legend, "In this sign, conquer." Despite the Emperor's own authority for the account, given late in life to Eusebius, it contains anachronisms and is in general more problematic than the other: but a religious experience on the march from Gaul is suggested also by a pagan orator, who in a speech of 310 referred to a vision of Apollo received by Constantine at a shrine in Gaul. Yet to suggest that Constantine's conversion was "politically motivated" means little in an age in which every Greek or Roman expected that political success followed from religious piety. The civil war itself fostered religious competition, each side enlisting its divine support; and it would be thought in no way unusual that Constantine should have sought divine help for his claim for power and divine justification for his acquisition of it. What is far more remarkable is Constantine's subsequent development of his new religious allegiance to a quite extreme personal commitment. Commitment to Christianity. After the defeat of Maxentius, Constantine met Licinius at Milan to confirm a number of political and dynastic arrangements. A product of this meeting was the so called Edict of Milan, extending toleration to the Christians and the restoration after the persecution of their personal and corporate property. The extant copies of this decree are actually those posted by Licinius in the eastern parts of the empire. But Constantine went far beyond the joint policy agreed upon at Milan. By 313 he had already donated to the Bishop of Rome the imperial property of the Lateran, where a new cathedral, the Basilica Constantiniana (now S. Giovanni in Laterano) soon rose. The Church of St. Sebastian was also probably begun at this time: and it was in these early years of his reign that Constantine began issuing laws conveying upon the church and its clergy fiscal and legal privileges and immunities from civic burdens. As he said in a letter of, 313 to the proconsul of Africa, the Christian clergy should not be distracted by secular offices from their religious duties ". . . for when they are free to render supreme service to the Divinity, it is evident that they confer great benefit upon the affairs of state." In another such letter, to the bishop of Carthage, Constantine mentioned the Spanish bishop Hosius, important later in the reign as his adviser and possibly since he may well have been with Constantine in Gaul before the campaign against Maxentius-instrumental in the conversion of the Emperor. Constantine's personal "theology" emerges with particular clarity from a remarkable series of letters, extending from 313 to the early 320s, concerning the Donatist schism in North Africa. The Donatists maintained that those priests and bishops who had once lapsed from the Christian faith could not be readmitted to the church. Constantine's chief concern was that a divided church would offend the Christian God and so bring divine vengeance upon the Roman Empire and Constantine himself. Schism, in Constantine's view, was "insane, futile madness," inspired by the Devil, the author of evil. Its partisans were acting in defiance of the clemency of Christ, for which they might expect eternal damnation at the Last Judgment (this was a Judgment whose rigours Constantine equally anticipated for himself). Meanwhile, it was for the righteous members of the Christian community to show patience and longsuffering. In so doing they would be imitating Christ, and their patience would be rewarded in lieu of martyrdom for actual martyrdom was, as Constantine observed, no longer open to Christians in a time of peace for the church. Throughout, Constantine had no doubt whatever that to remove error and propagate the true religion was both his personal duty and a proper use of the imperial position. Such pronouncements, expressed in letters to imperial officials and to Christian clergy, make untenable the view that Constantine's religious attitudes were even in these early years either veiled, confused, or compromised. Openly expressed, his attitudes show a clear commitment. Constantine's second involvement in an ecclesiastical issue followed the defeat of Licinius as promptly as the involvement in Donatism followed that of Maxentius; but the Arian heresy, with its intricate explorations, couched in difficult Greek, of the precise nature of the Trinity, was as remote from Constantine's educational background as it was from his impatient, urgent temperament. The Council of Nicaea, which opened in May 325 with an address by the Emperor, had already been preceded by a letter to the chief protagonist, Arius of Alexandria, in which Constantine stated his opinion that the dispute was fostered only by excessive leisure and academic contention, that the point at issue was trivial and could be resolved without difficulty. His optimism was not justified: neither this letter nor, despite its subsequent authority, the Council of Nicaea itself, nor the second letter, in which Constantine urged acceptance of its conclusions, was adequate to solve a dispute in which the participants were as intransigent as the theological issues were subtle. Indeed, for 40 years after the death of Constantine, Arianism was actually the official orthodoxy of the Eastern Empire. The Council of Nicaea coincided almost exactly with the celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the reign of Constantine, at which, returning the compliment paid by the Emperor's attendance at their council, the bishops were honoured participants. But Constantine's visit to the West in 326, to repeat the celebrations at Rome, brought the greatest political crisis of the reign. During his absence from the East, for reasons that remain obscure, Constantine had his eldest son, the deputy emperor Crisplls, and his own wife Fausta, Crispus' stepmother, slain. Nor was the visit to Rome a success. Constantine's refusal to take part in a pagan procession offended the Romans; and when he left after a short visit, it was never to return. These events set the course of the last phase of the reign of Constantine. Already after his defeat of Licinius he had renamed Byzantium as Constantinople: immediately upon his return from the West he began to rebuild the city on a greatly enlarged pattern, as his permanent capital and the "second Rome." The dedication of Constantinople, in May 330, effectively confirmed the divorce, which had been in the making for over a century, between the emperors and Rome, the traditional capital of the empire. Rome had for long been unsuited to the strategic needs of the empire: it was now to be left in splendid isolation, as an enormously wealthy and prestigious city still, as time would show, the emotional focus of the empire, but of limited political importance. It was perhaps in some sense to atone for the family catastrophe of 326 that Constantine's mother, Helena, embarked soon afterward on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Her journey was attended by almsgiving and pious works; above all, it was distinguished by her, church foundations, on the Mount of Olives at Jerusalem and at the Cave of the Nativity at Bethlehem, By the initiative of another lady of the imperial house, Constantine's mother-in-law Eutropia, a church was also built at Mamre, where, according to an interpretation of Genesis shared by Constantine and Eusebius, Christ had first shown himself to men in God's appearance to Abraham; but the most famous of these foundations followed the sensational discovery of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. The discovery was taken up with enthusiasm by Constantine. In a letter to Macarius, bishop of Jerusalem, the Emperor instigated the building of a great new basilica at the spot, offering unlimited help with labour and materials and personal suggestions as to design and decoration. Constantine's interest in church building was expressed also at Constantinople, particularly in churches of the Holy Wisdom (the original Hagia Sophia) and of the Apostles. At Rome, the great church of St. Peter was begun in the later 320s and lavishly endowed by Constantine with plate and property. Meanwhile, churches at Trier, Aquileia, Cirta in ' Numidia, Nicomedia, Antioch, Gaza, Alexandria, and elsewhere owed their development, directly or indirectly, to Constantine's interest. The Emperor was always an earnest student of his religion and spent hours discussing it with bishops. Even before the defeat of Licinius he had summoned to Trier the aged theologian and polemicist Lactantius, to be the tutor of Crispus. In later years, he wrote to Eusebius to commission new copies of the Bible for the use of the growing congregations at Constantinople. He composed a special prayer for his troops and went on campaign equipped with a mobile chapel in a tent. He issued numerous laws relating to Christian practice and susceptibilities: for instance, abolishing the penalty of crucifixion and the practice of branding certain criminals, "so as not to disfigure the human face, which is formed in the image of divine beauty"; enjoining the observance of Sunday and saints' days; extending privileges to the clergy while suppressing at least some of the more offensive pagan practices. Constantine had hoped to be baptized in the River Jordan, but perhaps because of the lack of opportunity to do so together no doubt with the reflection that his office necessarily involved responsibility for actions hardly compatible with the baptized state delayed the ceremony until the end of his life. It was while preparing for a campaign against Persia that he fell ill at Helenopolis. When treatment failed, he made to return to Constantinople but was forced to take to his bed near Nicomedia. There, Constantine received baptism, putting off the imperial purple for the white robes of a neophyte; and he died on May 22, 337. He was buried at Constantinople in his Church of the Apostles, whose memorials, six on each side, flanked his tomb. Yet this was less an expression of religious megalomania than of Constantine's literal conviction that he was, in a quite precise sense, the successor of the evangelists, having devoted his life and office to the spreading of Christianity. Assessment. The reign of Constantine must be interpreted against the background of his clear and unambiguous personal commitment to Christianity. This is not to say that his public actions and policies were entirely without ambiguity. Roman opinion expected of its emperors not innovation or revolution but the preservation of traditional ways; Roman media of propaganda and political communication were conditioned, by statement, allusion, and symbol, to express these expectations. It is significant, for instance, not that the pagan gods and their legends survived for a few years on Constantine's coinage but that they disappeared so quickly: the last of them, the relatively inoffensive "Unconquered Sun" had been eliminated within little over a decade after the defeat of Maxentius. Some of the ambiguities in Constantine's public policies were therefore exacted by the respect due to established practice and by the difficulties of expressing, as well as of making, total changes suddenly. The suppression of paganism, by law and by the sporadic destruction of pagan shrines, is balanced by particular acts of deference, such as the permission given in 326 to a pagan Athenian to use the imperial transport service to visit the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings in Egypt (a traditional centre of pagan "pilgrimage"). A town in Asia Minor mentioned the unanimous Christianity of its inhabitants in support of a petition to the Emperor; while, on the other hand, one in Italy was allowed to hold a local festival incorporating gladiatorial games and to found a shrine of the imperial dynasty although direct religious observance there was firmly forbidden. In an early law of Constantine, priests and public soothsayers of Rome were prohibited entry to private houses; but another law, of 320 or 321, calls for their recital of prayer, "in the manner of ancient observance," if the imperial palace or any other public building were struck by lightning. Traditional country magic was tolerated by Constantine as salutary in object and inoffensive in practice. Classical culture and education, which were intimately linked with paganism, continued to enjoy enormous prestige and influence; provincial priesthoods, which were as intimately linked with civic life, long survived the reign of Constantine. Constantinople itself was predominantly a Christian city, its dedication celebrated by Christian services; yet its foundation was also attended by a famous pagan seer, Sopatros, who seems to have been requested to devise rites for the dedication of the new city. An objective assessment of Constantine's secular achievements is not easy partly because of the predominantly religious significance with which the Emperor himself invested his reign, partly because the restlessly innovatory character that dissenting contemporaries saw in his religious policy was also applied by them to the interpretation of his secular achievement. Some of Constantine's contributions can, in fact, be argued to have been already implicit in the trends of the last half century. So may be judged the further development, taking place in his reign, of the administrative court hierarchy and an increasing reliance upon a mobile field army, to what was considered the detriment of frontier garrisons. The establishment by Constantine of a new gold coin, the solidus, which was to survive for centuries as the basic unit of Byzantine currency could hardly have been achieved without the work of his predecessors in restoring political and military stability after the anarchy of the 3rd century. Perhaps more directly linked with Constantine's own political and' dynastic policies was the emergence of regional praetorian prefectures with supreme authority over civil financial administration but with no direct control over military affairs: this they yielded to new magistri, or "masters," of the cavalry and infantry forces. The reduction of the prefects' powers was seen by some as excessively innovatory; but the principle of the division of military and civil power had already been established by Diocletian. A real innovation, from which Constantine could expect little popularity, was his institution of a new tax, the collatio lustralis. It was levied every five years upon trade and business and seems to have become genuinely oppressive. A lavish spender, Constantine was notoriously openhanded to his supporters and was accused of promoting beyond their deserts men of inferior social status. Yet he was not the first emperor to incur this criticism. More to the point is the accusation that his generosity was only made possible by his looting of the treasures of the pagan temples as well as by his confiscations and new taxes; and there is no doubt that some of his more prominent supporters owed their success, at least partly, to their timely adoption of the Emperor's religion. The foundation of Constantinople, an act of crucial long-term importance, was very much Constantine's personal achievement. Yet it, too, had been foreshadowed; Diocletian had already enhanced Nicomedia to an extent that was considered to. challenge Rome., The city itself exemplified the "religious rapacity" of the Emperor, being filled with the artistic spoils of the Greek temples; while some of its public buildings and some of the mansions erected for Constantine's supporters soon showed signs of their hasty construction. Its Senate, too, created to match that of Rome, for long lacked the aristocratic pedigree and prestige of its counterpart. In military policy, Constantine enjoyed unbroken success, with triumphs over the Franks, Sarmatians, and Goths to add to his victories in the civil wars; the latter, in particular, show a bold and imaginative mastery of strategy. Constantine was totally ruthless toward his political enemies, while his legislation, apart from its particular concessions to Christian sentiment, is mainly notable for a brutality that becomes only too characteristic of late Roman enforcement of law. Politically, Constantine's main contribution was perhaps that, in leaving the empire to his three sons, he reestablished a dynastic succession; but it was secured only by a sequence of political murders immediately after his death. Above all, Constantine's achievement was perhaps greatest in social and cultural history. It was the development, after his example, of a Christianized imperial governing class that, together with his dynastic success, most firmly entrenched the privileged position of Christianity; and it was this movement of fashion, rather than the enforcement of any program of legislation, which was the basis of the Christianization of the Roman Empire. Emerging from it in the course of the 4th century were two developments that contributed fundamentally to the nature of Byzantine and Western medieval culture: the growth of a specifically Christian, biblical culture that took its place beside the traditional Classical culture of the upper classes; and the extension of new forms of religious patronage, as initiated by Constantine, between the secular governing classes and bishops, Christian intellectuals and holy men. Constantine left much for his successors to do; but it was his personal choice made in 312 that determined the emergence of the Roman Empire as a Christian state. It is not hard to see why Eusebius regarded his reign as the fulfillment of divine providence nor to concede the force of Constantine's assessment of his own role as that of the thirteenth Apostle. Constantine would not have objected to being told that he had changed the course of history. (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1979, Constantine the Great, Vol. 5, p.71)

Arianism, a Christian heresy first proposed early in the 4th century by the Alexandrian presbyter Arius. It affirmed that Christ is not truly divine but a created being. The fundamental premise of Arius was the uniqueness of God, who is alone self-existent and immutable; the Son, who is not self-existent cannot be God. Because the Godhead is unique, it cannot be shared or communicated so that the Son cannot be God. Because the Godhead is immutable, the Son, who is mutable, being represented in the Gospels as subject to growth and change, cannot be God. The Son must, therefore, be deemed a creature who has been called into existence out of nothing and has had a beginning. Moreover, the Son can have no direct knowledge of the Father since the Son is finite and of a different order of existence. According to its opponents, especially Athanasius, Arius' teaching reduced the son to a demigod, reintroduced polytheism (since worship of the Son was not abandoned), and undermined the Christian concept of redemption since only he who was truly God could be deemed to have reconciled man to the God-head. The controversy seemed to have been brought to an end by the Council of Nicaea (AD 325), which condemned Arius and his teaching and issued a creed to safeguard orthodox Christian belief. This creed states that the Son is homoousion io Patri ("of one sub-stance with the Father"), thus declaring him to be all that the Father is: he is completely divine. In fact, however, this was only the beginning of a long-protracted dispute. From 325 to 337, when Constantine died, the Arian leaders, exiled after the Council of Nicaea, tried by intrigue to return to their churches and sees and to banish their enemies. They were partly successful. From 337 to 350 Constans, sympathetic to the orthodox Christians, was emperor in the West, and Constantius II, sympathetic to the Arians, was emperor in the East. At a council held at Antioch (341), an affirmation of faith that omitted the homoousion clause was issued. Another council was held at Sardica (modern Sofia) in 342, but little was achieved by either council. In 350 Constantius became sole ruler of the empire, and under his leadership the Nicene party (orthodox Christians) was largely crushed. The extreme Arians then declared that the Son was "unlike" (anomoios) the Father. These Anomoeans succeeded in having their views endorsed at Sirmium in 357, but their extremism stimulated the moderates, who asserted that the Son was "of similar substance" (homoiousios) with the Father. Constantius at first supported these Homoiousians but soon transferred his support to that of the Father. The Christology of Jehovah's Witnesses, also, is a form of Arianism; they regard Arius as a forerunner of Charles Taze Russell, the founder of their movement. (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1979, Arianism, Vol. I, p.509)

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Written By Steve Rudd, Used by permission at: www.bible.ca