Nicene Christianity finally triumphed, but the doctrinal seeds had been planted for a major schism with the East seven centuries later. Perceptive, well-written Church history. All rights reserved. There is nothing dry or pedantic about Richard Rubenstein's lively work. The fourth-century struggle between a heresy that wa not yet definitively heretical and an orthodoxy that was not yet definitively orthodox was a richly ideological one in which many on both sides were willing to die for an idea.
Nothing makes for a good story like a good fight.
Rubenstein has turned one of the great fights of history into an engrossing story. Book Description Remarkable religious history, meticulously researched and written with the fire of Robert Graves's I, Claudius. We all know the story of Jesus' life, his death, his resurrection, and the persecution of his early followers. Less well known is the struggle the early Christians had in deciding whether Jesus was God Himself or the holiest of men, adopted by God and raised to divine rank. This controversy was at the heart of the most fateful conflict in Christendom until the Reformation.