A.D. 381 heretics, pagans, and the dawn of the monotheistic state ( PDFDrive )

Chapter Five: True God from True God?
1 See MacMullen, Voting About God in Early Church Councils, pp.30—1.
2 Origen, On First Principles, 2.6. Quoted in Ford and Higton, p.87.
3 Catechetical Orations, number 14.
4 For examples, see Vaggione, pp.107—8, and Hanson, The Search for the
Christian Doctrine of God, pp.106—9.
5 Philo, Quis Rerum Divinarum Heres Sit, 205.
6 Quoted in Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, pp.344—5.
7 Ibid., p.346.
8 From Arius’ Thalia (320s), quoted in Ford and Higton, pp.86-7.
9 Richard Vaggione provides full details of Eunomius’ life and thought.
Although it has been customary to denigrate Eunomius, he played a vital part in
the debate by producing reasoned objections to the Nicenes that forced them to
clarify their own views.
10 Ayres, p.160. ‘We should be careful of assuming that this preference [for
Nicaea] reveals a detailed understanding of Nicaea: it probably reflects a
growing suspicion that those who pushed the Dated creed understood its
somewhat vague terminology in subordinationist senses they found
unacceptable. Nicaea was the obvious alternative, the most appropriate cipher
for their own sensibilities.’ Ayres’ is a meticulous study of the process by which
the Nicene Trinity achieved a broader acceptance. He is more sensitive than
earlier commentators to the different paths (‘trajectories’ as he terms them),
which coalesced to bring greater (but certainly not total) acceptance of Nicaea in
the second half of the century.
11 Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, p.380.
12 Quoted in Wiles, p.28.
13 Ammianus Marcellinus, The Later Roman Empire, tr. Walter Hamilton,
London, 1986, Book 22:5.
14 For the quotation from Ammianus Marcellinus, see ibid., Book 23:3. See