Is it true, as has often been claimed in recent years, that there was no real controversy in the period immediately following the Council of Nicaea? Sara Parvis, in this lively and meticulous study, argues not. She shows that the two opposing parties which had formed in support of Alexander of Alexandria and Arius in the years before Nicaea continued their activities afterwards, targeting one another with ruthless zeal at a series of synods which may look neutral but are revealed to be demonstrably partisan. Only the deaths of all the original party leaders except Marcellus of Ancyra, and the rise of Athanasius, broke the impasse which followed and allowed new political and theological configurations to form.
The Arian Controversy, the struggle after the conversion of Constantine over the agreed content of the Christian faith, remains one of the most central debates in the whole of Church history. This book sheds light on the neglected years immediately after the Council of Nicaea in 325, showing how the parties which would contest the Nicene Creed.
