The politics of heresy

Abstract

There is a growing contingent of church historians and scholars who look to downplay or even condemn the basic tenets of the Christian faith. Orthodoxy is painted as the big, bad bully of the early church, and the church fathers as its hitmen. Deviant forms of Christianity, historically considered heretical, are portrayed as the poor, innocent victims of the orthodox political machine which is out to, and eventual does, crush them under its wheels of insatiable hunger for more power and control. For this paper I want to concentrate narrowly on one aspect of this overall picture, that being the events surrounding the Orthodox struggle against Arianism around the time of the Council of Nicaea (325) through the reign of Constantius (361). This paper will be addressing the main question: ‘Was Arianism suppressed for solely political reasons?’ I will endeavour to show that it was actually Arianism which had the upper hand politically and that, for many orthodox leaders, it was political suicide to support the orthodox position.