Trinity: The Christian God Summary and Analysis

Karen Armstrong describes how the newly established Christian Church in the Roman Empire was almost immediately split by a fierce controversy. The split was to do with the nature of the Christian God as defined by competing philosophers, Arius, the Presbyter of Alexandra, and another philosopher called Anathasius. Specifically, the question was whether or not Jesus was a human person or part of the godhead. It was eventually resolved at a synod, called by the Emperor Constantine, at Nicaea, in what is now modern Turkey. At this synod, the modern Christian creed, the Nicene Creed, was first promulgated

After the synod, confusion still reigned in the Christian church with a competing philosophy developing in Cappadocia, which formed the basis of the theology of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The Greek influence on theology formed the core...