Description: This provocative new study reevaluates the history of the early Church. Focusing on the struggle between Ambrose of Milan, upholder of orthodoxy and the famous `Nicene' creed still used in the western Church today, and the heretical Arians who denied the divinity of Christ, Dr Williams challenges the traditional picture of the triumph of orthodoxy. His book is full of illuminating new insights on the social, political and theological entanglements of early Christianity.
Review Quotes: "This new study...makes a lively and challenging contribution to the literature on reception, as well as to our understanding of the events it describes."--Church Times
"The author's coverage of the subject is thorough, nicely organized, and well written....anyone interested in late Roman western religion, theological issues, and Ambrosian Milan will find it an important and even compelling study."--The Historian"Williams draws on recently edited, otherwise untranslated, and rarely read texts to provide the best account now available of both the character of early Western anti-Nicene (Homoian) theology and the rise (and self-definition) of Western pro-Nicene consciousness."--Journal of Religion"Williams offers a succinct and well-reasoned account of the rise and fall of 'Arianism' (Homoianism) in the West and the no-so-pivotal role played by Ambrose of Milan in its demise....William's study should prove fundamental to any future discussion of Western Arianism and Ambrose of Milan's role in the establishment of Nicene orthodoxy."--Theological Studies"...Williams skillfully illuminates the complex interaction between church and state that attended all doctoral controversy in the post-Constantian era."--Pro Ecclesia