ABSTRACT
There was mutual borrowing of and attribution of ideas, and the strength of heterodox variants to Catholic doctrine is shown by the number and scale of Councils which were required to pin down the most basic of Christian tenets: that Christ was fully man, and fully divine at one and the same time. Certain sectors of the church proved more resistant to orthodoxy than others; equally, the perpetuation and validation of alternative 'readings' of Christ's two natures owed much to differences in interpretation, cultural nuances, linguistic subtlety, political expediency and sheer brute force. And, whilst each of the Ecumenical Councils focused on specific heresies, attributed by name to individual fathers, the situation was complicated by the heresiarchs themselves refuting other heresies such that a hierarchy of heresies was implicit, with Arianism as the chief threat to the nascent Christian church.
