Later Theologians of The Greek East

The later theologians of the Greek east belong to another world from that of their predecessors. Their predecessors faced the threat, and the reality, of persecution by a hostile Roman state, while the later Greek theologians lived in a world where Christianity was first tolerated and gradually became the official religion of the Roman empire. Imperial patronage almost immediately made available to the Church the possibility — or necessity — of undreamt-of horizontal unity. The first three ecumenical synods mark out the fundamental doctrinal concerns of the Church in the period up to 431. The synod of Nicæa was called to settle a dispute between the pope of Alexandria, Alexander, and one of his presbyters, Arius. Earlier theologians had thought of the Logos as mediating between the inaccessible simplicity of God the Father and the multiplicity of the world; they had invoked the Logos as the subject of the theophanies of the Old Testament, and as incarnate in Jesus Christ.