ABSTRACT
Almost from the start, Christians protested that rules, leaders, and growth compromised their new faith. Allegations generated conflicts, which managerial elites tried to resolve. They pronounced ever more authoritatively on the character and meaning of sacred literature and fashioned fresh ideas about the jurisdictions of elders, bishops, and church councils. Constantine and Constantius, his son and sole surviving heir after 350, depended on cooperative church politicians to engineer doctrinal consensus, to provide an adequate confessional base for political solidarity. Not all Christians agreed, but by the early fifth century the churches' executives were generally conceding that the church on earth had room for sinners as well as for the saved. Augustine gave this comprehensivist principle great range, defending one Christian faction in North Africa against another. Christian demography is very difficult to determine, as are the nature and extent of spiritual training and exercise that were independent of organized Christian communities at any given time.
