HIS-201
History of Christian Doctrine
How core Christian doctrines, especially the Godhead, were formally defined from the patristic era through the Reformation and into the modern creeds.
Topics: Patristics, Nicaea to Chalcedon, Confessional history
Suggested resource: Philip Schaff's public-domain History of the Christian Church and The Creeds of Christendom, both free in full online.
Week 1: The Apostolic Fathers to Nicaea
Reading: 1 John 4:1–3; Colossians 2:9 (revisit)
In the two centuries between the apostles and the Council of Nicaea, the church faced serious challenges to its understanding of Christ and the Godhead. Gnosticism denied Christ's genuine humanity, teaching He only seemed to have a physical body — John had already answered this decades earlier: “every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God” (1 John 4:3). In the early 200s, a teacher named Sabellius taught that Father, Son, and Spirit were merely three sequential, temporary roles God played, like an actor changing masks, with no lasting relational reality behind the names — a view the church rightly condemned, and one Oneness theology is often unfairly compared to. The key difference is that Sabellius denied any genuine, ongoing distinction, while the Oneness position affirms real, simultaneous distinctions of role and relationship (Father, Son, and Spirit can be addressed and can act differently at the same moment, as at Jesus' baptism) while still insisting there is only one God, not three persons.
Arius, a presbyter in Alexandria in the early 300s, taught something different still: that the Son was the highest created being, brought into existence by the Father and therefore not eternal or fully divine — directly contradicting Colossians 2:9's “all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” The Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. was called primarily to answer Arius specifically, not to settle every possible question about the Godhead for all time. Understanding this matters: later tradition often assumes Nicaea addressed and ruled out every non-Trinitarian reading of Scripture, when in fact its target was a specific, narrower heresy denying Christ's full deity altogether.
Key terms: 1 John 4:3 against Gnosticism, Sabellius's sequential 'modes' (condemned, early 200s), Arius's denial of Christ's full deity (condemned, 325), What Nicaea actually targeted vs. later assumptions
Discussion Questions
- How would you distinguish the Oneness position, which affirms real simultaneous distinction of role, from the historical Sabellianism it's sometimes unfairly compared to?
- Why is it important to understand what Nicaea was actually responding to, rather than assuming it addressed every later question about the Godhead?
Challenge: Write a short, fair summary of Arius's actual teaching and why the church rejected it, clearly distinguishing it from the Oneness position.
Week 2: Chalcedon to the Medieval Scholastics
Reading: General reading: the Council of Chalcedon (451) and medieval scholastic theology
The Council of Chalcedon in 451 A.D. produced the classic formula describing Christ as one person with two natures, “without confusion, without change, without division, without separation” — language that still shapes how most of Christian history discusses the incarnation. The following centuries produced increasingly technical scholastic theology, figures like Anselm and Aquinas working out doctrine with philosophical precision, sometimes at the cost of the more direct, narrative-driven theology of the New Testament itself. Understanding this period equips you to recognize when a theological argument draws on genuine biblical exegesis versus philosophical categories imported from Greek thought.
Key terms: Council of Chalcedon (451), Two natures formula, Scholasticism
Discussion Questions
- Where do you see the value in technical, precise theological language, and where do you see the risk of it drifting from the plain sense of Scripture?
Challenge: Find the actual wording of the Chalcedonian Definition and identify which phrases you would affirm as written and which you would want to state differently.
Week 3: The Reformation's Doctrinal Confessions
Reading: General reading: Reformation-era confessions (Augsburg, Westminster)
The Reformation didn't just recover sola scriptura as a principle; it produced detailed confessional documents, like the Augsburg Confession and later the Westminster Confession, that tried to state Reformed doctrine with the same precision the medieval church had brought to its own theology. Comparing these confessions to your own tradition's beliefs is useful precisely because it forces you to locate exactly where you agree, where you differ, and why, rather than treating “Protestant” as one undifferentiated category. This kind of comparative doctrinal literacy, reading another tradition's own formal statement of belief and responding to it accurately, is exactly what graduate-level study should produce.
Key terms: Augsburg Confession, Westminster Confession, Comparative doctrinal literacy
Discussion Questions
- Where does your own tradition's understanding of salvation most clearly diverge from a Reformed confession like Westminster's, and can you state that divergence precisely?
Challenge: Read the doctrine-of-God section of one historic confession (Westminster is a good, free option) and write a paragraph noting specific points of agreement and disagreement with your own Oneness position.
Course Exam
Five questions for review or self-testing.
Q: What did Arius actually teach, and why was it rejected?
Reveal Answer
That Christ was the highest created being rather than eternally God; rejected because it denies Christ's full deity.
Q: What did the Council of Chalcedon (451) establish?
Reveal Answer
The classic two-natures formula: Christ as one person with two natures, without confusion, change, division, or separation.
Q: What is 'scholasticism'?
Reveal Answer
The increasingly technical, philosophically precise theology of the medieval period, developed by figures like Anselm and Aquinas.
Q: What are two major Reformation confessional documents?
Reveal Answer
The Augsburg Confession and the Westminster Confession.
Q: Why is comparing your beliefs to another tradition's confession useful?
Reveal Answer
It forces you to locate exactly where you agree and disagree, and why.