Charles Freeman: Heretics, Pagans and the Christian State May 7, 2008

One of our leading freelance historians, Charles Freeman follows his stunning The Closing of the Western Mind with his study of one of the most important moments in Church history in AD 381, which defined Christian orthodoxy and condemned all other theories of the Godhead heretical. For the first time in a thousand years of Greco-Roman civilization, free thought was suppressed.

Portrayed as a consensus on the Trinity of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, the suppression of paganism not only brought an end to the diversity of religious and philosophical beliefs throughout the empire but also created numerous theological problems for the Church, which have remained unsolved. John Carey said in the Sunday Times: "Even if theology and ancient history are subjects you avoid you should not miss this book. Its lucidity, learning and critical challenge are a feast for the mind".

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