Conclusion

Abstract

Thomas C. Ferguson’s The Past is Prologue concludes by emphasizing how personal the fourth-century world of Christian historiography was. Ferguson sees Eusebius of Caesarea, the founding figure of the important Christian genres of ecclesiastical history and the universal chronicle, as a partisan of a theological tradition rooted in personal loyalty to certain ideological figures. In connection with this observation is Ferguson’s belief that the modern dichotomy separating “theology” and “church history” is misleading. For Ferguson, the two are mutually informing aspects of the developing sectarian divisions that segregated the pro-Nicene and the “Arian” causes. History served as a theological vehicle even as theological struggles were waged in time. This present study confirms Ferguson’s intuition of “history” as a “theological” battleground: In the fourth-century, the struggle for the high ground of the past was a crucial stage in the formation of a triumphant narrative concerning one’s theological position. In this regard, the current study of the Lost Arian Histories is a crucial one. In it, the voice of the defeated non-Nicene partisans can be heard, and one can discern different steps in the development of a standard, pro-Nicene narrative of the fourth century.