Mark S. Smith, Dean and Fellow, Clare College, Cambridge

Mark S. Smith is Dean and Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, and Lecturer in the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge.

"This is a meticulous and perspicuous debut monograph. It is densely but very well written with some delightful turns of phrase (it is a long time since I found "pettifogging" in a book of historical theology!). Mark Smith is to be congratulated on an original and valuable contribution to the study of the councils in their historical context. The book deserves a wide readership." -- Marcus Plested, Church History

"Overall, this is a meticulous and perspicuous debut monograph. It is densely but very well written with some delightful turns of phrase (it is a long time since I found "pettifogging" in a book of historical theology!). Mark Smith is to be congratulated on an original and valuable contribution to the study of the councils in their historical context. The book deserves a wide readership." -- Marcus Plested, Oxford Early Christian Studies

"...The Idea of Nicaea is a clear, persuasive, and significant study of the making of Christian orthodoxy in late antiquity; it will definitively reshape discussions of the Council of Nicaea, and thus, of the early history of the diverse churches that claim its legacy." -- Christine Shepardson, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Religious Studies Review

"Smith's study offers important insight into the development of divergent perspectives on creedal and conciliar authority and the ecclesiastical disputes—further complicated by imperial intervention and imposition—that engendered them." -- Young Richard Kim, Onassis Foundation USA, Review of Biblical Literature

"This admirable book is more than a specialist study of one chapter in the history of Christian doctrine: it provides a model for defining the nature of doctrinal development in any age." -- Richard Price, Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum

"this book provides an analysis of the christological controversy of 431-51 that outdoes all others in its study of a full range of contemporary documents and scrupulous fidelity to how the competing factions understood and conducted the debate. It will be necessary reading for all students of the meaning and history of this central topic in the history both of the church politics of the period and of the development of Christian doctrine." -- Richard Price, Royal Holloway, University of London, Scottish Journal of Theology

"excellent study" -- Professor Mark Edwards, Church Times

"Mark Smith's Idea of Nicaea is superb" -- Dr. Paul Gavrilyuk