David,

After taking some time  and thoughts about what you said I would like to respond to some of the things you have said. I would like to do that in a spirit of learning and sharing.

you say:’So now we are down to the Christianity of the second and third
centuries, which isn’t any different than the Christianity of the
first, fourth, and fifth centuries.’

 I have followed your advise and have spent many hours reading about the fathers. I have done that in the past also, but this time especially of what concerns the trinity. I agree with you wholeheartedly that from the beginning all have confirmed that Jesus is God. But this can’t be said without qualifying it. This statement ‘Jesus is God’, in my opinion, has had different meanings to different church fathers at different times. Differences in opinion between fathers like Tertullian, Tatian, Origenes and others seemed to me mainly in the following areas: if there was a beginning of the Logos, or Christ, or not; if Christ is subordinate to the father or not, if Christ is taken of the substance of God as a part or not. In my eyes there is definitely a progress or development visible. So in this I would actually disagree with you that christianity in the 5th century wasn’t ‘any different’ to those in the 2nd and 3rd century.

One could go in lenghty details about this, I am sure, and I partly also do not feel scholarly enough to do that; I should leave that up to others and I am sure you know more about the fathers than I do. But I did come across a quotation from the New Catholic Encyclopedia says that seems to confirm this line of thinking:

"There is the recognition on the part of exegetes and Biblical theologians, that one should not speak of Trinitarianism in the New Testament without serious qualifications. New Testament exegesis is now accepted as having shown that not only the verbal idiom but even the patterns of thought characteristic of the patristic and concilian development would have been quite foreign to the mind and culture of the New Testament writers." "Trinity, Holy," pp. 295-305.

About St. Athanasius you write: ‘…he was inspired by the Holy Spirit to wage war on Arianism…’ I honestly doubt that the Holy Spirit would wage war on anyone. The sad thing is that the word ‘war’ is to be understood quite literally, and was not just aimed on some sort of ‘..ism’, but on real people. Following the Nicene creed, for example, the two bishops that did not sign it were expelled; all  non - orthodox writings were to be burned with a thread of death penalty for those who kept them. One might say it was the emperor and not the church; but it was hardly different after the Chalcedonian council which threatened all those with persecution and loss of property who didn’t comply with the creed. In the light of this, your questions ‘Surely, if this was a corruption of their faith, the common people would have risen up in protest’ sounds a bit ironical. And this does not just concern the lay people. There was imposed enourmous pressure on the bishops that came to the creed called in by Constantine, to sign the creed. Eusebius of Nicodemia writes later: ‘We committed an impious act, O Prince’, by subscribing to a blasphemy from fear of you’.

If I read Galatians 5,22 about the fruits of the Spirit; I don’t think it is unreasonable to apply some sort of caution towards the outcome of such councils. 

 you write: ‘I still maintain that careful historical study of the early
Church’s teaching and the doctrinal development of Christianity is
required in order for us to grapple with such a central question.’ I wholeheartedly agree with you!