Demonstrated his ability in the areas of church administration, preaching, and theology. He proved to be a fearless and able administrator of the affairs of the church. He spoke against the powerful Arian groups and did not even hesitate to oppose Emperor Theodosius.

His greatest work was a Latin translation of the Bible known as the Vulgate.

This pope was so highly respected as a teacher in the Western church that he is always portrayed with a dove, representing the Holy Spirit, communicating divine truth.

He was the founder of Latin theology and was the first to state the theological doctrine of the Trinity and to make use of that term to describe that doctrine.

He was a strong military leader who came to the imperial throne at the end of a century that was marked by political disorder in the Roman Empire. In 285, he ended the dyarchy of the principate, by which the emperor and senate had shared authority.

Emperor of Rome from 306 to 337, he is said to have seen a cross in the sky with the Latin words for “in this sign conquer” before the battle at Milvian Bridge near Rome in 312. He won the battle. The next year he granted freedom of worship, ending the persecution of the Christians.

He moved the empire from Rome to Constantinople in 330.

He was an able polemicist, a good preacher, a fine episcopal administrator, a superb theologian, and the creator of a Christian philosophy of history that is still valid in its essentials. He was a forerunner of Reformation ideas in his emphasis on salvation from original and actual sin as a result of the grace of a sovereign God who irresistibly saves those whom He has elected.

  Bishop of Antioch in Syria, who was arrested by the authorities because of his Christian testimony and sent to Rome to be killed by beasts in the imperial games.

They associated matter with evil, and insisted upon a clear separation between the worlds of the material and spiritual because to them matter was always associated with evil and spirit with good. Hence God could not have been the Creator of this material world.

  He was bishop of Smyrna for many years, and was martyred by being burned at the stake. During his trial before the Roman proconsul he said that he could not speak evil of Christ whom he had served eighty-six years and who had never done him wrong.

His greatest contribution to Christian literature is his work entitled De Principiis--this work is the first Christian treatise of systematic theology.

He developed his allegorical system of interpretation.

Became leader of the catechetical school of Alexandria.

He had the ideal of a Christian philosopher as his goal. Greek philosophy was to be related to Christianity so that one could see that Christianity was the great and final philosophy.