“The Fathers” and “patristics” are terms that I avoid in this book for rather straightforward reasons: that is, they perpetuate the concept that it was only “Fathers” and their thought that contributed to the life of the early church. Nevertheless, the period that I am engaging requires some justification and clarity. I use the term Nicene teachers not in the narrow sense of actual participants in the Councils of Nicaea or Constantinople,7 but as referring to those early