The Sanctuary in the Desert 11Ever since the Nicene Council in 325 C.E.—which declared Jesus
to be both fully God and fully man—and the Council at Chalcedon in
451 C.E.—which entrenched the doctrine of the Trinity into Christian
theology—Roman Orthodoxy had transformed a large portion of the
Christian Near East into heretics. Because the concept of the Trinity
is not explicitly mentioned in the New Testament (the term was
coined by one of the oldest and most formidable church fathers, Ter-
tullian of Carthage, early in the third century C.E.), it was neither
widely adopted nor universally construed by the early Christian com-
munities. Montanist Christians like Tertullian believed that Jesus pos-
sessed the same divine quality as God, but not in the same quantity as
God. Modalist Christians conceived of the Trinity as representing
God in three successive modes of being: first as the Father, then as the
Son, and finally and forevermore as the Holy Spirit. Nestorian Chris-
tians argued that Jesus had two completely distinct natures—one
human, the other divine—while Gnostic Christians, especially those
called Docetists, claimed that Jesus only appeared to be human but
was in fact fully God. And of course there were those like the Arians
who rejected the Trinity altogether.
After Christianity became the imperial religion of Rome, all of
these variations on Jesus’ identity were replaced by the single ortho-
dox position, most clearly presented by Augustine of Hippo (d. 430),
that the Son was “of the same substance or being” as the Father—one
God in three personae. All at once, the Montanists, the Modalists, the
Nestorians, the Gnostics, and the Arians were declared heretics and
their doctrines suppressed.
The Ghassanids, like so many Christians who lived beyond the
ever-tightening grip of Constantinople, were Monophysites, meaning
they rejected the Nicene doctrine confirming Jesus’ dual nature.
Instead, the Monophysites believed that Jesus had only one nature,
simultaneously human and divine, though depending on the school of
thought they tended to emphasize one over the other. In general, the
Antiochians stressed Jesus’ humanity, while the Alexandrians stressed
his divinity. So while the Ghassanids may have been Christians, and
while they may have acted as clients of the Byzantine Empire, they did
not share the theology of their masters.
Once again, one need only look inside the Ka‘ba to recognize