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tradition in the West.
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However, in the East, Antioch promoted an independent spirit within the
Syrian See and so veered from orthodoxy. Alexandria`s geographical location provided it with the
wealth and centrality necessary to amplify all its controversies to the rest of the world. The cultural
divide between East and West promoted two different paths to the same end. On both sides of the
empire, the development seems to have begun in the North and finalized in the South. A causal
connection cannot be made to geography for the way the doctrine developed, but knowing the way
it grew helps us understand how the doctrine that we have today.
Our journey along the road to Nicea has shown that geography has had an enormous impact
on the way the doctrine of the Trinity developed in the Ante-Nicene period. The resulting doctrine
may or may not have turned out the same, given different geographical restrictions, but that is
another question. The central thesis of this paper focused on the development of the doctrine, the
journey--the road to Nicea.
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In the West no evidence has been found to support the idea that any trinitarian debate
continued after Tertullian. However, since we have a plethora of evidence of the debate prior to
Tertullian, the argument from silence has validity. Therefore, we are safe to conclude that
Tertullian`s theology was accepted throughout the West, ending the debate in the West.