Abstract
Historical theologians have generally approached the third-century monarchian controversy as a doctrinal dispute arising from theological commitments internal to Christianity.¹ Although it has led to fruitful studies, this presupposition has directed scholars’ interest away from external factors that may have also shaped the debate. Recently, Clifford Ando has shown that in the two centuries preceding the monarchian controversy (19–215 C.E.), successive imperial regimes articulated a political ideology, which is represented in the Latin literature of the Augustan age—in the works of Cicero, Vergil, and Seneca, among others. Ando documents an imperial “political theology,” which used some philosophical notion