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Which is precisely the assertion -- somewhat tongue in cheek -- I made last week. Before 325, some Christians believed that Jesus was God, but many did not. It was Nicea that established this belief as orthodox doctrine.

I think we understand each other.

At Niceae these orthodox things were defined. And, afterward, the Emperor put the muscle behind these teachings. (Whether this is good or bad if another subject.)

To see this as the beginning of something new is to hold a view that the Catholic Church is not the bishops who got together and hammered out what was orthodox, but rather the force of the state in eliminating heterodoxy.

The latter started after Nicea. I don't see how one can say the former did.

And they are not, by necessity, one and the same.

is to hold a view that the Catholic Church is not the bishops who got together and hammered out what was orthodox

Many, perhaps most, bishops of the time were not what came to be called orthodox. While they undoubtedly held many things in common, they also had a wide variety of beliefs. The idea of one church unified in belief from the time of the apostles, and beset by heretics, is simply untenable. Where there is no established orthodoxy, there can be no heresy.

At Niceae these orthodox things were defined.

But it is only in retrospect that these orthodox teachings are projected backwards as being those preserved and handed down from the apostles. Had Arianism or Donatism carried the day, they would now be "orthodoxy". That is the difference in our perspectives. You see it as the Spirit preserving Truth. I see the outcome as an accident of history, something that could have gone either way.