Keep on keeping on, Jeremy! Can't wait for the next installment...

FWIW, it would seem that if the early Christians were poor and illiterate, not to mention slaves, the high Christology that Paul is witness of was in fact their belief. It's only when intellectuals like Clement of Alexandria begin to defend Christian beliefs that the arguments become more sophisticated. Already, Irenaeus was attacking the gnostics, who were imaginative but not theoreticians.

Do you know Bernard Lonergan's The Way to Nicea? It's actually the introduction of his 2-volume Triune God. While the patristics are old (1950s), the argument isn't: he traces the emergence of theory leading to the Nicene doctrine.

Here's a quote:

"For it was a transition from multiplicity to unity, from many symbols, many titles, many predicates, to the ultimate foundation of them all, the consubstantiality of the Son. […] It was also a transition from the word of God accommodated to a particular people, at a particular time, and in particular circumstances, to the word of God to be affirmed by all peoples at all times and in all circumstances; and this is but the transition from the oracles of Yahweh, from the gospel proclaimed in Galilee, from the preaching of the apostles and the simple tradition of the church, to catholic dogma. […] Lastly, in its answer to the trinitarian question the foundation was now laid upon which the entire systemization of catholic theology almost of its own accord would emerge. And with this systemization in place, the inheritors of Nicea have little difficulty understanding why the ante-Nicene authors could have said what they actually did say."[1]

[1] Triune God: Systematics., 255. Also appears at the end of The Way to Nicea. The small-c “catholic” in Lonergan’s text means universal.