Historical Simulation Engine — Full Guide

What it is

The Historical Simulation Engine places you inside ten real Church crises — the Arian Crisis, the Novatian Schism, the Donatist Controversy, the Monothelite Crisis, the East-West Schism, the Iconoclast Crisis, the Galileo Affair, the Modernist Crisis, the Reformation and Council of Trent, and the Anabaptist Schism.

You choose an authority model at the start — Episcopal/Catholic, Conciliarist, Sola Scriptura, or Individual Conscience — and the simulation tests it against the historical record. The engine is era-locked: you can only use information that was available to a participant at the time. No hindsight.

How to use it

Go to Tools → Historical Simulation Engine. Choose a scenario from the grid. Read the historical context carefully — it tells you where you are, who the players are, and what is at stake.

Select your authority model. This determines how you will respond to each challenge. Then work through the scenario: each stage presents a real historical development that your authority model must account for.

What the meters measure

Logical Pressure: How much strain your authority model is under given the historical evidence presented. High pressure means the model is struggling to account for what actually happened.

Logical Debt: Commitments your model has accumulated that conflict with each other or with the historical record. Debt cannot be cleared by ignoring it — it compounds.

Cumulative Pressure: The total stress across the full session. This is your final score and appears in the Session Journal.

The Session Journal

Every simulation you run is recorded in your Session Journal (right sidebar). It shows the scenario, your authority model, the pressure readings, and any logical debt you carried. Use it to compare how different authority models perform across different crises.

Tips

Start with the Arian Crisis — it is the foundational scenario and introduces the engine’s mechanics clearly.

Run the same scenario with different authority models. The contrast is instructive: the same historical facts look very different depending on what authority you grant to councils, bishops, scripture, and individual interpretation.

The Cross-Examination button appears after you complete a scenario. Use it — it probes the weakest point in your model’s response and is the most challenging part of the engine.

Known limitations

The engine covers the main lines of each crisis. It does not attempt to represent every theological nuance or every position taken by every participant. It follows the historically significant choices and their logical consequences.