Santa Claus in a Bar Fight?

Over on Making Light, Teresa Nielsen Hayden quotes an Associated Press report on a couple in Statesboro, Georgia, who were arrested after watching Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ. The story reports that Sean Davidson and Melissa Davidson left the theater arguing over a theological point: whether, in the Holy Trinity, God the Father was human or symbolic. Once they got home, the argument escalated into violence.

The report quotes sherriff's deputy Gene McDaniel: "“Really, it was kind of a pitiful thing, to go to a movie like that and fight about it. I think they missed the point." To which Teresa responds:

Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t. They’re hardly the first people to wander into that tar pit. The night before the final balloting at the Council of Nicea, Saint Nicholas of Myra punched out Arius in a bar fight arising from a very similar argument.