The Seven Holy Ecumenical Councils

After the Council of Chalcedon, one would have thought that every question about our Lord’s Incarnation had been answered. But there was still one question which some thought had not been answered. It was: When Christ was tempted by the Devil, did he, like us, have to struggle to overcome the excitement of temptation? Or did the fact that his divine nature was united to his human nature in the one person-hood of Jesus Christ mean that he was really immune from temptation? Would it be more accurate to speak about the “one divine-human will” in Christ?

Suppose that a skilful rock climber wishes to scale a steep rock wall. He can only do so if there are niches for his fingers and toes. These may exist because the wind and rain have weathered the mortar, or because the wall was built unskillfully in the first place. We can imagine a rock wall so well built that even the most skilful climber could not find any toe holds.

So temptation can scale our spiritual defences because we are so slack in maintaining the wall, that the Devil can find many toe holds. In fact he’s climbed our wall so often before, he doesn’t even have to look to find them!

But in our Lord’s case there were no niches in his wall. Take, for example, the time the Devil showed Christ all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time and said to Him: “To you I will give all this authority and their glory... if you will worship me.” Christ was not fooled by the Devil’s trickery. The Devil ruled the kingdoms of the world only in so far as he could bind them to himself through internal dissension and fear. The Devil was offering Christ something that was not really his to give. Further, Christ knew that when we do evil that good may come out of it, we usually end up with an even bigger evil. So all the Devil’s bargains have a “hidden” price tag. But the price tag was very obvious to Christ. So Christ “in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sinning.” (Hebrews 4:15)

The Fifth and Sixth Ecumenical Councils reaffirmed the faith of Chalcedon, but added statements which made Chalcedon even clearer. The Sixth stated clearly that it is not correct that Christ had “one divine-human will”. Christ has two separate wills: human and divine, but that the human will always chose freely to work in perfect harmony with the divine will. The Sixth also condemned by name Roman Pope Honorius for his written support of the “One-will” heresy.

The great St Athanasius had said; “God became incarnate, so that men might be in-godded.” When a person becomes “in-godded” he/she is not absorbed into the Divine in some pantheistic/Hindu sense. An in-godded (a god by grace) person becomes authentically human: as God intended human beings to be when He first created them. [By contrast, a person who is a slave to sin is driven by animal instincts (see Jude 1:10)]

There was a very different question which needed to be answered. From time to time, local synods had been held which had made various decisions about various matters. The question was: Which of these decisions applied to the whole Church? So those who had been involved in the Sixth Ecumenical Council were recalled in 692AD to the same room in Constantinople to make a list of local councils whose decisions were to be regarded as having Ecumenical authority. This council is known as the “Quinisext” [=5th - 6th] Council because it completed the work of both the Fifth and Sixth Ecumenical Councils. The councils it approved are listed in Canon 1 of ACC(USA). One of the regional synods approved was the 4th century Synod of Laodicea. Its Canon 11 forbids the ordination of women as priest, and its canon 44 forbade the use of women servers.

(‘The Quinisext Council is sometimes called the Council in Trullo after the name of the room in which it met. However this is confusing as the 680AD council met in the same room!)

Only five months after the Byzantine Emperor Leo III seized the throne in 717 AD the Saracen army surrounded Constantinople. But the Saracens were unlucky: Leo had been brought up in Syria and had the nickname “Saracen-minded”. He knew the way Saracens thought and so could anticipate their every move. Not only did he deliver Constantinople (with the aid of a very severe winter) but he drove them further back from his empire’s borders than they had been for years.

Having established peace, Leo turned his attention to the Church. Although a Christian, he was half Muslim in his thinking and his son who became the next emperor under the name Constantine V, proved to be even more quasi-Muslim. During Leo’s and Constantine’s reigns the following ideas were promoted:

Constantine appointed bishops who agreed with his views - he even created new dioceses so that he could appoint more tame bishops. He wrote a treatise and then in 753 called a council to approve this treatise. He did this when the job of Patriarch of Constantinople happened to be vacant, and when neither the Pope nor the other patriarchs could send representatives. This “council” was nicknamed “the Headless Council”. Armed with the authority of this council, Constantine set about a thorough reformation of the Church. The focus of the “reformation” was religious art which, he said, broke the second commandment about raven images. So icons, statues, mosaics, picture windows; showing Christ, the Virgin Mary, the saints were smashed, burnt, or painted over. (Pictures of the Emperor were OK!)

At the centre of the controversy was a statement made by St Basil (+330): “Honour given to a picture is transferred to the person the picture is of.” St Stephen the Younger, abbot of a monastery on Mt. Auxentius in Asia Minor, debated St Basil’s statement with Constantine. Suddenly St Stephen produced a coin with Leo’s head on it. He threw it on the ground and stamped on it. Constantine was furious at this insult to his father and the saint was thrown into jail.

When Constantine’s daughter-in-law Irene and her young son became joint emperors, they called a proper ecumenical council in 787. This was held at the same place as the first ecumenical council: Nicaea. It restored icons etc, and said that Scripture must be interpreted according to the Mind of the Fathers.

Unfortunately the decisions of the Council were so poorly translated into Latin, that the Western European theologians initially rejected the authority of the council. It was a long time before this was corrected. Had the West really grasped what the Seventh Ecumenical Council was about, the Protestant Reformation may have been avoided, or at least its devastating effects diminished.

Nicaea II was the last Ecumenical Council ever held. The reasons they were discontinued were:

The seven Ecumenical Councils had really covered every possible controversy:

There was really nothing left to decide. Future problems were about authority and particularly the Popes’ claim to have a universal jurisdiction over all councils, patriarchs and bishops. Clearly this claim helped to cause the great schism in 1054.