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The Seven Ecumenical Councils: Causes and Consequences
On Church Councils
When St. Constantine I ordered all bishops of the Christian Church to assemble in Nicea to settle the question of Arianism it wasn’t as though he was acting on a novel idea. Some years earlier he had experienced a local synod settle the question of the Donatists in north Africa[1]. But that was a local problem settled by a handful of bishops. The Council called by Constantine that would meet in the city of Nicea was different.
When the bishops gathered at Nicea they understood themselves as acting not for the Christians in one city only, or for the Christians in the Roman Empire only, but for all Christians everywhere in the world. To anyone who saw the council this, probably, wasn’t an unwarranted understanding. Even considering that the council was dominated by bishops from the eastern half of the Roman Empire, it was representative of the whole Church in that the super-metropolitans[2] of Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria were present in person or had sent legates. And, if the various lists of attendees are trustworthy[3], even bishops from outside the empire were present at the First Ecumenical Council: Archbishop John (Yohannan) of Persia and Great India, a Gothic bishop named Theophilus, and Bishop Stratophilus of Pitiunt (in present day Georgia) were in attendance. But, perhaps, more importantly than the attendance of all the bishops from various parts of the Church, was the Apostolic example of a Council making a decision for the whole Church, even claiming Divine authority in the formula “It seems good the Holy Spirit and to us”[4].
The First Ecumenical Council (Nicea I)
Issue: Prior to this council the exact nature of the relationship between the Father and the Son was not defined in plainly understood words but was depicted in Scripture through metaphor and implied in doxology. This gave room to a certain Arius, a priest in Egypt, to argue that the Son is a creature. The result was a great disturbance in the Church. This was sore displeasing to Constantine, who wanted to use Christianity as a unifying force for the Empire.
Prelude: Bishop Hosious of Cordova traveled throughout the eastern Empire shoring up the anti-Arian bishops and weakening the position of the Arian bishops.
Resolution: The Arian party was defeated and the few bishops who refused to recant and join with the Orthodox were deposed and exiled. One does not have to wonder what the effect of these depositions would have been if the Emperor had not given the force of imperial law to the decisions of the Council and backed up the Council’s claim to speak for God[5]. Could the council have even kicked Eusebius out of his church if Imperial soldiers had not been standing by, ready to enforce the emperor’s command?
Aftermath: If the Holy Fathers of the Council and the Emperor thought Arianism was killed at Nicea they were wrong. As though in a horror movie, the evil Arianism refused to die. In fact, the emperors, even St. Constantine liked Arianism because of the theological basis it gave to their rule.
Just a few years after the Council one of Orthodoxy’s most important lights, St. Athanasius of Alexandria (He was a deacon at the Council, later elevated to Bishop of Alexandria) was in exile, being hunted from place to place while Arianism took root and spread throughout the Empire, prompting to St Jerome to write from Jerusalem, “Ingemuit totus orbis et Arianum se esse miratus est.”[6] Over centuries Arianism was gradually eclipsed by Orthodox Christology (It is interesting to me that Arianism is a Patrological heresy as much as it is an Christological heresy yet it is never called such.) but as late as the 17th Century, the Church of England was burning Arians[7].
The Second Ecumenical Council (Constantinople I)
Issue: The Orthodox victory at the Council of Nicea, as stated above was almost no victory at all. Nearly every emperor to follow Constantine I was Arian. Even Julian the Apostate - in telling the Christians to settle their own problems while he, the emperor went about trying to rekindle the dying embers of the ancient pagan religion - aided the Arians.[8] Bishops continued to denounce each other. The Gothic chieftains and nobility in the west embraced Arianism, and even the aged (he was 100 years old) Hosious of Cordoba was hornswagled into signing a creed that was less than Orthodox. Orthodox bishops were deposed left and right. Local councils were manipulated by emperors. Emperors were manipulated by warring bishops. The Empire, and especially the east was a whirlwind. The question, what is the relationship between the Father and the Son must be settled.
Before the Council, when Valens was still Emperor in the east there was an interesting exchange between a bishop and an officer of the Empire that, I think, foreshowed what was to come during the reign of Theodosius. When this officer threatened St. Basil, Metropolitan of Capodocean Caesarea with confiscation of his property if he did not agree to the heretical decree of one of the robber councils, Basil rebuffed him. The officer retorted that no one had ever spoken to him so harshly, prompting St. Basil to answer,“ Perhaps you have never met a bishop before”.[9] This contest between the will of the empire and the will of the Church would play out during the reign of Theodosius.
Prelude: Like St. Constantine I before him, though Theodosius shared the Christian faith, he delayed baptism. This meant that although he was emperor, he was not a member of the Church. And his lack of baptism allowed him to act with impunity and dispense death in matters of state. It also allowed him to postpone dealing with the problems in the Church.[10] After all, weren’t all sins remitted in the water of baptism?[11]
This rational plan of baptism just before death was messed up when Theodosius became ill and nearly died while traveling to Thessalonica. The local bishop was called to the emperor and baptized him, and to the surprise of everyone, Theodosius recovered![12]
Strictly speaking Christian theology has always held that any baptized Christian can baptize another person. No clergy are required to be present[13]. So we have to wonder, why was a bishop called? I see a possible answer. There might have been some question about the people with Theodosius. Were they all baptized Christians? If so, were all their baptisms valid? Just to be sure, and to make sure there would be no challenge to the baptism, in this life or the next, a bishop whose baptism and thus who’s authority to baptize could not be questioned was called for. A similar thing happened when Lyndon Johnson ascended to the Presidency of the United States. In that instance there was a Notary Public on Air Force One in Dallas with him when news that President Kennedy was dead reached him. But rather than rely on a Notary Public, an official qualified by law to administer oaths, Mr. Johnson delayed the take-off of Air Force One until a federal judge, someone who’s authority was beyond challenge, could get to him and administer the oath.[14]
And when he entered Constantinople he did so with all the moral obligations of a Christian, not just an emperor. Determined to put an end to the chaos in the Church caused by the rift between Arians and Orthodox, Theodosius called council to meet in the Capitol of the Empire, Constantinople.
Resolution: The Council sided with the Orthodox, affirmed the use of the Nicene ὁμοούσιον instead of the various other words proposed, and expanded the Nicene Creed to define the place of the Holy Ghost in the Trinity, and his relationship to the other Divine Persons.
Aftermath: Arian bishops were deposed from their churches, the new Creed was promulgated, and from a civil point of view, arising more out of Theodosius’ baptism than anything decided at the Council, the emperor was under the authority of the Bishops in spiritual matters.
Theodosius submission to the Church as emperor was tested at the very place of his baptism. When one of his generals was killed by a mob in Thessalonica he was so enraged that he sent an army there to avenge the death of his general on the population of city of his new birth. The result was 7,000 dead men women and children in the hippodrome of that city. St. Ambrose of Milan was repulsed and furious that a baptized Christian, emperor or not, would murder so many innocents. So he went directly to the palace and demanded repentance, which Theodosius, believing himself completely just in his actions toward the rebellious people of that city, refused to offer.
St. Ambrose then ratcheted up the pressure on Theodosius by excommunicating him and even forbidding him from entering a church. For several months the stand-off continued, as neither the emperor nor the bishop would yield to the other. Finally, as fear for his soul weighed on him, Theodosius, in sack cloth and ashes, publicly confessed his sin and was received back into Communion by St. Ambrose[15]. Thus setting a new precedent regarding relations between the Church and Empire.
The precedent of the emperor submitting to the Church in spiritual matters was re-affirmed in the west when, in 1077, Emperor Henry IV of Germany walked barefoot through the snow in Canossa, and shivered three days in the courtyard beneath the window of Pope Gregory VII, was defied by Otto von Bismarck in the Reichstag in 1872[16], and is playing out now in the dispute between the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of North and Central America on one side and President Obama, a baptized member of United Churches of Christ, and Secretary Sebelius, a Roman Catholic, on the other.
The Third Ecumenical Council (Ephesus) & the Fourth Ecumenical Council (Chalcedon)
The Third Ecumenical Council (Ephesus) and the Fourth Ecumenical Council (Chalcedon) can be dealt with together since they had similar outcomes, though they were dealing with opposite problems. At Ephesus the issue was whether or not Jesus was both God and Man, and whether or not Mary could be rightly called the Mother of God. Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople said she couldn’t be, thus denying, to Orthodox minds, the Divinity of Jesus.
To make short of it, Nestorious and his teaching were condemned by the Council and he and his followers fled to northern Mesopotamia establishing what today is called the Assyrian Church of the East and spreading his doctrine, called Nestorianism to the churches of Persia, where the Persian government encouraged it as a religious bulwark against the Roman Empire, and to India, and even China. The schism between the Assyrian Church of the East and the Orthodox lasts to this day.
At Chalcedon the issue was how many natures did Jesus have, did he have one blended nature or two distinct natures . The Egyptians, Ethiopians, and Armenians all said one nature (their heresy is called Monophysitism) and they wound up leaving the Church just like the Assyrians, Persians and Indians did before them.
It might be the case that much of what transpired to cause the Nestorian schism and the Monophysite schism was political and cultural. This theory is strengthened by the 1976 ascension address of Mar Dinkha IV, head of the Assyrian Church of the East when he repudiated Nestorianism[17], by literature published by the Assyrian Church of the East which says the church was never Nestorian[18], and by the1990 report of the Joint Commission of the Theological Dialogue between the Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches, which says:
“In the light of our Agreed Statement on Christology … we have now clearly understood that both families have always loyally maintained the same authentic Orthodox Christological faith, and the unbroken continuity of the apostolic tradition, though they have used Christological terms in different ways. It is this common faith and continuous loyalty to the Apostolic Tradition that should be the basis for our unity and communion.”[19]
The aftermath of these two Councils is a reluctance of the modern Eastern Orthodox Church to hold another Ecumenical Council. A proposed Council has been in the planning stage for at least a decade, but several of the Patriarchs, including Moscow (the largest) refuse to convene unless all the bishops reach unanimous agreement an all ten proposed agenda items BEFORE the convening of the council, so as to avoid schisms like what happened at Ephesus and Chalcedon.[20]
Regarding the third Canon of Chalcedon, it has come back to haunt the Patriarch of Constantinople as some supporters of the Patriarch of Moscow have claimed that Moscow is now the third Rome.[21]
The Fifth Ecumenical Council (Constantinople II)
This Council is one that seems, perhaps, to have not been necessary. It dealt with nothing new, it merely re-affirmed the teaching of the previous four Ecumenical Councils. The only noteworthy thing about it is that even though he was present in Constantinople, the Bishop of Rome refused to attend the council for several days. The most important thing to come from this Council are the Anathemas against Origen for they showed how Hellenism and the Gospel are in fundamental disagreement.[22]
The Sixth Ecumenical Council (Constantinople III)
This Council dealt with the heresy of Monotheletism, can be thought of as a low calorie version of Monophysitism. It granted that there are two natures in Jesus but said that there is only one will, the Divine. This of course, opposes St. Athanasius the Great’s soteriology as described in his second book, The Incarnation, and defies Orthodox teaching. The Council condemned Monotheletism.
One of the most interesting things about the Council is that its sixteenth session anathematized the person of the then deceased Bishop of Rome Honorius (“To Honorius, the heretic, anathema!”) because of his support of Sergius I. The reason this is so fascinating is that the post-mortem expulsion of Honorius from the Church is still a bone of contention, as countless internet bulletin boards, as well as the writings of immanent apologists, such as the Roman Catholic Scott Hahn and Protestant R.C. Sproul fight over Roman Catholic dogma of Papal Infallibility.
Another interesting thing about the Council is that Maximus the Confessor, who traveled all around the Mediterranean to defend the Orthodox Faith and strengthen the defense against Monotheletism was, functionally, a Monothelete in that he posited the total subordination of the human will to the Divine will, he nevertheless taught that there are two wills in Jesus, human and Divine. This seems to have been made possible because, as is to be expected of a Christian following the division of Hellenism and Christianity at the Fifth Ecumenical council, “Maximus does not share the strong intellectualist understanding of the soul, which characterizes Stoicism…”[23] and this permitted him the philosophical latitude to imagine a will and an intellect that are independent of person. Thus, for St. Maximus there is no conflict between saying Jesus is one person with two natures and two wills.
The Quinisext Council (Sometimes called the Council in Trullo)
The Emperor Justinian II seems to have been very devout, lavishing gifts on the Church and encouraging others to do the same. And, it seems he might have wanted to leave a lasting mark on the Church by convening what is called the Quinisext (Fifth-Sixth) Council. The Council dealt with no major heresies but did promulgate 102 canons, some of which were non-controversial, such as suppression of singing songs to Dionysius during the grape harvest. But some of the canons were directly critical of western Christian practice, especially in Rome.[24]
When the Bishop of Rome refused to recognize the canons Justinian II marched on Rome. But it went badly for him and he barely escaped with his life.[25] Was Justinian truly concerned with the piety and practice of the Church? Did he use the Council as a pretext for imposing his own will on the West? Or, did he instigate and direct the proceedings of the Quinisext Council in order to ensure a causus belli? I don’t think the answers to these questions can be known.
It seems that the justification for making these canons and claiming that they belong to the Fifth and Sixth Ecumenical Councils is that the Holy Fathers of those councils did not issue any canons[26]. And though Ven. Bede, according to Paul the Deacon, called the council “reprobate”[27] and the Pope in Rome at the time of the Council rejected its 102 Canons, Pope Hadrian I did indeed recognize the Canons[28], as did the Holy Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council.
The Seventh Ecumenical Council (Nicea II)
From the earliest days[29] Christians have made images (Gr. eikonos) of Jesus, angels and saints. Eusebius of Caesarea mentions seeing an Icon of Jesus that was commissioned by the woman healed of an issue of blood, but he also condemned the use of Icons, believing that using them in worship was idolatrous.
Christians have been making Icons, if we count the woman Jesus healed, from the time before Jesus’ Curucifixion.[30] (This statue, or a statue claimed to be this statue, would be hauled into the Council as evidence during the Council) They seem to have learned the practice of making Icons from the Jews, as the book of Exodus records that there were Icons of angels in the Tabernacle in the very ancient days. The Priscilla and Domatilla catacombs in Rome contain many Christian Icons dating from the First Century until the 5th Century: The Breaking of Bread, the Good Shepherd, and the adoration of the Magi.[31] Contemporaneous with the oldest surviving Icons of the Annunciation, which has been dated to the 2nd century[32], are the Icons of the story of Esther and Elijah unearthed at the Dura-Europos Synagogue in Syria.[33]
But as Eusebius’ opposition to the Icons shows, there was opposition to Iconology from the earliest days. So, opposition to Icons should not be thought of as something made up out of whole cloth by Leo the Isaurian. Rather, Leo should be thought of as the inheritor, the refiner, and executor of the Iconoclast heresy. But that is to be expected since the Iconoclast heresy is rooted first of all in the heresy of Origenism.[34]
The effects of this heresy were devastating to the Empire. As the Roman Emperor was a heretic[35] and the empire was in turmoil because of the Iconoclast blood-letting, and Pepin, one of the Merovingian Mayors of the Palace, was nearby when the Pope of Rome needed help against the Lombards he gave his moral support to Pepin, the sire of the Carolingian dynasty over and against the Merovingian.[36] This had the long term effect of creating the kingdoms of the middle ages, giving birth to feudalism, and splitting forever in name and law what had been, up until that time, the idea of one Empire divided between east and west, with the west temporarily out of the control of the Emperor. Never again could an Emperor in Constantinople think or even dream that he was Emperor of the west.
Though there was some question, both before and after the Council, the heresy of Iconoclasm was defeated, and to this day the Eastern Orthodox and The Roman Catholic churches accept the decrees of the council.
Bibliography
Abbot, Philip, Accidental Presidents: Death, Assasination, Resignation, and Democratic Succession, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Volume 35, Issue 4 (December 2005)
Brownworth, Lars, Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Civilization that Rescued Western Civilization (New York: Crown Publishers, 2009)
Butler, William B., Jr., Milton’s Arianism Reconsidered, The Harvard Theological Review, Volume 52, Number 1 (January 1959)
Davis, Leo Donald, The First Seven Ecumenical Councils (325-787): Their History and Theology (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1990)
Garte, Edna, The Theme of Resurrection in the Dura-Europos Synagogue Paintings, The Jewish Quarterly Review, New Series, Volume 64, Number 1 (July 1973)
Golden, Peter, Review of Muscovy and the Mongols: Cross-cultural influences on the steppe frontier, 1304-1589 by Donald Ostrowski, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Volume 53, No.2 (April 2002)
Guiu, Adrian, The Byzantine Christ: Nature, Person, and the Will in the Christology of St. Maximus the Confessor, Anglican Theological Review, Volume 89, Number 3 (Summer 2007)
Hill, H., Light from the East, (Toronto Canada: Anglican Book Centre, 1988)
Hollister W., Bennett J., Medieval Europe: A short History, 9th Edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003)
Kitchin, William P.H., The Literary Influence of St. Jerome, The Catholic Historical Review, Volume 7, Number 2 (July 1921) Accessed March 24, 2012 at http://www.jstor.org/stable/25011752
Ouspensky L. and Lossky, V., The Meaning of Icons, 2nd Ed. (New York: St. Vladimir Seminary Press, 1999)
Parsons, Mikael, Who Wrote The Gospel of Luke?, BR, Volume 17, Number 2 (April 2001)
Prevelakis, Nicolas. "Iconography: Its Historical, Theological and Philosophical Background." Ekistics Volume 70, no. 418 (2003) http://search.proquest.com/docview/232562255?accountid=8289 (accessed March 29, 2012).
Richter, J.P., Early Christian Art in the Roman Catacombs, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, Volume 6, Number 22 (January 1905) p. 292 Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/856226
Schaff, P., Wace, H., A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Send Series, Volume XIV, The Seven Ecumenical Councils (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1900) http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.xiv.ii.html
Second Agreed Statement (1990), Orthodox Unity, Joint Commission of the Theological Dialogue between the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches http://www.orthodoxunity.org/state02.php
Shahan, Thomas, The Council In Trullo, The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 4 (New York: Robert Appleton Compay, 1908) http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04311b.htm
[1] Davis, Leo Donald, The First Seven Ecumenical Councils (325-787): Their History and Theology (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1990), p. 30
[2] Davis, p.64-5
[3] Davis, p. 57
[4] Acts 15:28
[5] Davis, p.69
[6] Kitchin, William P.H., The Literary Influence of St. Jerome, The Catholic Historical Review, Volume 7, Number 2 (July 1921), p. 71 Accessed March 24, 2012 at http://www.jstor.org/stable/25011752
[7] Butler, William B., Jr., Milton’s Arianism Reconsidered, The Harvard Theological Review, Volume 52, Number 1 (January 1959), p. 10
[8] Brownworth, Lars, Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Civilization that Rescued Western Civilization (New York: Crown Publishers, 2009), p. 44
[9] Davis, p.111
[10] Brownworth, p.44
[11] Acts 2:28
[12] Brownsworth, p.44
[13] Baptism, Orthodoxwiki http://orthodoxwiki.org/Baptism
[14] Abbot, Philip, Accidental Presidents: Death, Assasination, Resignation, and Democratic Succession, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Volume 35, Issue 4 (December 2005), p.633
[15] Brownworth, p. 46
[16] Anonymous, Financial Times, April 5, 2008 http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy1.apus.edu/docview/248342067?accountid=8289
[17] Hill, H., Light from the East, (Toronto Canada: Anglican Book Centre, 1988) p107.
[18] In the summer of 2002 I attended a wedding in the Assyrian Church of the East in Modesto, California. There was in the pew in front of me a pamphlet explaining some of the history and beliefs of the Assyrian Church of the East. The pamphlet claimed that though Nestorius is one of that church’s saints no one really knows what he taught and that the Assyrian Church of the east affirms the “same Christology as other Christians”. The pamphlet also said the Assyrian Church of the East admits all baptized Christians to Communion.
[19] Second Agreed Statement (1990), Orthodox Unity, Joint Commission of the Theological Dialogue between the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches http://www.orthodoxunity.org/state02.php
[20] His Holiness Patriarch Kirill: Surrender of the Principle of Consensus in the Pre-Council Process Can Bring About Disorders in World Orthodoxy, Pravoslavie (23 Dec, 2011) http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/50710.htm
[21] Golden, Peter, Review of Muscovy and the Mongols: Cross-cultural influences on the steppe frontier, 1304-1589 by Donald Ostrowski, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Volume 53, No.2 (April 2002), p.362-3
[22] Davis, p. 247
[23] Guiu, Adrian, The Byzantine Christ: Nature, Person, and the Will in the Christology of St. Maximus the Confessor, Anglican Theological Review, Volume 89, Number 3 (Summer 2007), pp. 483-485 http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy2.apus.edu/docview/215266816?accountid=8289
[24] Ostrogorsky, pp. 138-9
[25] Ibid.
[26] Schaff, P., Wace, H., A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Send Series, Volume XIV, The Seven Ecumenical Councils (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1900), p.356 http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.xiv.ii.html
[27] Shahan, Thomas, The Council In Trullo, The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 4 (New York: Robert Appleton Compay, 1908) http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04311b.htm
[28] Schaff, P., Wace, p.358 http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.xiv.ii.html
[29] Prevelakis, Nicolas. "Iconography: Its Historical, Theological and Philosophical Background." Ekistics Volume 70, no. 418 (2003): 47-51, http://search.proquest.com/docview/232562255?accountid=8289 (accessed March 29, 2012).
[30] Parsons, Mikael, Who Wrote The Gospel of Luke?, BR, Volume 17, Number 2 (April 2001), pp.12-16
[31] Richter, J.P., Early Christian Art in the Roman Catacombs, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, Volume 6, Number 22 (January 1905) p. 292 Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/856226
[32] Ouspensky L. and Lossky, V., The Meaning of Icons, 2nd Ed. (New York: St. Vladimir Seminary Press, 1999), p.173
[33] Garte, Edna, The Theme of Resurrection in the Dura-Europos Synagogue Paintings, The Jewish Quarterly Review, New Series, Volume 64, Number 1 (July 1973), pp. 1-15
[34] Davis, p. 292
[35] Hollister W., Bennett J., Medieval Europe: A short History, 9th Edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003), p. 106-7
[36] Davis, p. 305
1 comment:
Awesome! I look forward to reading it!
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