BRITISH AND FOREIGN EVANGELICAL REVIEW. APRIL 1866. ART. I.-The Ecumenical Councils. BY THE REV. PHILIP SCHAFF, D.D., MERCERSBURGH, U.S. * ABOVE the patriarchs, even above the patriarch of Rome, stood the Ecumenical or General Councils, the highest representatives of the unity and authority of the old catholic church. They referred originally to the Roman empire, but afterwards included the adjacent barbarian countries, so far as those countries were represented in them by bishops, They rise up like lofty peaks or majestic pyramids from the plan of ancient church history, and mark the ultimate authoritative settlement of the general questions of doctrine and discipline which agitated Christendom in the GræcoRoman empire. The synodal system in general had its rise in the apostolic council at Jerusalem,t and completed its development under The name úvodos eixouμevin (concilium universale, s. generale) occurs first in the sixth canon of the Council of Constantinople in 381. The oixovín (sc. y) is, properly, the whole inhabited earth; then, in a narrower sense, the earth inhabited by Greeks, in distinction from the barbarian countries; finally, with the Romans, the orbis Romanus, the political limits of which coincided with those of the ancient Græco-Latin church. But as the bishops of the barbarians outside the empire were admitted, the ecumenical councils represented the entire catholic Christian world. ↑ Acts xv. and Gal. ii. Comp. my "History of the Apostolic Church," § 67-69 (Engl. ed., p. 245–257). Mansi, 1. c. tom. i. p. 22, (De quadruplici Synodo Apostolorum), and other Roman Catholic writers, speaks of four apostolic synods: Acts i. 13, sqq., for the election of an apostle; ch. vi. for the elec tion of deacons ch. xv., for the settlement of the question of the binding authority of the law of Moses; and ch. xxi., for a similar object. But we should distinguish between a private conference and consultation, and a public synod. VOL. XV.-NO. LVI. P its catholic form in the course of the first five centuries. Like the episcopate, it presented a hierarchical gradation of orders. There was, first, the diocesan or district council, in which the bishop of a diocese (in the later sense of the word), presided over his clergy; then the provincial council, consisting of the metropolitan or archbishop, and the bishops of his ecclesiastical province; next, the patriarchal council, embracing all the bishops of a patriarchal district (or a diocese in the old sense of the term); then the national council, inaccurately styled also general, representing either the entire Greek or the entire Latin church (like the later Lateran councils and the council of Trent); and, finally, at the summit stood the ecumenical councils, for the whole Christian world. There was, besides these, a peculiar and abnormal kind of synod, styled oúvodos ivdnuovoz, frequently held by the bishop of Constantinople with the provincial bishops resident (vonuouvres) on the spot.* In the earlier centuries, the councils assembled without fixed regularity, at the instance of present necessity, as the Montamist and the Easter controversies in the latter part of the second century. Firmilian of Cappadocia, in his letter to Cyprian, first mentions that at his time, in the middle of the third century, the churches of Asia Minor held regular annual synods, consisting of bishops and presbyters. From that time we find an increasing number of such assemblies in Egypt, Syria, Greece, Northern Africa, Italy, Spain, and Gaul. The Council of Nice, A.D. 325, ordained, in the fifth canon, that the provincial councils should meet twice a-year, during the fast season before Easter, and in the autumn.t In regard to the other synods, no direction was given. The ECUMENICAL Councils were not stated but extraordinary assemblies, occasioned by the great theological controversies of the ancient church. They could not arise until after the conversion of the Roman emperor, and the ascendancy of Christianity as the religion of the state. They were the highest, and the last, manifestation of the power of the Greek church, which in general took the lead in the first age of Christianity, and was the chief seat of all theological It is usually supposed there were only four or five different kinds of councils; but Hefele reckons eight (i. p. 3, 4), adding to those above named the irregular úvodo, ivdnμovrai, also the synods of the bishops of two or more provinces; and, finally, the concilia mixta, consisting of the secular and spiritual dignitaries of a province, as separate classes. † A similar order, with different times, appears still earlier in the 37th of the apostolical canons, where it is said (in the ed. of Ueltzen, p. 244), Asütign τοῦ ἔτους σύνοδος γινέσθω τῶν ἐπισκόπων. What were the Ecumenical Councils? 223 activity. Hence in that church, as well as in others, they are still held in the highest veneration, and kept alive in the popular mind by pictures in the churches. The Greek and Russian Christians have annually commemorated the seven ecumenical councils since the year 842, on the first Sunday in Lent, as the festival of the triumph of orthodoxy,* and they live in the hope that an eighth ecumenical council shall yet heal the divisions and infirmities of the Christian world. Through their symbols of faith those councils, especially of Nice and Chalcedon, still live in the western church, both Roman Catholic and Evangelical Protestant, Strictly speaking, none of these councils properly represented the entire Christian world. Apart from the fact that the laity, and even the lower clergy, were excluded from them, the assembled bishops themselves formed but a small part of the catholic episcopate. The province of North Africa alone numbered many more bishops than were present at either the second, the third, or the fifth general council. The councils bore a prevailing oriental character, were occupied with Greek controversies, used the Greek language, sat in Constantinople or in its vicinity, and consisted almost wholly of Greek members. The Latin church was usually represented only by a couple of delegates of the Roman bishop, though these delegates, it is true, acted more or less in the name of the entire west. Even the five hundred and twenty, or the six hundred and thirty, members of the council of Chalcedon, excepting the two representatives of Leo I., and two African fugitives accidentally present, were all from the east. The council of Constantinople, in 381, contained not a single Latin bishop, and only a hundred and fifty Greek, and was raised to the ecumenical rank by the consent of the Latin church towards the middle of the following century. On the other hand, the council of Ephesus, in 449, was designed by emperor and pope to be an ecumenical council; but instead of this it has been branded in history as "the synod of robbers," for its violent sanction of the Eutychian heresy. The council of Sardica, in 343, was likewise intended to be a general council, but immediately after its assembling assumed a sectional charac * This Sunday, the celebration of which was ordered by the Empress Theo dora in 842, is called among the Greeks the xvgan Ts godogías. On that day the ancient councils are dramatically reproduced in the public worship. The schismatical Donatists alone held a council at Carthage in 808, of two hundred and seventy bishops (comp. Wiltsch. Kirchl. Geogr. u. Statistik, i. pp. 53, 54); while the second ecumenical council numbered only a hundred and fifty; the third a hundred and sixty (a hundred and ninety-eight); and the fifth, a hundred and sixty-four. ter, through the secession and counter-organisation of the eastern bishops. It is, therefore, not the number of bishops present, nor even the regularity of the summons alone, which determines the ecumenical character of a council, but the result, the importance and correctness of the decisions, and, above all, the consent of the orthodox Christian world.* The number of the councils thus raised by the public opinion of the Greek and Latin church to the ecumenical dignity, is seven. The succession begins with the first council of Nice, in the year 325, which settled the doctrine of the divinity of Christ and condemned the Arian heresy. It closes with the second council of Nice, in 787, which sanctioned the use of images in the church. The first four of these councils command high theological regard in the orthodox evangelical churches, while the last three are less important, and are far more rarely mentioned. The ecumenical councils have not only an ecclesiastical significance, but bear also a political or state-church character. The very name refers to the oixovui, the orbis Romanus, the empire. Such synods were rendered possible only by that great transformation, which is marked by the accession of Constantine. That emperor caused the assembling of the first ecumenical council, though the idea was probably suggested to him by friends among the bishops; at least Rufinus says he summoned the council ex sacerdotum sententia. At all events, the Christian Graeco-Roman emperor is indispensable to an ecumenical council in the ancient sense of the term, its temporal head and its legislative strength. According to the rigid hierarchical or papistic theory, as carried out in the middle ages, and still asserted by Roman divines, the pope alone, as universal head of the church, can summon, conduct, and confirm a universal council. But the history of the first seven, or, as the Roman reckoning is, eight, ecumenical councils, from 325 to 867, assigns this threefold power to the Byzantine emperors. This is placed beyond all contradiction by the still extant edicts of the emperors, the acts of the councils, the accounts of all the Greek historians, and the contemporary Latin sources. Upon this Byzantine precedent, and upon the example of the kings of Israel, the Russian Czars and the Protestant princes of Germany, Scandinavia, and England—be it justly * Schröckh says (vol. viii. p. 201), unjustly, that this general consent belongs to the "empty conceits." Of course the unanimity must be limited to orthodox Christendom. The Convocation of the Councils. 225 or unjustly-build their claim to a similar and still more extended supervision of the church in their dominions. In the first place, the call of the ecumenical councils emanated from the emperors.* They fixed the place and time of the assembly, summoned the metropolitans and more distinguished bishops of the empire by an edict, provided the means of transit, and paid the cost of travel and the other expenses out of the public treasury. In the case of the Council of Nice and the first of Constantinople, the call was issued without previous advice or consent from the bishop of Rome. In the council of Chalcedon, in 451, the papal influence is for the first time decidedly prominent; but even there it appears in virtual subordination to the higher authority of the council, which did not suffer itself to be disturbed by the protest of Leo against its twenty-eighth canon in reference to the rank of the patriarch of Constantinople. Not only ecumenical, but also provincial councils were not rarely called together by western princes; as the council of Arles, in 314, by Constantine, the council of Orleans, in 549, by Childebert, and-to anticipate an instance -the Synod of Frankfort, in 794, by Charlemagne. Another remarkable fact has been already mentioned: that in the beginning of the sixth century several orthodox synods at Rome, for the purpose of deciding the contested election of Symmachus, were called by a secular prince, and he the heretical Theodoric; yet they were regarded as valid. In the second place, the emperors, directly or indirectly, took an active part in all but two of the ecumenical councils summoned by them, and held the presidency. Constantine the Great, Marcian, and his wife Pulcheria, Constantine Progonatus, Irene, and Basil the Macedonian, attended in person; but generally the emperors, like the Roman bishops (who were never present themselves), were represented by *This is conceded even by the Roman Catholic Church historian Hefele (i. p. 7), in opposition to Bellarmine and other Romish divines. "The first eight general councils," says he, "were appointed and convoked by the emperors; all the subsequent councils, on the contrary [i.e, all the Roman Catholic general councils], by the popes; but even in those first councils there appears a certain participation of the popes in their convocation, more or less prominent in particular instances." The latter assertion is too sweeping, and can by no means be verified in the history of the first two of these councils, nor of the fifth. † As regards the council of Nice, according to Eusebius and all the ancient authorities, it was called by Constantine alone; and not till three centuries later, at the council of 680, was it claimed that Pope Sylvester had any share in the convocation. As to the council of Constantinople in 381, the Roman theory, that Pope Damasus summoned it in conjunction with Theodosius, rests on a confusion of this council with another and an unimportant one of 882, Comp. the notes of Valesius to Theodoret, Hist. Eccl. v. 9, and Hefele (who here himself corrects his earlier view), vol. i. p. 8, and vol. ii. p. 36. |