Councils: The Church Thinking Together
When serious theological controversies arose in the early centuries — questions about the nature of Christ, the Holy Spirit, the proper veneration of icons — the Church did not leave the answer to individual theologians or ruling bishops alone. She gathered in Ecumenical Councils: assemblies of bishops from the entire Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, to discern and articulate the truth of the faith received from the Apostles.
Orthodox Christianity recognizes seven such Ecumenical Councils, held between 325 and 787 AD, as authoritative for the whole Church. Their decrees carry the weight of divine guidance: "It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us" (Acts 15:28) was the ancient formula, and the Orthodox Church applies it to these seven gatherings.
The councils did not create new doctrines. They defended old ones — articulating clearly what had always been believed, in the face of those who sought to alter or diminish it.
The Seven Councils and Their Definitions
First Council of Nicaea (325): Condemned Arianism; defined that the Son is homoousios (of one essence) with the Father. Produced the original Nicene Creed.
First Council of Constantinople (381): Affirmed the full divinity of the Holy Spirit; completed the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed as we know it today.
Council of Ephesus (431): Condemned Nestorianism; affirmed Mary as Theotokos (God-Bearer).
Council of Chalcedon (451): Defined Christ as one Person in two natures — fully human, fully divine — "without confusion, without change, without division, without separation."
Second Council of Constantinople (553): Further clarified the Chalcedonian definition against various misreadings.
Third Council of Constantinople (680-681): Affirmed that Christ has two wills — human and divine — condemning Monothelitism.
Second Council of Nicaea (787): Restored the veneration of holy icons, condemned by iconoclasts, affirming that the Incarnation made matter capable of bearing the divine.
The Significance of the Councils
Each council was called in response to a specific heresy — a false teaching that, if accepted, would have fatally distorted our understanding of who God is and how He saves us. The councils were not exercises in theological creativity but acts of protection: guarding the treasure of the Apostolic faith against those who would substitute a more philosophically convenient but spiritually empty counterfeit.
The faith of the Fathers is the faith of the Church. Let no man add to it or take away from it. Let it stand as it was defined by the holy Fathers who assembled at the Councils.
— St. Sophronius of Jerusalem