How many ecumenical councils have there been

To this council we owe the Nicene Creed, defining against Arius the true Divinity of the Son of God homoousios , and the fixing of the date for keeping Easter against the Quartodecimans. Further Reading: www. It was directed against the followers of Macedonius, who impugned the Divinity of the Holy Ghost. To the above-mentioned Nicene Creed it added the clauses referring to the Holy Ghost qui simul adoratur and all that follows to the end. Cyril of Alexandria representing Pope Celestine I, defined the true personal unity of Christ, declared Mary the Mother of God theotokos against Nestorius, Bishop of Constantinople, and renewed the condemnation of Pelagius.

It put an end to Monothelitism by defining two wills in Christ, the Divine and the human, as two distinct principles of operation. It anathematized Sergius, Pyrrhus, Paul, Macarius, and all their followers. Between and bishops assisted. The Photian Schism, however, triumphed in the Greek Church, and no other general council took place in the East. About bishops and abbots assisted. It abolished the right claimed by lay princes, of investiture with ring and crosier to ecclesiastical benefices and dealt with church discipline and the recovery of the Holy Land from the infidels.

Decisions: Opposed erroneous teachings about the soul; reaffirmed the doctrine of indulgences; restated the relationship between popes and ecumenical councils; on the eve of the Protestant Reformation, failed to inaugurate an authentic and thoroughgoing reform of the Church, inadvertently helping Protestantism. Decisions: Defined papal infallibility and primacy; condemned errors regarding the relationship between faith and reason the council was cut short by war, its work to be taken up again by Vatican II.

Decisions: Issued pastoral documents on the renewal and reform of the Church, intending the make the Church more effective in dealing with the contemporary world. Skip to main content Accessibility feedback article. Download Share. Nicaea I Pope Sylvester I, Emperor Constantine, Decisions: Condemned Arianism, which denied the divinity of Christ elements of Arianism have reappeared in our own time ; defined the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son; fixed the date for Easter; began formulation of Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed.

Constantinople III Pope Agatho, Emperor Constantine IV, Decisions: Condemned Monothelitism, which held Christ had but one will, the divine this heresy arose as a reaction to the monophysite heresy ; censured Pope Honorius I for a letter in which he made an ambiguous but not infallible statement about the unity of operations in Christ an episode commonly used by anti-Catholic writers as an argument against papal infallibility, but for the real meaning, see Catholicism and Fundamentalism , pages Nicaea II Pope Hadrian I, Emperor Constantine VI, Decisions: Condemned iconoclasm which was mainly confined to the East , a heresy that held that the use of images constituted idolatry; condemned Adoptionism, which held that Christ was not the Son of God by nature but only by adoption, thereby denying the hypostatic union.

Both the Eastern Orthodox Church and Roman Catholic Church recognise as ecumenical the first seven councils, held from the 4th to the 9th century.

While most Eastern Orthodox Churches accept no later council or synod as ecumenical, the Roman Catholic Church continues to hold general councils of the bishops in full communion with the Pope, reckoning them as ecumenical. In all, the Roman Catholic Church recognises twenty-one councils as ecumenical. The situation was changed totally, however, by Constantine's Edict of Milan in AD when freedom of religion was proclaimed and Christianity was officially encouraged.

Like many a secular ruler before him and since, Constantine was not without a mixed motive in using religion as a political tool. Then in control of the re-unified Empire, Constantine was baptised on his death-bed in AD having, while a catechumen, liberated Christianity. A significant result of the liberation was that in the very broadest of terms, the Christian world had become geographically virtually coterminous with the Roman world.

With Constantine's conversion, Christianity ceased to be the 'heresy' it once was and became the religion of the Empire, while paganism survived for a time.

The disadvantage of positive recognition was that Christianity tended to absorb some of the social customs and organisation of the Empire.

This applied to both the East and West 'wings' of the Empire and to a degree mirrored their political differences. This geographical distinction introduces the further historical point—insufficiently appreciated today—that much of the empire and the Christian world excepting the not-inconsiderable pagan residue was then largely united in faith, but divided in language: the East being predominantly Greek and the West Latin.

Crudely, a language dividing line, often with a different civil government, either side of the line, ran North to South somewhere to the East of the heel of Italy, although for a thousand years there remained a Greek presence in Italy. There Greek ruins can be seen today, although the Romans had taken over control of the Middle East by the first Century B. The general opinion is that the Gospels were originally written in Greek, although Our Lord's language was Aramaic.

However, much cross-fertilisation, as it were, between Latins and Greeks remained for centuries. The weight of adherence in the early Church, it is thought, then lay in the Eastern part, but the abiding significance of Rome is that the Blessed Apostles, Peter and Paul were martyred there and the Bishop of Rome, the Patriarch of the West was early recognised as the successor and Vicar of Peter and was, in effect, guardian of the Apostles' tombs.

It was for this reason that Rome became the focus of pilgrimage and the 'reference point' for unity. By the third century—and before general councils—it was not uncommon for bishops to meet together to discuss matters, most often regionally or locally, in a Synod or a Council.

An ecumenical or general Council of the Church, in modern times, is an assembly of bishops representing those churches in union with the Pope, the Bishop of Rome in order to determine matters of doctrine, to correct disciplinary matters, and to issue pastoral pronouncements.

Subsequent circumstances dictated that the first eight Councils were conducted in Greek and were held in the East, when the centre of gravity of the Church, as it were, tended towards the eastern end of the Mediterranean. At the first Council of Nicaea in AD, the then Pope, Sylvester, was not present personally, but was represented by two priest-legates. Most of the bishops were from the East with only a few from the West. The number in total is thought to be around Therefore, as Bishop Butler noted in a brief review of the early Church for a book on Vatican II: "Thus ecumenical Councils entered the history of the Church, not as a spontaneous development, but in obedience to a secular statesman.

Professor N P Tanner SJ, a leading Council scholar, discusses key issues of definition determining the ecumenical or general status of Councils since the Great Schism between the churches of East and West in There is, however, general agreement about the universal nature of seven Councils, with some disagreement about the eighth: Constantinople IV The ratification of the Pope -- the Bishop of Rome -- was always required from the days of the first Council and Council decisions exercised supreme jurisdiction over the Church.

They are the most appropriate means of proclaiming revealed truth and refuting error. Councils have their prototype in the 'Apostles Council' in Jerusalem cf. Acts ch. At Jerusalem the apostles and presbyters under Peter's leadership were asked to formally consider what, if any obligations of Jewish Law should be placed on gentile converts.

The assembly ratified the proposal that neither circumcision nor the law should be imposed on gentiles but at the same time, urged gentile Christians to take care to avoid Jewish - Christian sensitivities.

In the intervening years since that early meeting in Jerusalem, there have been 21 Ecumenical Councils recognised by the Roman Catholic Church. But the Great Schism, normally dated AD was an unhappy watershed in agreement about Council history. It has been mentioned that during the early years of the church local synods or councils had become a feature of church governance before Constantine called for the bishops of the Oikumene - the whole inhabited world, to meet at Nicea in AD.

At issue was the claim by the Egyptian priest, Arius, that the Son of God was a created being and not therefore fully divine. This heresy was refuted by the assembled bishops, who declared that the Father and Son were of one substance, 'consubstantial' - or, in Greek, ' homoousios '.