Ecumenical councils

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chuckd

chuckd

Puritan Board Junior
What constitutes a council ecumenical in the Reformed tradition? Who must attend? Who can vote? When was the last valid one? What must happen for another one to take place?
 
Chuck,
This doesn't answer the question you asked, but is an important historical note, particularly in a discussion in the context of Rome:

I heard from a church history prof, that the general consensus is this: Protestants and Catholics hold together the first five (5) ecumenical councils together....up through Chalcedon. After that, there is no more unity.
 
chuckd said:
What constitutes a council ecumenical in the Reformed tradition? Who must attend? Who can vote? When was the last valid one? What must happen for another one to take place?
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Turretin said a magistrate must call it. The Byzantine Emperor in ancient days called it (which is a sore point with Rome, since for Rome a council can only be legitimate if the Pope calls it).
 
Just a quick thought concerning our present circumstances:
The Church is in such a divided state today that an ecumenical council cannot be remotely hoped for. There will not be ecumenical councils until there national councils uniting disparate churches under a single, national church government. The Church is suffering miserably under disestablishmentarianism/voluntarism.
 
An important element is really reception. Ecumenical intentions might be important, but relatively small councils with scanty representation from wide areas can still be recognized and received as ecumenical. The question is whether their deliberations reflected the mature conviction of the churches.
 
chuckd said:
What constitutes a council ecumenical in the Reformed tradition? Who must attend? Who can vote? When was the last valid one? What must happen for another one to take place?
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I think at best the ecumenical councils were parachurch gatherings with delegates from various local churches. They are "valid" and useful for us now for their doctrinal contributions where they stand up to the scrutiny of scripture. Most men here, I qualify for the sake of our Anglican brethren, would believe the church in large swaths had abandoned the biblical pattern for church government anyway by the time the early church ecumenical councils came to pass. In God's providence they have been used but as a model for the church they fall short. The top down, command and control approach isn't biblical.
 
Church historians generally see the impossibility of an ecumenical council after the east-west schism in 1054 when it becomes impossible to recognize a single, visible church.

How far back you can go in the councils before that date is a matter of debate with protestant churches generally accepting four (through Chalcedon) and eastern orthodoxy holding through the seventh when iconography was re-affirmed. RC continues to claim ecumenisity in it meetings.
 
chuckd said:
What constitutes a council ecumenical in the Reformed tradition? Who must attend? Who can vote? When was the last valid one? What must happen for another one to take place?
Click to expand...

Technically there never has been an ecumenical council. Those called "ecumenical councils" could only be as extensive as the authority of the civil magistrate which called them. They often contained an unbalanced representation in favour of the places in which they were called and some places had no representation. It is important for Protestants to recognise this lack of universality in order to contest the claims of traditionalists who use the ecumenical councils to undermine the Confessions of the Protestant reformation.

Charitably, though, the first four "ecumenical councils" are generally recognised for the good confession which they make before many witnesses with respect to the faith once delivered to the saints, especially in relation to the Trinity and the person of Christ. Appeal is sometimes made to them to show the catholicity of what Protestants confess. They are also useful for showing that the Pope of Rome did not have the authority which he later claimed for himself, and that councils can err and have erred.

Calvin wrote (Institutes, IV. ix. 9), "we shall never be able to distinguish between contradictory and dissenting councils, which have been many, unless we weigh them all in that balance for men and angels, I mean, the word of God. Thus we embrace the Council of Chalcedon, and repudiate the second of Ephesus, because the latter sanctioned the impiety of Eutyches, and the former condemned it. The judgment of these holy men was founded on the Scriptures, and while we follow it, we desire that the word of God, which illuminated them, may now also illuminate us. Let the Romanists now go and boast after their manner, that the Holy Spirit is fixed and tied to their councils."

Again (Institutes, IV. ix. 11), "all I mean to infer from what I have said is, that though councils, otherwise pious and holy, were governed by the Holy Spirit, he yet allowed them to share the lot of humanity, lest we should confide too much in men. This is a much better view than that of Gregory Nanzianzen, who says (Ep. 55), that he never saw any council end well. In asserting that all, without exception, ended ill, he leaves them little authority."
 
MW said:
Gregory Nanzianzen, who says (Ep. 55), that he never saw any council end well. In asserting that all, without exception, ended ill
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Though to be fair to the good bishop of Nazianzus, he spoke from experience and found the politics of the councils little to his taste. Even the best councils were filled with sinners.
 
The initial councils give us the dogma of our faith: what is the Bible? Who is Christ? Is God one or three, and who proceeds from whom? These are the things we recite in our creeds. Are these raised to the level of scripture? No, but it would be impossible to give a credible profession of faith without acknowledging these foundational truths.
 
MW said:
Technically there never has been an ecumenical council. Those called "ecumenical councils" could only be as extensive as the authority of the civil magistrate which called them. They often contained an unbalanced representation in favour of the places in which they were called and some places had no representation. It is important for Protestants to recognise this lack of universality in order to contest the claims of traditionalists who use the ecumenical councils to undermine the Confessions of the Protestant reformation.

Charitably, though, the first four "ecumenical councils" are generally recognised for the good confession which they make before many witnesses with respect to the faith once delivered to the saints, especially in relation to the Trinity and the person of Christ. Appeal is sometimes made to them to show the catholicity of what Protestants confess. They are also useful for showing that the Pope of Rome did not have the authority which he later claimed for himself, and that councils can err and have erred.
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Thank you for the response. Couple questions. When the civil magistrate called them, who went? How was a person chosen to go?

How were controversies settled? Simple majority? Unanimous?

How were they ratified? You said some were unbalanced or underrepresented. What did that mean for absent churches? If they disagreed with something the council had settled, were they still in communion?
 
Chuck, a couple is two. I count at least eight question marks in your post. :)

The Councils were all slightly different. Perhaps read a history like Schaff's or the Nicene Fathers' volume on the ecumenical councils in order to find the precise answers for which you are looking. The following is a snippet which helps to show that the ecumenical councils are charitably called such, not that they were intended to be ecumenical. I would dispute the idea that the church in the whole world accepts these synods and their canons, but the snippet shows what is intended by the idea of calling them ecumenical councils.

"An Ecumenical Synod may be defined as a synod the decrees of which have found acceptance by the Church in the whole world. It is not necessary to make a council ecumenical that the number of bishops present should be large, there were but 325 at Nice, and 150 at I. Constantinople; it is not necessary that it should be assembled with the intention of its being ecumenical, such was not the case with I. Constantinople; it is not necessary that all parts of the world should have been represented or even that the bishops of such parts should have been invited. All that is necessary is that its decrees find ecumenical acceptance afterwards, and its ecumenical character be universally recognized."
 
For in process of time, when the power of the Roman empire gave countenance and protection unto the Christian religion, another way was fixed on for this end, viz., the use of such assemblies of bishops and others as they called General Councils, armed with a mixed power, partly civil and partly ecclesiastical — with respect unto the authority of the emperors and that jurisdiction in the church which began then to be first talked of. This way was begun in the Council of Nice, wherein, although there was a determination of the doctrine concerning the person of Christ — then in agitation, and opposed, as unto his divine nature therein — according unto the truth, yet sundry evils and inconveniences ensued thereon. For thenceforth the faith of Christians began greatly to be resolved into the authority of men, and as much, if not more weight to be laid on what was decreed by the fathers there assembled, than on what was clearly taught in the Scriptures. Besides, being necessitated, as they thought, to explain their conceptions of the divine nature of Christ in words either not used in the Scripture, or whose signification unto that purpose was not determined therein, occasion was given unto endless contentions about them.
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From John Owen's not very favorable overview of the early councils in his Preface to CHRISTOLOGIA from John Owen works, vol. 1. Unfavorable as to the process, anyway, for he concludes:

However, such was the watchful care of Christ over the church, as unto the preservation of this sacred, fundamental truth, concerning his divine person, and the union of his natures therein, retaining their distinct properties and operations, that — notwithstanding all the faction and disorder that were in those primitive councils, and the scandalous contests of many of the members of them; notwithstanding the determination contrary unto it in great and numerous councils — the faith of it was preserved entire in the hearts of all that truly believed, and triumphed over the gates of hell.
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