ECUMENICAL COUNCILS

ECUMENICAL COUNCILS. Councils comprised primarily of the Church’s bishops which have been reckoned as having embraced the Christian oikoumene and therefore as possessing universal authority (qq.v.). In practice during the first Christian millennium, the oikoumene meant effectively the territories of the Christian Roman Empire (q.v.). So far as their geopolitical reality is concerned, the Ecumenical Councils were more accurately imperial councils, convoked by the emperor of Constantinople (q.v.) and subsequently enforced by him as imperial law. The Orthodox Church recognizes the decrees of seven of these assemblies as binding on all believers: Nicea I (325), Constantinople I (381), Ephesus (431), Chalcedon (451), Constantinople II (553) and III (681), and Nicea II (787). The first two dealt with the theological crisis prompted by Arius and resulted in the agreement on the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (qq.v.) as the standard of the Christian faith. The Third Council condemned Nestorius and upheld the Christology of Cyril of Alexandria (qq.v.). The Fourth, dominated by Pope Leo the Great (q.v.), affirmed against monophysitism (q.v.) the completeness of Christ’s divinity and humanity. The Fifth and Sixth sought to address the problems and confusions deriving from the Fourth, in particular the schism of the Coptic, Armenian, and Jacobite (qq.v.) communities. The Emperor Justinian (q.v.) thus convoked Constantinople II to condemn the Nestorianizing Christology of the “Three Chapters” and affirm the unity of Christ’s person. The Sixth Council condemned another imperial initiative in the 7th c., the proposal that Christ had but one will, monotheletism (q.v.). The Seventh Council met to condemn the iconoclasm of the Isaurian Dynasty (q.v.), and thus to affirm the veneration of images. By an agreement that appears to be in place in the Orthodox world, possibly the council held in 879 to vindicate the Patriarch Photius (q.v.) will at some future date be recognized as the eighth council.