What is a council?
The word means any kind of gathering. It comes from the Latin word concilium which just means to assemble. Another word with the same meaning is synod which has roots in the Greek word συνοδος.
How is the word used in theology?
It refers to a gathering of a church’s leadership to make decisions pertaining to the church. An ecumenical council is a gathering of the universal church.
What is the first council on record?
This is the council of Jerusalem; see here.
What is the purpose of a council?
The assumption behind a council is the truth which Solomon taught us: Where no wise guidance is, the people fall; but in the multitude of counsellors there is safety. (Proverbs 11:14)
What is the authority of a council?
Councils have great authority, but they are no more infallible then the men who made the decisions. Thus, the Jerusalem council was infallible because the apostles were infallible. The letter that was sent to the churches from this council contained this line: For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us, to… (Acts 15:28). Clearly, the apostles were guided by the Holy Spirit in their decisions which makes them infallible. No other council, however, had this even though many of them claimed it. Hefele records (p1) the following examples:
- Cyprian wrote (252ad) to Pope Cornelius: “It seemed good to us, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit…”
- The Synod of Arles (314ad) wrote, “It seemed good, therefore, in the presence of the Holy Spirit and His angels…”
- Emperor Constantine called the decree of the Synod of Arles a heavenly judgment; and he added, that the judgment of the priests ought to be so received as though the Lord Himself sat and judged. He said the same thing twenty years later about the decisions of the council of Nicaea. “What seemed good to the three hundred holy bishops (that is, the members of the Nicene Synod) is no otherwise to be thought of than as the judgment of the only Son of God.”
Hefele goes on to note that Athanasius, Augustine, and Gregory the Great made similar comments. Gregory even compared the authority of the first four councils with the authority of the four gospels. Percival writes (pxii):
The Ecumenical Councils claimed for themselves an immunity from error in their doctrinal and moral teaching, resting such claim upon the promise of the presence and guidance of the Holy Ghost. The Council looked upon itself, not as revealing any new truth, but as setting forth the faith once for all delivered to the Saints, its decisions therefore were in themselves ecumenical, as being an expression of the mind of the whole body of the faithful both clerical and lay, the sensus communis of the Church. And by the then teaching of the Church that ecumenical consensus was considered free from the suspicion of error, guarded, (as was believed,) by the Lord’s promise that the gates of hell should not prevail against his Church. This then is what Catholics mean when they affirm the infallibility of Ecumenical Councils. Whether this opinion is true or false is a question outside the scope of the present discussion. It was necessary, however, to state that these Councils looked upon themselves as divinely protected in their decisions from error in faith and morals, lest the reader should otherwise be at a loss to understand the anathemas which follow the decrees, and which indeed would be singularly out of place, if the decrees which they thus emphatically affirm were supposed to rest only upon human wisdom and speculation, instead of upon divine authority.
What are the ecumenical councils?
- First Council of Nicaea (325ad)
- First Council of Constantinople (381ad)
- Council of Ephesus (431ad)
- Council of Chalcedon (451ad)
- Second Council of Constantinople (553ad)
- Third Council of Constantinople (680–681ad)
- Second Council of Nicaea (787ad)