www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology The Ecumenical Councils: Are there 21 or only 7?

Okay, fair enough, I sincerely appologize if I may have sounded like a "militant" trying to prove something with arrogance. I did not intend it that way, but sometimes I'll have to agree I don't make myself clear enough. I thought my assertions "The way I see it is" and "It seems" would point out that I'm just making observations on what my little understanding of the issue is. Also, disregard my quotings. Again, I'm sorry. I should've been more careful in posting.

Okay, now, for a more legitimate question: How did this become (as apotheoun had stated) that we're at liberty to reject the doctrines formulated by these councils? I'm having a difficult time reconciling this with what little I know about Catholic theology. I thought doctrines such as papal infallibility, primacy, purgatory, Immaculate Conception, etc. were in the deposit of faith, in which if rejected would make the person outside the Church. Can someone help me please?

You know, when I replied to your first post I added a P.S.: "Welcome to the forum". I almost added "Brace yourself".
Sorry for the reaction you got here. To be fair, anyone who has been here for a while has seen arrogant Latin [and Orthodox] posters come and go. Some may react a bit hastily, to the bewilderment of well-meaning newcomers. Of course your screen name didn't help much.

I think most of us would make a distinction between "doctrine", meaning the articulation of a dogma in a certain theological or cultural tradition, and "Dogma", meaning the fundamental religious truth.
For example, "Purgatory" as a Latin construct meaning a "place" of "punishment for the temporal effects of sin" is a foreign concept to Eastern Christians. Note though that we believe that the soul's journey to God, the process of theosis , continues after death, that this may include the suffering of purgation, and that said soul benefits from the prayers of the living, and you will see that there is fundamental agreement. [Indeed note that this latter understanding is represented in the Catechism of the Catholic Church rather that the more Tridentine imagery.
Similarly, Eastern Catholics may be uncomfortable with the monarchist, triumphalistic or scholastic language the West uses to describe the Pope's authority, without denying it.
Hope this helps.
-Daniel

The difficulty often experienced by Latin Catholics -- and I say this as a former Latin -- is founded upon a perspective that limits the Church's doctrinal patrimony to the theological speculations of the Western Scholastics of the middle ages. In addition, at least on the part of some, there can also be too great an emphasis placed upon the theological opinions of St. Augustine, giving the impression that the Augustinian school of thought somehow represents the entire patristic tradition. Clearly, it does not.

The Eastern Fathers have a different understanding of the various doctrines of the faith, and these different viewpoints are often ignored by Westerners who are less familiar with the teachings of men like St. Maximos the Confessor, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Basil, St. Gregory Palamas, et al.; moreover, some of the Scholastics misunderstood the teachings of some of the Eastern Fathers, partially because they (i.e., the Scholastics) were working only with brief collections of excerpts from the writings of the Fathers, and not the full texts of the Greek Fathers.

You're also confusing doctrines with doctrinal formulations, because these two things are not synonymous. The doctrine is a revealed mystery, while the doctrinal formulation is an attempt to express the mystery in human language. It must always be borne in mind that God is beyond every category of human thought; and so, human language, which is itself a creation of man, and not of God, reflects the limitations inherent in man's own mode of existence.

Eastern and Western theology have developed along different lines, now this does not necessarily entail opposition, but it does mean that the approach of one "school" of thought within the Church cannot exhaust the mystery of salvation.

As I said in a previous thread:

The deficient nature of human language was emphasized by the Cappadocian Fathers in particular, because they understood that language is, like man himself, limited, and as a consequence it cannot convey the essential reality of the divine (or even the essence of created things), but only signifies the epinoetic concepts formed from the divine energies, which come down to man and which reveal God in the world. There is a tendency on the part of many Westerners to see their own tradition as an exhaustive exposition of the mystery of Christ, but it is not, nor can it ever be that; in fact, even if a man were to try and combine the two main traditions of the Church (East and West) it would still be impossible to convey all that God is, and all that He has revealed about Himself.

Blessings to you,
Todd

My, this thread has been having a busy afternoon! I've been watching "A Night To Remember" - if you haven't seen it, you probably would find it worth-while.

However, a good friend rang me and suggested that I look in on the thread, so here I am. Rejoice or lament, if you feel inclined to do either.

What has caught my eye is Daniel's question "Is it my imagination or is more patience shown to obnoxious Orthodox posters than bumbling Romans who stumble in here?"

Prescinding from the language, Daniel could well be correct. The reason is not hard to follow: the Orthodox have not had the recent experience of Vatican II and the clear theological directions of Pope John Paul II (as well as Pope Benedict XVI in his previous position). So people like myself are apt to react by thinking that one should be able to expect Catholics, who announce their adherence to the magisterium (an odd word, that) to act accordingly- first by reading the relevant documents with some care and then by refraining from trying to attack those of us who DO take those documents seriously.

As for the suitability of one's chosen screen moniker, I obviously have no room to talk!

Incognitus

Can we address a bit why some believe that the Easterners somehow weren't present at the latter Councils?

As best as I can make out from some posts here, some are saying that these Councils are general and not ecumenical because of the fact that the East is somehow underrepresented.

Can we flesh this out, because this doesn't make sense to me. How much represenation from the East is "enough" to make a council ecumenical? 50%? 25%? 2%?

We all know that in the first Seven Ecumenical Councils, the East was represented more than the West; the majority of Christians were from the East - or am I wrong about this? So why should we be employing this equal representation yardstick? From the point of view of the Catholic Church, at the time of, say, the Council of Trent, the Church claimed much more Western membership than Eastern, and that's just the way it was - - - just as in the earlier centuries the Church claimed more Eastern members than Western.

Anyway, these are my sundry thoughts and I'd be open to read others' opinions...but I do feel this has all been discussed at length in a prior thread a year or two ago.

Logos Teen

21 or only 7 ???

How about 3 !

cf.
http://www.geocities.com/derghazar/chalcedon.html

Great question Teen. I am drawn to the East for two reasons, one its ancient spirituality and two because it is Catholic, I sometimes fell that we lean to much to the Orthodox. They are our brothers and I love them but we are still part of the Catholic Church and just because we are outnumbered doesn't mean the East doesn't count.

Logos Teen,

I think you might be missing quite a bit.

I can�t speak for others and they may be saying what you are responding to (but I don�t see it in their posts). You might consider that the �ecumenical� status is not determined merely by the participation of East and West. The conditions for a council being �ecumenical� are much more complicated. And since the Church has not specifically spoken to this with one voice it�s going to stay that way for awhile.

I think an additional point you might like to consider is that the content and application of a council (why they were meeting, how the results were received by the Church, and how they affected the Church) is also a necessary consideration. Trent (and most of the other General Councils in the West) had absolutely no affect on the Eastern Catholic Churches. Most dealt specifically with problems within the Latin Church. So they are a �General Councils in the West� (and fit this according to Paul VI�s definition). Even Vatican II, as wonderful and great as it is, and with Eastern representation, made no change to the Eastern Churches, except to direct them not to imitate Latins and to be faithful to their Orthodox roots. Looking at Trent and Vatican II one could argue that Vatican II deserves a higher pedestal then Trent (so far as ecumenical status goes). But neither rise to the rank of the Seven Ecumenical Councils.

In Pope Paul VI�s his letter commemorating the 700th anniversary of Lyons (1974) (excerpts of which are quoted in the linked article on the filioque by Apotheoun) he stated that �the Latins chose texts and formulae expressing an ecclesiology which had been conceived and developed in the West. It is understandable [�] that a unity achieved in this way could not be accepted completely by the Eastern Christian mind.� A little further on, the Pope, speaking of the future Catholic-Orthodox dialogue, observed: ��it will take up again other controverted points which Gregory X and the Fathers of Lyons thought were resolved.� This pretty much makes it clear that the Paul VI is agreeing that because the council spoke only from the Western perspective and that the issues were not resolved, the matter must be taken up again. That, together with the fact that elsewhere in his text he discusses that the Seven Ecumenical Councils are in a different category than the General Councils in the West, makes the whole thing pretty clear.

The Seven Ecumenical Councils did have a majority Eastern representation. But this is not the point. The decisions of the Seven Ecumenical Councils provided a foundation of theology used equally by East and West (they were accepted, received and used by the entire Church). Councils like Trent had little or no influence in the East. We have not discussed it in this thread, but the reverse is also true. We Eastern Catholics have our 40 Day Advent (called Philip�s Fast) from the Council of Constantinople in 1166. The more important issue of that council was a clarification of some specific issues about the hypostatic union. The West does not reject this council but nether does it include it in its list of councils. While the East does not use the term �General Councils in the East� one could use such a term to refer to these types of councils in the East (that parallel similar councils in the West).

So, again, the issue of what �ecumenical� means varies throughout Church history and it is used differently by different Churches. There is no single definition that applies to all. To insist on a single definition (Eastern or Western) is to place one particular ecclesiology as the standard. And we can see that the Church has backed away from that and is going in a new direction.

Admin

Thanks all! I think I get it now.

May God bless you.

Admin,

Thank you for your response.

However, it seems I'm going to have to dig through the archives and dredge up these exact points that I allude to here, so as to more easily justify them.

One would be the fact that the Seventh Ecumenical Council dealt primarily with Iconoclasm, a heresy that heavily affected the East but barely, if at all, tarnished the West. This is a Council we both claim to be "ecumenical," and yet its purposes and decisions impacted the West little, and were much more important to the East.

So, maybe from a Western POV, we should chuck this Council - - - but I have a feeling that would find resistance. Why, logically?

Logos Teen

Logos Teen writes about "Iconoclasm, a heresy that heavily affected the East but barely, if at all, tarnished the West." I sincerely hope that this is intended as a jest. Iconoclasm in the West is a sad fact. For only one dreadful example, I suggest that excellent and overwhelmingly sad book The Stripping of the Altars.

If memory serves me correctly, the canons teach that a General Council requires the Pentarchy, either in person or by representation.

Incognitus

I sincerely hope that Incognitus recognizes that I'm not talking about the post-Vatican II Latin Church, but rather about the West during the time of the 7th Ecumenical Council.

Incognitus has just proved my point. The West has, recently, undergone a type of iconoclasm, and we can look back to the 7th Ecumenical Council to see that this is unjustifiable. Perhaps in another 1000 years the East can look back on one of the later Ecumenical Councils when y'all run into problems...

Logos Teen

Garrett is right; iconoclasm was not an issue in the West until the Reformation. Within the Church it was not an issue until Vatican II...
-D

I don't think that is accurate. Prior to the high Middle Ages heretical groups, which often tended to iconoclasm were not very visible or organized. When you started to get wandering preachers like Henry the Monk and Peter of Bruis in the 11th century, they were most certainly iconoclasts. They were precursors to the larger Cathar and Waldensian movements. All of which predated to the events at Wittenberg by a few centuries.

Andrew

Rilian is correct, because there have been iconoclastic movements in the Western Church throughout its history, and not simply in the post-Reformation era, but even at the time of the Seventh Ecumenical Council. In fact it can be argued that the West has never fully understood the importance of icons in the worship of God and His saints. The West tends to see icons as decorations used merely for aesthetic purposes, or as didactic tools for teaching the uneducated. But the East has always seen icons as an extension of the incarnation, that is, as visible theophanies of grace (divine energy) in the life of the Church. Fr. Kucharek spoke about these differences in his book on the divine liturgy, when he said that:
The Seventh Ecumenical Council, as the last council of the Church of the East and West united as one, gives the final word on the dogma of the incarnation and its perpetual extension in the life of the Church.

Blessings to you,
Todd

Here is a interesting web article on icons: Icon (Image) [religion-religions.com]