The Council and the Question of Reception

The Church has no test by which a council may be certified ecumenical at the moment it disperses. Every proposed criterion — imperial convocation, universal representation, papal or patriarchal confirmation — is satisfied by at least one council the Church subsequently rejected. What the Church has instead is reception: the councils she has received are ecumenical, and the ones she has not received are not. This file sets out that doctrine, the historical cases that force it, and the real difficulties it carries — because it is a genuine account and not a tidy one.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Conciliar Form

The Church acted in council before she had any theory of councils. Acts 15 records the apostles and elders gathered at Jerusalem to settle whether Gentile converts must be circumcised; the decision is issued in a letter whose formula has never stopped being quoted: “it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us” (Acts 15:28).

The formula fixes two things at once. The council’s decision is ascribed to the Holy Spirit — it is not a majority opinion. And it is ascribed to the Spirit and to us — it is a human deliberation and not a revelation delivered to passive recipients. Both halves are necessary, and the doctrine of reception exists because the second half is real: men deliberate, and men can get it wrong even when assembled.

By the fourth century councils were routine at the provincial level (Nicaea I, Canon 5, requires two a year) and, with imperial support, possible at the level of the whole empire. Seven such councils are received by the Orthodox Church as Ecumenical: Nicaea I (325), Constantinople I (381), Ephesus (431), Chalcedon (451), Constantinople II (553), Constantinople III (680–681), Nicaea II (787).

The Criteria and Why They Fail

Various criteria for ecumenicity have been proposed, and each fails on the historical record.

Imperial convocation. Every one of the seven was convened by an emperor. So was the council of Ephesus in 449, convened by Theodosius II — which the Church rejected and which St Leo named a latrocinium, a gathering of robbers. So was the iconoclast council of Hieria in 754, convened by Constantine V, which styled itself the Seventh Ecumenical Council and which Nicaea II condemned.

Universal representation. Hieria assembled some three hundred and thirty-eight bishops, a larger attendance than several of the seven. It had no patriarch of the great sees and no papal legate, which is a genuine defect; but Ephesus II in 449 did have papal legates, and Ferrara–Florence in 1438–39 had the Emperor, the Pope, the Patriarch of Constantinople, and representatives claiming to speak for the Eastern patriarchates, and was signed by nearly the whole Greek delegation.

Confirmation by the great sees. Florence is the decisive counter-example. It was signed. It was promulgated. And it was rejected — repudiated in the East within a few years, its sole non-signing Greek bishop, St Mark of Ephesus, honoured as a confessor rather than remembered as an obstructionist (see St Mark of Ephesus, and The Great Schism).

Its own claim. Councils that claimed ecumenicity are precisely the ones at issue. A council cannot make itself ecumenical by saying so.

What is left is that the Church knows which councils are hers. That is not a criterion; it is the doctrine of reception.

What Reception Is

Reception is the Church’s recognition, over time and by the whole body, that a council’s decision is the apostolic faith. It is exhibited in a set of concrete acts rather than in a vote: the decrees are incorporated into the liturgical books and the Synodikon; bishops who reject them cease to be commemorated; the council is cited as authority in subsequent councils; the faithful venerate its Fathers; the catechesis is taught from it.

The Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs of May 1848 supplies the standard formulation, and it is worth quoting because it is the text on which the whole modern discussion rests:

“…with us, neither patriarchs nor councils could ever introduce new teaching, for the guardian of religion is the very body of the Church, that is, the people themselves…” (Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs, Constantinople, May 1848, §17)

This is the passage the Slavophiles built on (Catholicity and Sobornost), and it is regularly over-read. It says that neither patriarchs nor councils can introduce new teaching and that the whole body is the guardian — a claim about the transmission of the received faith. It does not say that the faithful vote on doctrine, and the same Encyclical is itself an episcopal act.

The Cases

Ephesus II (449). Convened by the Emperor, presided over by the Patriarch of Alexandria, attended by papal legates. It rehabilitated Eutyches, deposed Flavian of Constantinople, and suppressed the Tome of Leo. Chalcedon reversed it two years later. Rejected.

Hieria (754). Convened by the Emperor, large, and doctrinally explicit. Nicaea II examined its horos and refuted it. Rejected.

Ferrara–Florence (1438–39). The most instructive case, because nothing was procedurally wrong with it. The union it proclaimed was not received: the Greek signatories’ own churches repudiated it, the synodal act of the Eastern patriarchs at Jerusalem in 1443 and later synodal acts rejected it, and it was formally repudiated at Constantinople in 1484 by the synod under Patriarch Symeon that also settled the mode of receiving Latin converts. Rejected.

The councils of secondary authority. Reception also works positively and by degrees. Several councils not numbered among the seven carry very high authority in Orthodox usage: the Council of Constantinople of 879–880 under St Photius, which restored him and, on the Orthodox reading, condemned additions to the Creed; the Quinisext (Trullo, 692), whose canons the Church receives as completing the Fifth and Sixth Councils; the Palamite councils of Constantinople, 1341, 1347, and 1351, whose definitions on the divine energies are dogmatic in Orthodox usage and are enshrined in the Synodikon of Orthodoxy; and, at a lower level, the Encyclical of 1848 and the great local synods. Some Orthodox theologians have argued that 879–880 and the Palamite councils should be reckoned the Eighth and Ninth Ecumenical Councils. [Disputed: whether the Council of 879–880 and the Palamite councils of 1341–1351 are to be reckoned Ecumenical Councils. The proposal has been advanced by Orthodox theologians and hierarchs — St Nikodemos the Hagiorite describes 879–880 in the Pedalion in terms of ecumenical rank, and the position has been argued in the twentieth century by John Romanides and others; against it stands the settled usage of the Orthodox Church, which numbers seven, and the observation that no synodal act has conferred the title. The material is set out in The Question of an Eighth Council.]

The Difficulties, Stated Honestly

The doctrine of reception is true and it is awkward. Four difficulties deserve to be named rather than managed.

It has no timetable. Nicaea’s homoousion was not securely received for more than half a century; the intervening decades included councils, exiles, and imperial Arianism. If reception is the criterion, then during those decades no one could have said with certainty whether Nicaea was ecumenical — and yet St Athanasius contended for it as though the matter were settled, because for him it was. Reception describes how the Church’s judgment becomes manifest, not how an individual Christian is to know what to confess in the meantime. The answer to that second question is the faith received from the Fathers, not a survey of current opinion.

It is not a plebiscite. The temptation to read reception democratically — the Church votes, the majority decides — is strong and must be resisted. At the height of the Arian crisis a majority of bishops in the East were in some degree Arianizing. The criterion is not headcount but the identity of the faith with what was handed down, and the whole body’s guardianship is exercised by holding fast, not by polling.

It cannot be turned into a procedure. There is no reception committee and no waiting period after which a council becomes ecumenical. Attempts to specify a mechanism have not succeeded, and Orthodox writers who press the doctrine hardest are usually the least willing to operationalize it.

It can be abused in both directions. A party that dislikes a council’s decision can appeal to non-reception indefinitely; a party that wants one can declare reception accomplished. Both moves are made in live disputes, including the one in section 09, and the possibility of abuse is not an argument against the doctrine — it is a reason to state it precisely.

The Practical Force of the Doctrine

Two things follow that are used throughout this collection.

Authority is not conferred by office alone. A council of unimpeachable convocation whose teaching the Church does not receive has no authority; a patriarch acting within his competence can be wrong, and has been. This is the same point made about apostolic succession in One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic: the chain transmits, and what it transmits is what matters.

An unreceived act remains unreceived until it is received. This is a formal point and it cuts in every direction. The Agreed Statements with the Oriental Orthodox were never received pan-Orthodoxly and therefore changed nothing canonically (Chalcedon and the Non-Chalcedonians, §09). The grant of autocephaly to the Orthodox Church in America in 1970 has been received by some churches and not by others. The grant of autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine in 2019 likewise. In none of these cases does non-reception by itself establish that the act was wrong; it establishes that the act is not settled, which is a different and more modest claim, and it is the claim section 07 works with.

The Council of Crete, 2016

The most recent test. The Holy and Great Council convened in Kolymbari, Crete, in June 2016, after a preparatory process of more than half a century. It was styled a “Holy and Great Council” and not an Ecumenical Council. Four autocephalous churches — Antioch, Russia, Georgia, and Bulgaria — did not attend, for reasons ranging from the Antioch–Jerusalem dispute over Qatar to objections to the draft texts and to the procedure; the Church of Greece and others sought amendments to the document on relations with the rest of the Christian world; and the reception of its texts across the Orthodox world has been uneven.

Its status is therefore precisely the question this file has been describing, and it is not settled. The Council’s own documents claim authority for the churches that signed them; the churches that did not attend have not received them; and no subsequent pan-Orthodox act has resolved the matter. That is the honest report, and it is the report given in The Holy and Great Council of Crete.

See Also

References

  • Scripture: Acts 15:1–29, esp. 15:28.
  • First Ecumenical Council (Nicaea I, 325), Canon 5; Quinisext (Trullo, 692), canons; Second Council of Nicaea (787), acts against the horos of Hieria — trans. NPNF II/14 (Percival, ed., The Seven Ecumenical Councils); Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 vols. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990.
  • Council of Ephesus II (449) and Leo the Great, Ep. 95 (the latrocinium); trans. NPNF II/12.
  • Council of Hieria (754), horos, as preserved and refuted in the acts of Nicaea II (787).
  • Council of Ferrara–Florence (1438–39), Laetentur caeli; and the Synod of Constantinople (1484) repudiating the union.
  • Council of Constantinople (879–880) under St Photius; Councils of Constantinople 1341, 1347, 1351 (the Palamite councils), as enshrined in the Synodikon of Orthodoxy.
  • Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs, Constantinople, May 1848, §17.
  • St Nikodemos the Hagiorite and Agapios, The Rudder (Pedalion), trans. D. Cummings. Chicago: Orthodox Christian Educational Society, 1957. (Nikodemos’ footnotes are commentary, not canon text.)
  • Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, Kolymbari, Crete, June 2016: official documents (holycouncil.org).
  • Meyendorff, John. Imperial Unity and Christian Divisions: The Church 450–680 A.D. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1989.
  • Florovsky, Georges. “The Authority of the Ancient Councils and the Tradition of the Fathers,” in Bible, Church, Tradition, Collected Works I. Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1972.