01 — What an Ecumenical Council Is
The frame within which the seven councils must be read: the Orthodox understanding of conciliarity and conciliar authority, and the harder question of what makes a council “ecumenical” — not imperial convocation but reception by the whole Church.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox
This section sets out the ecclesiology the rest of the collection presupposes. An Ecumenical Council is not, in Orthodox understanding, a legislature whose majority vote binds by procedure, nor a papal ratification, but the Church gathered in the Holy Spirit to confess and define the faith she has always held — an authority that is finally recognized by the whole body’s reception, not conferred by any external mechanism. This is why some large, imperially convened councils that called themselves ecumenical (Ephesus 449, Hieria 754) were rejected, and why the Church numbers exactly seven as universally received.
Navigation
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| conciliarity-and-authority.md | The nature of councils from the Apostolic Council onward; how the Church discerns; the council as the organ of the Spirit; the formula “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us.” |
| ecumenicity-and-reception.md | What makes a council “ecumenical”: reception by the whole Church, not mere imperial convocation; why exactly seven are universally received; the rejected “robber councils.” |
See Also
- Orthodoxy: Holy Tradition — the living Tradition within which councils are received
- Ecumenicity and Reception — the reception principle developed
- The Question of an Eighth Council — the reception principle applied to the open cases