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Dear ChristTeen:

Your youthful wisdom becomes more apparent as days go by!

Pre-schism days, the Pope OR the Emperor had the power to convoke a General (Ecumenical) Council; but ONLY a Pope had/has the power and authority to issue the seal of approval/confirmation.

Further, the Pope or his leagte(s) nrmally presides over the sessions of such Councils.

That is, only the Pope possesses the requisite
"IMPRIMATUR."

AmdG

The councils can only be valid if their teachings are valid.

As I recall, all (or nearly all) of the bishops at the Council of Ferrara-Florence 1438-45 signed on to the proceedings except Mark of Ephesus. When the Eastern bishops returned home, the body of the Church, led by Mark, rejected the council. Some of the popular rejection of it was that the byzantine merchants were afraid of renewed Genoese and Venetian domination and had memories of the crusades, but much of it was also genuine monastic and popular lay opposition to the tenets of the council.

The two sides (East and West) were close, but the resulting council's formulas were flawed (as we have discussed at length in this forum).

In the East, validity comes with assent by the worshiping Church, not through dictates from above. The Oriental/Eastern Orthodox split is a good example. There may indeed come a time when the Church will divide again over something affirmed in a council. For that reason, we need to go into the council having thought out and discussed well in adavance what to put on the agenda and why.

In Christ.

Thank you, most esteeemed administrator, for re-posting the rules. We all need to have our memory jogged every now and then.

I thoroughly enjoy reading and learning here. I tend to skim over anything even slightly dis-respectful.

I am very grateful there is a Byzantine Forum. I have learned a lot here and I hope to continue to do so. I love to discuss my Faith and this is an excellent place to do that with folks from around the world. This is truely marvelous.
:p

Dear ChristTeen287,

I have yet to see any evidence that "the Orthodox Churches don't even know for certain which councils are ecumenical and which are not" as you write above. Orthodoxy is clear in its acceptance of no more than 7 councils as Ecumenical as evidenced by the liturgical texts and other sources. (For a more popular presentation, see the links in a previous post.) That there are scholars who are not Orthodox who are making assertions about what Orthodoxy accepts or does not accept, inasmuch as this is in conflict with Orthodoxy, is a bit preposterous.

Because there is no mention of anything beyond the 7th Ecumenical Council certainly implies that this one is the last Ecumenical Council by Orthodox reckoning. Sure, there were other local councils, these are not called Ecumenical.

Are you willing for non-Catholics to make such assertions about Catholics or will the Catholic Church define its faith? Do you accept that certain positions of individuals on this board (positions which appear to be at variance with the Catholic position) means that the Catholic Church does not know what it believes?

While Orthodoxy does not tend to arrange things neatly into Cathechisms (sometimes it would be nice if It would) the teaching of the church is apparent.

If you can find any authoritative Orthodox voice that says that Orthodoxy does not know how many councils are Ecumenical (meaning we don't know what we believe) I (and many others) will be most interested in seeing it.

Tony

Congratulations to Alex for getting it right. It should be no surprise to anyone that there are (according to the Orthodox) seven ecumenical councils, yet there are indeed other councils and writings which have been recognized as authoritative. Bishop Kallistos in his classic "The Orthodox Church" lists at least 13 important documents or councils after the seventh ecumenical council in 787 which have, in his words, "ecumenical authority" (p. 202, 1997 edition).

The church has known such an arrangement from the very beginning. The Jerusalem Council (Acts 15) is indeed "binding" on the whole church. Yet it is not numbered among the ecumenical councils. (I like to point that out when we're enjoying blood pudding! )

In regard to the idea that the Papal imprimateur was some how needed to "ratify" an ecumenical council, once again, Alex hits the nail on the head. Papal ratification was simply the "first among equals" of all the Patriarchates. Without the agreement of all the bishops, (and the church itself!) we have a problem. Or we should say, of those who are "in agreement"! Surely there were bishops and clerics participating who were rebuked or condemned by the decisions of the council.

So, if were looking to once again assert that the Orthodox are "confused" or "disunited" in matters of dogma, let's lay that to rest.

Priest Thomas Soroka
St. Nicholas Orthodox Church [stnicholas-oca.org]
McKees Rocks, PA

Dear Andrew:

Thanks for making this point. It is a point that is unclear to me; I hope you will be willing to elaborate.

How would you (or any posters) describe the means by which the members of the worshipping church develop and demonstrate their assent?

Clearly this formation of assent must be different than "private judgement", but it nevertheless implicates a an aggregation of individual decisions to reject the declarations of Councils - even Councils that appear, through the roster of delegates, to be speaking the consensus of a broad-base of the Overseers of the Church.

As to its demonstration: It had seemed to me that Chalcedon was the perfect example that shows that the assent of the worshipping church is not a workable criterion for the validity of a Council, inasmuch as the ancient Partiarchates of Alexandria and Antioch, en masse, rejected this Council. Yet you speak of it as being exemplary of the the requirement for grass-roots assent. So I'd like to ask you to discuss your idea in some greater detail.

Finally, as regards to Florence:
I am interested, in the context of the posts here in particular, on the evolution of its rejection. Historically, it was not officially abandoned in the EP until after the establishment of Ottoman rule in its territory. As for Rus' Bishop Tikhon (OCA Diocese of the West) has recently pointed out that, notwithstanding legends to the contrary, it was not popular discontent but a unilateral act of the Great Prince of Moscow through which the re-union was repudiated and Metropolitan Isidore was incarcerated, condemned, then allowed to flee.
http://listserv.indiana.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0212d&L=orthodox&O=A&P=425
Do you (or others) have any recommendations as to solid, scholarly histories of the short-term aftermath of this Council?

djs

Ah, thank you, Amado, but that is because day by day I am losing more and more youth!

I was merely relying on what some Orthodox-in-communion-with-Rome have said in this very thread. I have been advised by a couple of people hereto defer to others' statements and opinions rather than formulating my own (we'll see how long that lasts) since I have no formal theological training. When I do so, it seems I still get pinned with accusing the Orthodox of something. Not so! I was simply asking if this were the case, thus the "Perhaps not?".

Well, Eastern Orthodoxy.

Well, apparently Fr. Thomas and +Kallistos Ware seem to think along these lines:

So, non-ecumenical documents and councils have "ecumenical authority" but are somehow not Ecumenical Councils. Could someone explain this to me, Fr. Thomas perhaps? I'm at a bit of a loss of understanding how this could occur.

Yes. (Equivocating is really a fine art).

Obviously not.

Tony, have I offended you by my questions?

Father, please! Some of us have weak stomachs!

ChristTeen287

I think I did, yes? Acts 15. A council with ecumenical authority yet not one of the seven. The best example that both Orthodox and Catholics (and Protestants!) can appreciate. It is not because it is "scriptural" that it has authority, but because it is a gathering of the Church's apostles, and *they* ruled on a matter which had ecumenical (universal) implications. Of course, one could nit-pick and say that it was not doctrinal in nature. However, it certainly had far-reaching implications for the direction of the Church not being judaizing.

Bishop Kallistos even further defines what he means when he names these other dogmatic writings or local councils as having "ecumenical authority": "a universal authority similar to that possessed by the doctrinal statements of an Ecumencial Council." However, the distinction being that while the doctrinal definitions of Ecumenical Councils are infallible, other councils and writings require much more selective treatment before part or all of a local councils conclusions or a writing or encyclical are seen as having "ecumenical authority."

He particularly points out five of these 13 documents and councils which are sometimes called the "symbolical books" of Orthodoxy.

-The confession of faith by Gennadius, Patriarch of Constantinople (1455-1456)
-The replies of Jeremias II to the Lutherans (1573-1581)
-The confession of faith by Met. Kritopoulos (1625)
-The Orthodox Confession by Peter of Moghila, in its revised form (ratified by the council of Jassy, 1642)
-The confession of Dositheus (ratified by the Council of Jerusalem, 1672)

among these 13 are also

-The reply of the Orthodox Patriarchs to Pope Pius IX (1848)
-The reply of the Synod of Constantinople to Pope Leo XIII (1895)
-The Encyclical Letters by the Patricharcate of Constantinople on Christian Unity and on the "Ecumenical Movement" (1920, 1952)

I think the whole point of Bishop Kallistos mentioning these is to show that Orthodoxy is not static in dogmatic definitions or concilar action, since there has been no ecumencial council since 787.

Priest Thomas

Dear ChristTeen287,

You formulated your question in such a way that it contains a statement. The statement is what I posted to you previously. Your question is contingent on the statement. So, your question implies the accuracy of the statement. You (whether you mean to or not) did not merely ask a question, you made a statement then asked a question based on that statement.

Note that I wrote in my post to you "Sure, there were other local councils, these are not called Ecumenical." "Ecumenical Council" is a technical term. The point is not about how many councils are "binding" or have ecumenical character but how many are called "Ecumenical Councils" by the Orthodox Church (and apparently some ECs).

Tony

A simple layperson's guide to the basic sources of Eastern Orthodox beliefs can be found at this GOARCH/ECUMENICAL PATRIARCHATE site:

www.goarch.org/en/ourfaith/articles/article7064.asp [goarch.org]

Dear djs, you bring up a good point, namely the history behind the acceptance of the Council of Florence is long, complicated, and often sordid. And probably better suited for another thread, but here are some thoughts.

Metropolitan Mysail and the archimandrites of the Kyiv-Pecherska Lavra and the Vilnius Monastery of the Holy Trinity, Ioann and Makarii, wrote a letter to Pope Sixtus the VI addressing him as "Universal Pope". This was nearly thirty years after the closing of the Council of Florence.

This was also the famous letter which referred to Sixtus as something like the "source of four rivers, watering all creation...through the four patriarchates, the firm holy pillars of the Church". This letter also maintained that there was no difference among Greeks and Latins concerning Christ, with all of those baptized in Christ being called to live according to their respective traditions.

It has to be acknowledged that Part of the problem in continuing the union was from the Roman side. The intrigue underlying the activities of the infamous Borgia Pope Alexander VI are partly to blame and are not often discussed in the context of Florence.

Unfortunately this Pope had the ear of Sacranus, who wrote a polemical (and theologically ridiculous) pamphlet called "Elucidarius errorum ritus Ruthenici" which attacked all aspects of the Ruthenian liturgy, spirituality, ecclesiastical discipline (including married clergy), and attacked the Byzantine religious ethos in general.

Sacranus was appointed the first royal chaplain in Poland by King Jan I, and was royal confessor to him and several sucessor Polish kings who revered him. Needless to say, he used his position of prestige to poison not only the Union but relations with Eastern Christians in general whom he clearly saw as highly inferior at best and dangerous heretics at worst.

In fact, in one of his diatribes he states that the Ruthenians were the worst of all heretics, far worse than the Greeks. His only position for negotiating with any Ruthenians, Greek Catholic or Orthodox (with whom he made no distinction) was that they could only be subjects for conversion to the Latin faith.

Sacranus even publicly and violently attacked the Bernardine friars who had taken the position that no rebaptism was needed for converts from Orthodoxy to the Roman Church. Unfortunately Sacranus' works were popular in some higher Latin ecclesiastical circles. And who can then blame the Ruthenians, after reading such garbage, from distancing themselves from the Union.

To compound matters, the rise of Muscovite power and the appointment of Muscovite clergy independent of Constantinople also created distance from the Union. The Muscovite authorities also used polemic against the Union to not only distance themselves from the Latin Church and the foreign powers (especially Poland) who were closely allied with the Latins, but also to distance them from the ecclesiastical authority of Constantinople.

Sorry to digress from the original point of the thread, which was well stated by the Administrator.

Sorry, it looks as if I just repeated a message.

I am a convert (1971) from a Baptist background.

I find in interesting that any "Latin" rite Catholic might question "Orthodox" Churches that are in full Communion with the one, apostolic Church. I cannot believe that they understand the words of our creed which has it roots in Egypt.

I am searching for some history of the early church. I love Egypt and am very interested in the Coptic Church and would wish to aid in getting the full communion back. I know that there is a "Coptic" Church that is in full union. I do not know a lot about "Orthodox" Churches except what I have read. I caught the end of an "Orthodox" rite when I was early for a "tourist" Mass in Aswan, Egypt in Nov 2001. The "tourist" Mass was a latin Mass that was attended by myself and a shipmate on the River Cruise who heard I was going to Mass. We arrived at the end of a "Coptic" rite. The history of Egypt and visiting Coptic Churches (not in Communion with Rome), I saw a history that intrigued me. I wondered if the "Orthodox" rite was a more original form of the Mass than the Latin Rite (which has changed slightly in the time I have been in the Church).

In my short study of the Egyptian Coptic Church, I have discovered that the "Latin" much to the early Egyptian Church founded by Christ though the Apostle St. Mark.

FATHER THOMAS:

No, Father. If you did, it was not apparent to me.

Ok, but is there a difference in the substance of the Seven and the other ecumenical councils and documents? If so, what are these differences?

Interestingly, many Catholics consider the Council of Jerusalem to be an Ecumenical Council. I don't know if this matters or what it implies, just throwing it out there.

So, I suppose my question is if these have ecumenical authority, why aren't they viewed as ecumenical councils?

TONY:

I admit this is true, point well taken, but I assure you it was unintentional.

I don't understand the reasoning behind this.

ChristTeen287

Perhaps they consider it so, but I have never seen a RC list of the Ecumenical Councils that has ever included Jerusalem, even though these lists list the Ecumenical Councils along with the other eighteen councils.