This is the final part of a three-part series explaining the history, meaning, and significance of the Ecumenical Councils. You can read part one here, and part two here.
The Sixth Ecumenical Council
After the unsuccessful attempts of the Emperor Justinian to heal the rift between the Orthodox and the Monophysites, a long period of time ensued, during which there were no significant developments regarding these theological disputes. When the Emperor Heracleus, who reigned from 610 to 641, came to the throne, serious theological discussions with the goal of returning the heretics to the bosom of the Church once again began to take place. Patriarch Sergius, as well as the Roman Pope Honorius, proposed a compromise between the Orthodox teaching that there are two natures in Christ and the Monophysite teaching that Christ has but one divine nature. They proposed a new teaching whose central idea was that, in Christ, there truly are two natures, a human and a divine, but that there is only one will, the divine. This doctrine is called Monothelitism. The Church battled against this heresy for over forty years. The main defenders of the Orthodox faith in these years were the Holy Hierarch Sophronius of Jerusalem, the Holy Hierarch Martin the Pope of Rome, who died in exile in the Crimea, and the Holy Monk Maximus the Confessor, who had his tongue cut out and his right hand cut off so as to deny him the ability to preach and write the truth.
In 668 the great-grandson of Heracleus, Constantine the Fourth, who reigned from 668 to 685, ascended the throne of the Byzantine Empire and called the Sixth Ecumenical Council in 680. The 170 fathers of this council met for about ten months in Constantinople. Both the Orthodox and Monothelites participated in the meetings at which the arguments of both sides were diligently examined. When it became clear that many of the citations of the Holy Fathers that were being used by the Monothelites were forgeries, the position of the heretics fell to pieces, and most of them accepted the Orthodox faith. Monothelitism was deemed a version of the larger Monophysite heresy. With this council the theological disputes concerning the second person of the Holy Trinity came to a close, not because all the heretics returned to the Orthodox Church, but simply because those provinces in which the Monophysites lived were no longer part of the Byzantine Empire. It so happened that most of the faithful within the Byzantine state were Orthodox. By contrast, many that were living in Egypt and the East were Monophysites, and this situation persists to this day.
The Sixth Ecumenical Council is important because it defended the understanding that Christ has a full-fledged human nature — which must of course have its own personal will — and that this nature with its will is exactly like ours, except that it is without sin. A person without his own personal free will is no man, but simply some kind of robot which has been programed by someone else. If the Saviour did not have a human will, as the Monothelites taught, it would mean that He was not a complete human. If He was not a true man, it means that God did not join Himself to us and, as a consequence, our pathway to God ceases to exist. It is also important to note that although the God-man Jesus Christ has separate human and divine wills, the human will is always in obedience to the divine.
The Seventh Ecumenical Council
We all know that the Seventh Council defended icons and their veneration and condemned the iconoclasts, who falsely taught that icons are the same as idols, that it is impermissible to have icons or other images of the Savior, the Mother of God, the angels, or the saints in churches or homes, and that prayers before images is tantamount to idol worship.
There are various theories which try to explain why this heretical teaching appeared. Some believe that the emperor was influenced to ban icons by the Jewish and Muslim prohibitions of images of the Divine. Others think that the iconoclasts were reacting to real violations of some of the Orthodox regarding the use of icons — perhaps some people truly did venerate or worship physical icons, boards and pigments, and not the prototypes which were depicted on them. Still, others posit that iconoclasm was a political maneuver to humiliate the monastics and confiscate their large land holdings for the benefit of the government. Although this question is interesting, we will not delve into answering it today. Let’s only note that this heresy began in the reign of Emperor Leo the Isaurian, who reigned from 717 to 741, was intensely supported by the Emperor Constantine Copronymus (741-775) and continued to exist during the reign of Leo the Khazar (775-780). Only in the reign of Constantine VI (780-797) and his mother Irene did the Orthodox once again come to power in the Byzantine Empire.
During the years that the venerators of icons were persecuted, many confessors and martyrs for the Orthodox faith appeared. Amongst them were the Holy Hierarch Germanus of Constantinople and the monk Saint Stephen the New. The main apologist of the Orthodox faith in these years was the wonderful hymnographer and theologian Saint John of Damascus. In the fall of the year 787, the Emperor Constantine and his mother Irene called the Seventh Ecumenical Council, which met in Nicea and was attended by 367 fathers. Presiding over the council was the new patriarch of Constantinople, the Holy Hierarch Tarasius. The council confirmed the Orthodox teaching on icons and condemned the iconoclasts. The council explained why we venerate icons with the following words: “The honour which is paid to the image passes on to that which the image represents, and he who reveres the image reveres in it the subject represented.”1 Not long after the Seventh Council, the iconoclasts once again came to power in Constantinople. Only in 843 was icon veneration finally and definitively confirmed.
Some may think that the question of icon veneration is not of such importance and does not have such deep meaning as those questions that were discussed at earlier councils, but this is not the case. It is important, personally, for each of us and for our salvation, just like the questions discussed at all the other ecumenical councils. Images of our Lord Jesus Christ in pictorial form clearly witness to the truth that God became a man and lived here on earth amongst us, suffered on the cross, and arose from the dead. If the Lord and God became a man and was seen by His contemporaries, why should we not be able to gaze on His image? If we reject the possibility of depicting the Savior, we are as if rejecting the fact that He came to earth and, in such a way, joined Himself to us.
In some cases, it seems that icons can much more clearly express those theological truths or dogmas about which we have been examining. What words can express the whole idea of the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ better than an icon of the newly-born infant Christ, lying in a manger in a dark cave? What theological works can express with such precision the fullness and depth of this incarnation as can an image of the crucified Christ on the Cross? What hymns, even the most sublime, can with such clarity show those consequences that the incarnation and death on the cross brought to the whole human race and personally to each of us as an icon of the Resurrection of the Savior?
The Councils of 879, 1341, 1347, and 1351
Is it really possible that after the Seventh Council there were no more theological disputes and ecumenical councils no longer met? Of course, there were both disputes and authoritative councils, but these councils are not called ecumenical. Let’s take note of several of them.
Many people hold that an eighth ecumenical council really did take place when another council met in Constantinople in the years 879-880. It was attended by 400 hierarchs, including representatives of the Pope of Rome and all the Eastern Orthodox patriarchs. This council gathered to discuss two main issues. The first was to judge as legitimate the election of the Holy Hierarch Photius to the patriarchal throne of Constantinople, which was challenged by the western Church. This council also accurately and clearly expressed the idea that it is impermissible to change the Orthodox faith of the holy apostles, the holy fathers, and the Seven Ecumenical Councils, and that this faith is expressed in the Symbol of Faith, which was adopted at the Second Council and confirmed by all the following councils. This expression of the faith was not issued by chance, but was proclaimed as a defense against the practice of many western Churches of adding to the Creed the words that the Holy Spirit proceeded not only from the Father, but also from the Son. As we all know, the Western Church did not reject this erroneous teaching, and in the 11th century, it was this teaching that led to the separation of the western Christians from the eastern Church.
There was also a series of three councils in the 14th century in 1341, 1347, and 1351, which can be counted as a Ninth Ecumenical Council. All three of these councils met in Constantinople and were concerned with the theological disputes between Barlaam the Calabrian and the Holy Hierarch Gregory Palamas. Barlaam, a well-educated Greek monk and philosopher from southern Italy, was troubled by the idea that simple uneducated monks can truly come to know God through prayer. He taught that it was impossible to commune with the being or essence of God, and that it is only possible to see some of God’s actions in our world through diligent study.
The Holy Hierarch Gregory, who was also a marvelously educated person, but at the same time had much monastic experience, came to the defense of the Athonite monks, who were called hesychasts (that is, ones who are still, or quiet, recluses). St. Gregory Palamas noted that of course, the essence of God is impossible for man to know, but that God manifests Himself in the world through His uncreated energies, or, in other words, through grace. Any person, not just a monk, can acquire grace and truly come to know, or see, or commune with God through prayer, good deeds, ascetic struggles, and the mysteries of the Church. As an example of this, Gregory Palamas gave the Transfiguration of the Lord and said that the apostles saw not a usual earthly created light, but an uncreated divine light, and that in such a way, they communed with God Himself. Barlaam did not share this belief, but insisted that the light of Mount Tabor, just like all the other manifestations of God’s grace amongst people here on earth, was created.
These councils of the 14th century confirmed the traditional Orthodox teaching which was so eloquently and clearly expressed by the Holy Hierarch Gregory, and condemned Barlaam and his supporters. These councils are important because they, like the Seven Ecumenical Councils, defended an important idea of Orthodox theology – that it is possible to know God, not only in an abstract academic way, but also in a personal manner and to draw close to Him, commune with Him, to in the most literal sense become a member of His Body, or, in the words of the hesychasts, to become god-like. Each one of us should understand this well, because at some moment of our own lives each of us has felt the presence of God, and has felt grace acting on us.
In Conclusion, the Seven Ecumenical Councils, as well as those great and authoritative councils that followed them, are an integral part of our Orthodox faith, and cannot be dismissed as something unimportant or difficult to understand. In fact, as I have tried to show above, the basic ideas and arguments that were expressed at these gatherings are straightforward and relevant to our own personal salvation. The holy fathers that participated in the deliberations of these meetings or prepared the theological groundwork beforehand exerted a tremendous amount of energy to defend and clearly express the true faith. Some of them paid for their steadfastness with their lives. Perhaps each of us should keep their struggle in mind and pay the ecumenical councils and the teachings that were so eloquently expressed at them the attention that they are due.