Semi-Autonomous: An ecumenical council, also called general council, is a meeting of bishops and other church authorities to consider and rule on questions of Christian doctrine, administration, discipline, and other matters[1] in which those entitled to vote are convoked from the whole world (oikoumene) and which secures the approbation of the whole Church.
Starting with the third ecumenical council, noteworthy schisms led to non-participation by some members of what had previously been considered a single Christian Church.
[citation needed] The first four ecumenical councils are recognized by some Lutheran Churches, Anglican Communion and Reformed Churches—though they are "considered subordinate to Scripture".
[5] The Lutheran World Federation recognizes the first seven Ecumenical Councils as "exercises of apostolic authority" and recognizes their decisions as authoritative; while member churches are not required to accept all theological statements produced by the Federation, but only to subscribe to the most basic Lutheran historical confessional documents, most do follow this recommendation.
Of the seven councils recognised in whole or in part by both the Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox Church as ecumenical, all were called by a Roman emperor.
The Catholic Church does not consider the validity of an ecumenical council's teaching to be in any way dependent on where it is held or on the granting or withholding of prior authorization or legal status by any state, in line with the attitude of the 5th-century bishops who "saw the definition of the church's faith and canons as supremely their affair, with or without the leave of the Emperor" and who "needed no one to remind them that Synodical process pre-dated the Christianisation of the royal court by several centuries".
The relationship of the Papacy to the validity of ecumenical councils is a ground of controversy between Catholicism and the Eastern Orthodox churches.
[53] However, Cyril managed to open the council over Candidian's insistent demands that the bishops disperse until the delegation from Syria could arrive.
When the pro-Nestorius Antiochene delegation finally arrived, they decided to convene their own council, over which Candidian presided.
[54] The proceedings of both councils were reported to the emperor, who decided ultimately to depose Cyril, Memnon and Nestorius.
[55] Nonetheless, the Orthodox accept Cyril's group as being the legitimate council because it maintained the same teaching that the church has always taught.
[citation needed] Paraphrasing a rule by St Vincent of Lérins, Hasler states ...a teaching can only be defined if it has been held to be revealed at all times, everywhere, and by all believers.
[citation needed] The Oriental Orthodox hold that the Dyophysite formula of two natures formulated at the Council of Chalcedon is inferior to the Miaphysite formula of "One Incarnate Nature of God the Word" (Byzantine Greek: Mia physis tou theou logou sarkousomene) and that the proceedings of Chalcedon themselves were motivated by imperial politics.
Meetings between Pope John Paul II and the Assyrian Patriarch Mar Dinkha IV led to a common Christological declaration on 11 November 1994 that "the humanity to which the Blessed Virgin Mary gave birth always was that of the Son of God himself".
Through ecumenical councils the Holy Spirit has led the Church to preserve and transmit the faith once delivered to the saints.
They handed on the prophetic and apostolic truth, formulated it against heresies of their time and safeguarded the unity of the churches.
Led by the Holy Spirit, it has borne witness to Christian truth in its historic formularies, the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, The Book of Common Prayer and the Ordering of Bishops, Priests and Deacons.
I, AB, do so affirm, and accordingly declare my belief in the faith which is revealed in the Holy Scriptures and set forth in the catholic creeds and to which the historic formularies of the Church of England bear witness; and in public prayer and administration of the sacraments, I will use only the forms of service which are authorized or allowed by Canon.
Anglican cleric of Anglo-Catholic churchmanship Bishop Chandler Holder Jones, SSC, explains: We indeed and absolutely believe all Seven Councils are truly ecumenical and Catholic—on the basis of the received Tradition of the ancient Undivided Church of East and West.
The Anglican formularies address only particular critical theological and disciplinary concerns of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and that certainly by design.
Behind them, however, stands the universal authority of the Holy and Apostolic Tradition, which did not have to be rehashed or redebated by Anglican Catholics.
[71]He quotes William Tighe, Associate Professor of History at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, (another member of the Anglo-Catholic wing of Anglicanism): ...despite the fact that advocates of all sides to the 16th-century religious conflict, Catholic, Lutheran and Reformed alike, were given to claiming that their particular doctrinal stances and, in some cases, distinctive practices, were in accord with those of the Early Church Fathers, or at least with those of high standing (such as St. Augustine), none [but Anglicanism] were willing to require, or even permit, their confessional stances to be judged by, or subordinated to, a hypothetical "patristic consensus" of the first four or five centuries of Christianity.
[71]Methodist theologian Charles W. Brockwell Jr wrote that the first "four ecumenical councils produced and clarified the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Symbol (Nicene Creed), the most important document in Christian history after the Bible itself.
"[72] The Manual of the Church of the Nazarene, part of the Wesleyan-Holiness movement within Methodism, states "Our denomination receives the creeds of the first five Christian centuries as expressions of its own faith," including the Christological doctrines formulated during the first four Ecumenical Councils.
Independency or congregationalist polity among Protestants may involve the rejection of any governmental structure or binding authority above local congregations; conformity to the decisions of these councils is therefore considered purely voluntary and the councils are to be considered binding only insofar as those doctrines are derived from the Scriptures.
They consider new doctrines not derived from the sealed canon of Scripture to be both impossible and unnecessary whether proposed by church councils or by more recent prophets.
They conclude that this would lead to a logical inconsistency of a non-authoritative body fixing a supposedly authoritative source.