The Church Councils of the Emperor
The high drama of the first council of
Nicaea has sadly been much neglected by playwrights. Not
only is this event called "one of the most important in the history of Christianity" by Encyclopedia
Britannica, [1]but
its powerful images cry out for the Shakespeares of the
world to imprint them on the human imagination. Here is
the regal emperor, casually retaining his leadership of
the Roman state pagan religion, even its title pontifex
maximus , as he coolly calls one major gathering of
Christian bishops after another. [2]He
first exercised his power to gather the bishops to do his
bidding because of a controversy in the Church, as though
the emperor should have anything to do with it.
Here they come, walking through lines of imperial Roman
soldiers who only twenty years before had presided over
the latest round of the death and torture of Christian
martyrs. They'd done it with the same cruel efficiency
with which they had put the Savior to death three centuries
prior.
Imagine the inner thoughts of one of those distinguished
bishops as wonder fills his heart that perhaps after all
the 
Kingdom of God has come to earth:
It is called the First Ecumenical, or universal, Council
because it included bishops from the East and from the
West. To celebrate the twentieth anniversary of his reign,
Constantine invited the assembled bishops to dine with
him. When those who had survived the great persecution
filed between ranks of Roman soldiers to sit down with
the emperor, one of their number wondered whether the Kingdom
of God had come, or whether he dreamed. [3]
This was no ordinary gathering of clerics. Constantine
didn't simply command them to come; he paid their expenses
and even provided their means of getting there. In his
famous Life of Constantine, the bishop and church
historian Eusebius wrote of the gathering:
Nor was this merely the issuing of a bare command but
the emperor's good will contributed much to its being carried
into effect: for he allowed some the use of the public
means of conveyance, while he afforded to others an ample
supply of horses for their transport. The place, too, selected
for the synod, the city Nicaea in Bithynia (named from "Victory"),
was appropriate to the occasion. As soon then as the imperial
injunction was generally made known... [4]
This "imperial injunction" was the compelling force
that brought about the Council of Nicaea. Was the very
setting of the councils their message? If so, then their
statements of faith are insignificant in the history of
Christianity in comparison to their setting. The bishops
gathering at imperial expense, presided over by the emperor
himself, whose decrees were upheld by his power, then becomes
the essential message of the council. Almost
every historian says the church married the state under
Constantine, but maybe it did far more than that. Maybe
it actually merged with the world.
These councils and the creeds that came forth from them
are held in the highest regard in Christianity. They form
the basis of identifying what is and what is not Christian
faith, practice, and doctrine ever since. From then on,
they have formed the foundation for all orthodox Christian "faith
and practice."
The counsel that came forth at imperial command was argued
in the most bitter, even violent terms, which resulted
in exile or death for the losers, their books being burnt,
their churches confiscated. All of these evils were manifested
at the first of the Ecumenical Church Councils. The participants,
in the obvious belief they were setting a pattern worthy
of imitation, recorded them without any sense of shame.
And as even a very limited knowledge of Church history
shows, this pattern was followed.
The first of the ecumenical councils, that of Nicaea in
325, became a model for many that followed. It was ecumenical
in the sense that bishops were summoned from the whole
inhabited world. It was ecumenical in the more technical
sense that its decisions were meant to be binding on all
Christians, and not merely on those of this or that diocese
or patriarchate. It was called in the face of the special
crisis arising from the spread of the Arian heresy. It
was conducted by means of free debate; but when the decisions
were reached (e.g., to define Jesus Christ as "True God
of true God, begotten not made, of one substance with the
father"), the Bishops who were recalcitrant were subject
to ecclesiastical excommunication and political exile.
Although the emperor convoked the council, paid the expenses,
was present at some of the sessions and punished the recalcitrants,
it seems to have been understood that he had acted with
the consent of the bishops and particularly, of Pope Sylvester. [5]
The seven ecumenical councils, which form the universal
foundation for both the western and eastern branches of
Christianity, followed this pattern. Like the first, they
were called to do the bidding of the emperor.
Six of those seven ecumenical councils either occurred
in or near Constantinople, another reflection of their
total domination by the secular power of the Eastern emperor.
The Curses of the Councils
The bishops called down curses on those who disagreed
with them concerning the creeds. They were called anathemas in
their creeds and in their dogmas, after the Greek word
the apostle Paul used:
If anyone does not love the Lord Jesus Christ, let him
be accursed. O Lord, come! (1 Corinthians 16:22)
The bishops at their councils called down anathemas on
those with incorrect doctrine, while Paul had used it for
something else entirely. He said those who didn't love
the Savior were accursed, for their disobedience to His
commands was destroying the very fabric of the church.
In the gospels, He had very clearly defined loving Him
as obeying Him:
If you love Me, keep My commandments... He who has My commandments
and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves
Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and
manifest Myself to him... Jesus answered and said to him, "If
anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will
love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with
him. (John 14:15,21,23)
The early church obeyed His commandments, which is why
abundant grace was upon them all. [6] They
were able to forgive their enemies and live quiet, godly
lives. [7]
Paul's use of the word anathema was based upon
the Savior's words of instruction about those who would
not listen to their brothers, but persisted on in sin:
Moreover if your brother sins against you, go and tell
him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you,
you have gained your brother. But if he will not hear,
take with you one or two more, that "by the mouth of two
or three witnesses every word may be established." And
if he refuses to hear them, tell it to the church. But
if he refuses even to hear the church, let him be to you
like a heathen and a tax collector. (Matthew 18:15-17)
That Paul understood excommunication to mean exclusion
from the church alone is evident by these words, "not to
keep company" with the immoral:
I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with
sexually immoral people... But now I have written to you
not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is
sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler,
or a drunkard, or an extortioner — not even to eat with
such a person. For what have I to do with judging those
also who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside?
But those who are outside God judges. Therefore "put away
from yourselves the evil person." (1 Corinthians 5:9,11-13)
A serious problem arose when there ceased to be an inside and outside in
regards to the church and society. When the church encompassed
society, and the emperor stood as head of both state and
church, excommunication took on an entirely new terror.
When the councils spoke of anathemas from the
time of Constantine on, it was the state that would impose
the full range of penalties of those under the curse of
the church.
With the beginning of the Christian empire under Constantine
and his successors in the fourth century, Christian authorities
gained the opportunity to persecute their Jewish rivals
and every other non-Christian group. From the time of Constantine
to our own twentieth century, Christians have made frequent
use of this opportunity. [8]
Coming under an anathema (a curse) could mean
one, more, or all of the following: losing your priesthood
or other office (even of government), having your possessions
confiscated, having your writings burned, being exiled,
being tortured, and ultimately, being executed. Such a
curse could befall you for a mere turn of phrase. The Nicene
Creed of AD 325 ends with the words:
But, those who say, Once He was not, or He was not before
His generation, or He came to be out of nothing, or who
assert that He, the Son of God, is of a different hypostasis
or ousia, or that He is a creature, or changeable, or mutable,
the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes them.
The Second Council of Constantinople ends with the following
words. The theology is abstruse, but the curses are very
readily understood:
...If anyone does not confess that the Father and the
Son and the Holy Spirit are one nature or essence (reality),
one power or authority, worshipped as a trinity of the
same essence (reality), one
deity in three hypostases of
persons, let him be anathema. For there is one God and
Father, of whom are all things, and one Lord Jesus Christ,
to whom are all things, and one Holy Spirit, in whom are
all things.
Subsequent councils also ended with anathemas ,
not only against errant Christians, but even against the
Muslims, calling forth the Crusades. [9] Do
you suppose that the Second Vatican Council in 1963 would
have been held in such esteem by the world's press if the
assembled cardinals and bishops had called upon the nations
of the European Union to punish dissenting churchmen and
heretics as past rulers had? Of course not! They would
have cried in horror, "Intolerance! Murder! Bigotry! Persecution!
God is not in your midst!" And so did many in the past,
just before they were silenced, exiled, or burned at the
stake. Why is it always those with "good doctrine" who
persecute and kill those with "bad doctrine"?
You will know a Tree by its Fruit
So, is this intimate cooperation and compromise with worldly
power, which is all the Seven Ecumenical Councils can be
called, a good tree from which to pick fruit? Can the obvious
conclusion be avoided that such collusion undermines the
integrity of the councils to judge spiritual matters? Or
to put it another way, were they only natural men, devoid
of the Spirit?
Agreement with the historic creeds is considered one of
the foundational proofs of orthodoxy in the Christian religion.
But the Son of God said that genuineness is known by the
fruit it produces. [10] He
said His disciples would be known by their love. [11]
A "watchdog" of modern heresies and advocate of the historic
creeds once wrote, "Biblical love is the hallmark
of a truly vibrant Christian witness, however, love is
always the handmaiden of sound doctrine and not the other
way around."
Therefore, if the ecumenical councils indeed formulated
sound doctrine, the councils themselves and the fruit which
came from them would be as undeniable
a witness and testimony of love as the creeds are true
to what the Bible teaches. Sound doctrine would not be
without her handmaiden, love.
Some of the earliest participants - as early as the fourth
century - saw so much personal animosity and selfish ambition
at the councils they sought to avoid attending them whenever
they could:
"Venerable bishops," said Gregory of Nazianzus ironically, "who
put their personal squabbles before questions of faith... For
my part, to speak the truth, I prefer to avoid all councils
of bishops. I have never seen a council which ended well
or cured evils - on the contrary." [12]
Was the handmaiden granted a leave of absence during the
councils? Some would say Christian history proves she's
been granted a nineteen-hundred-year leave of absence.
[1] "The 5 th century
historian Socrates declared that the Nicene fathers could
not depart from the truth because they were enlightened
by the grace of the Holy Spirit. The Councils of Ephesus
(431) and Chalcedon (451) declared that the decisions of
the Council of Nicaea were unalterable." Encyclopedia
Britannica , Vol. 6, p. 633 (1971).
[2] "The rise of the
Donatist schism of North Africa was the occasion for introducing
the secular element of imperial authority into the conciliar
system. The Emperor Constantine, not yet baptized,
and, therefore, without any rights in the Christian society
of the church, convoked a council in Rome in 313, to
settle the rival claims of Caecilian and Majorinus, the
Donatist, to the see of Carthage. Though the decision of
the council was made under the presidency of Pope Melchiades, the
right of the emperor to convoke the synod passed unchallenged .
It was Constantine who convoked the larger council of Arles
in 314, to which Bishops from distant Britain were summoned." ( Encyclopedia
Britannica , Vol. VI, pp. 587-588, 1957)
[3] Roland H. Bainton, Christianity (American
Heritage Library, 1964), p. 9
[4]Eusebius, Vita
Constantini, Book III, ch. 6ff.
[5]Encyclopedia
Britannica, Vol. VI, pages 587-588 (1957)
[6] Acts 4:32-34
[7] Acts 7:59-60 and
1 Timothy 2:1-2
[8] Marc Edwards in Luther's
Last Battles, Politics and Polemics, 1532-1546 ,
page 117.
[9] The Ninth (1123),
Eleventh (1179), Thirteenth (1245), and Eighteenth (1512-1517)
all called for crusades of one kind or another.
[10] Matthew 7:16-20
[11] John 13:34-35
[12]Encyclopedia
Britannica , Vol. 6, p. 634 (1971).
Back
Printer-friendly
