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Incarnation - Pentecost Cycle - Councils and Controversies

Please make sure that you have read the main "Incarnation" page first.

Setting the Scene

When the early Christians simply shared their faith amongst themselves and with their neighbours often in situation of sporadic persecution over 300 years, the articulation of faith in the face of challenges to the claims of Christ remained the responsibility of individual apostolic teachers (such as St. Irenaeus of Lyons).  Sometimes local councils of bishops were able to meet to resolve difficult issues but these rarely addressed christological questions that concerned the whole Church because there was no means to convene larger whole Church Synods. 

This all changed after 313 AD when Christianity was legalised across the Empire by the Edict of Milan.  Barely 12 years later Emperor St. Constantine had convened the first Great Ecumenical Council in Nicaea (modern day Turkey) to deal with the menace of Arianism … a false doctrine that Christ was not True God from all eternity but rather a specially favoured creation of God the Father.  The Nicene Creed (in its final form promulgated at the Second Ecumenical Council in 381 AD, covering also the divinity of the Holy Spirit) immediately became the universal standard confession of faith for Christians … spoiled only by the west by its unilateral insertion of the “filioque” clause; but more of that later.  The fathers at Nicaea insisted that the faith once delivered by the saints was and always had been Christ as true God and true Man.  Their creed attempted to put this beyond all controversy but it was some time before Arianism was finally defeated, especially amongst the half converted German barbarian hordes who continually harassed the western part of the Empire at this time.

Nicaea didn’t cover all the issues concerning the person of Christ.  There remained the need to show with an economy of words how the human and divine aspects or natures of Christ related and were united in the one hypostasis or person of the Word.  Again these were issues that demanded pubic clarification after the rise of Nestorianism which had maintained the duality of the natures at the expense of the singular personhood of Christ.  The Monophysite heresy had committed the opposing error of folding the distinct human nature of Christ into a singular divine nature, (although many so-called Monophysites probably supposed no such thing, the issue for some being the confusion of the words “person” and “nature.”)  The Fourth Ecumenical Council at Chalcedon in 451 AD resolved (mostly) these issues with its famous definition:-

"Following the holy Fathers we teach with one voice that the Son [of God] and our Lord Jesus Christ is to be confessed as one and the same [Person], that he is perfect in Godhead and perfect in manhood, very God and very man, of a reasonable soul and [human] body consisting, consubstantial with the Father as touching his Godhead, and consubstantial with us as touching his manhood; made in all things like unto us, sin only excepted; begotten of his Father before the worlds according to his Godhead; but in these last days for us men and for our salvation born [into the world] of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God according to his manhood. This one and the same Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son [of God] must be confessed to be in two natures, unconfusedly, immutably, indivisibly, inseparably [united], and that without the distinction of natures being taken away by such union, but rather the peculiar property of each nature being preserved and being united in one Person and subsistence, not separated or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son and only-begotten, God the Word, our Lord Jesus Christ, as the Prophets of old time have spoken concerning him, and as the Lord Jesus Christ hath taught us, and as the Creed of the Fathers hath delivered to us."

Much more could be said about the Councils of the Church but we have looked very briefly for now at those conciliar decisions that have primarily concerned the Person of Christ.  For further resources on christology from Nicaea to Chalcedon consult this web page:-

The Christological Controversy (Monachos.net)

An Orthodox Christian always defers to the mind of the Holy Fathers for two connected reasons:-

(1)   Their apostolic witness has been received by the whole Church.

(2)   Their teaching is authenticated by their own faithfulness to Tradition and the holiness of life this sustained and sustains in the lives of those who follow their godly examples.

Practical

Please learn the Nicene Creed - off by heart.  You will repeat it at every Liturgy for the rest of your life.  The first step to unlocking its riches is to commit it to memory.  Use the translation used in your own parish.

Do a little planned study on the Monachos site (above) and, perhaps, join in one one of their online discussion forums.  Develop insights and understandings from other Orthodox Christians and especially the Holy Fathers.

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