[ Published in The Greek Australian VEMA October (2018) 13/29 ]

The Significance of the Seven Ecumenical Councils, Part 2

Mario Baghos

The Fifth Ecumenical Council

The interim between the fourth and fifth ecumenical councils was a turbulent one. The
council of 451 was by-and-large not accepted in the land where Cyril preached, and the
disunity between what can be termed the ‘Chalcedonians’ and ‘non-Chalcedonians’ resulted
in failed attempts by subsequent emperors to bypass or supersede the council. The polarity
between the Chalcedonians and the non-Chalcedonians was expressed in the latter
interpreting the definition of faith at Chalcedon that affirmed that Christ has two natures as
‘Nestorian,’ and the former in turn condemning monophysitism as contrary to orthodox
doctrine. In order to bring these groups into unity, in AD 553 the emperor Justinian convoked
in Constantinople a fifth ecumenical council that both confirmed the council of Chalcedon
and attempted to placate the non-Chalcedonians by condemning certain persons and writings
from the Antiochian tradition that they believed were associated with Nestorian teaching.
These were Theodore of Mopsuestia and his works, select writings of Theodoret of Cyrrhus,
and a letter of Ibas of Edessa to the Persian bishop, Maris. These were known as the Three
Chapters. But in order not to alienate the Antiochians that could discern no Nestorianism in
the writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia, Justinian also denounced Origen of Alexandria, who
was considered by the Antiochians to be the source of monophysitism. Although the council
was daring in its attempt at reunification, the mutual condemnations to placate factious
elements did not succeeded in bringing the non-Chalcedonians into the fold. What this
council did accomplish was to confirm and clarify the council of Chalcedon, interpreting it
through the lens of St Cyril’s emphasis on Christ’s unity. This can be described as Cyrilline
or neo-Chalcedonianism. This emphasis on Christ’s oneness is exemplified in the hymn to
the “Only begotten Son,” which we chant in every liturgy. This hymn maintains the Son of
God’s divinity while affirming that he became human “without change,” to save us while
remaining one of the Holy Trinity, “glorified together with the Father and the Holy Spirit.”1

The Sixth Ecumenical Council

Despite the fifth ecumenical council, the division between the non-Chalcedonians and neo-
Chalcedonians continued to grow. The Persian advance into territories inhabited by the
former threatened to separate the two even further. In the early 600s the patriarch of
Constantinople, Sergius, had a plan for unification. He “built on the Cyrilline
Chalcedonianism of Justinian [that] amounted to the affirmation of” Christ as “one divine
person, possessing two natures, one divine, one human, both in their full integrity, with the
further assertion that this single person was expressed in a single activity (or energy, in
Greek: energeia): a doctrine called ‘Monoenergism’ [µονοενεργητισµός].”2 Monoenergism
was immediately promoted as achieving union between non-Chalcedonians and neo-

1
The Divine Liturgy of our Father among the Saints John Chrysostom (Sydney: St Andrew’s Orthodox Press,
2005), 15.
2
Andrew Louth, Maximus the Confessor (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), 12.
Chalcedonians, but was rebuked by St Sophronius—who later became patriarch of
Jerusalem—insofar as he perceived that it nullified the duality of Christ’s natures. In
deference to Sophronius, Sergius composed his Psephos which emphasised Christ’s oneness
but excluded “there being two wills in Christ contrary to each other,”3 a position that was
refined by Pope Honorius of Rome, who celebrated the ostensible restoration of the Church
and confessed “the one will of our Lord Jesus Christ,”4 so that monoenergism—the construal
of Christ’s person as expressed through a single activity or energy—became the doctrine of
monothelitism [µονοθελητισµός], the belief that Christ has a single, divine will. It was
monothelitism, as a refinement of monoenergism, that was expounded by Sergius in his
Ekthesis that became an imperial edict issued by the emperor Heraclius from the capital city
of Constantinople in AD 638. St Sophronius argued against monothelitism as implying
monophysitism; an overshadowing of Christ’s humanity in not accepting the existence of his
human will. Not long after, St Maximus the Confessor refuted monothelitism, and Sergius’
Ekthesis was condemned by several councils in North Africa, prompting Heraclius’
successor, Constans II, to issue his Typos which forbade any discussion of wills or energies in
Christ. Saint-pope Martin of Rome rebelled against this decree, holding the Lateran council
of 649—to which St Maximus, who was present at the council, contributed greatly—to
condemn the heresy of the imperial court. Both saints were arrested, terribly mistreated, and
taken back to Constantinople for trial: the former died in Cherson, Crimea, in 655, and the
latter in Tsageri, Georgia, in 662. Their views, that Christ has a fully divine will and a fully
human one, were not vindicated until the sixth ecumenical council held in Constantinople
almost twenty years later between 680 and 681. Convoked by emperor Constantine IV, the
council condemned monoenergism and monothelitism and, following a reiteration of the
definition of Chalcedon, affirmed that in Christ there are:

…two natural volitions or wills … and two natural principles of action which undergo
no division, no change, no partition, no confusion, in accordance with the teaching of
the holy fathers. And the two natural wills not in opposition, as the impious heretics
said, far from it, but his human will following, and not resisting or struggling, rather
in fact subject to his divine and all powerful will.5

Since the human will is so characteristic of human nature, then the Son of God, in his
assumption of the human nature, also assumed a human will. So, while in Christ there are
“two natural wills, because there are two natures”6—in other words, the divine will that he
shares with the Father and the Holy Spirit and his human will—his assumption of the latter
did not involve the adoption of the deliberative process that leads us to sin (what St Maximus
the Confessor describes as the human being’s ‘gnomic’ will, as distinct from our natural
will).7

The Seventh Ecumenical Council

3
Ibid., 13.
4
Ibid., 14.
5
Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Norman P. Tanner (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press,
1989), 128.
6
Louth, Maximus the Confessor, 59.
7
Ibid.
Ecumenical councils one through six all concerned our Lord Jesus Christ, and asserted, in
consecutive order, his divinity or shared essence with the Father (councils one and two), the
oneness of his person (council three), the reality of his divine and human natures (council
four), his oneness once again (council five), and the full integrity of his human nature by
affirming that he had a human will which was subject to his divine one. Addressed in such a
manner, the councils seem to reflect a progression into the mystery of the eternal Son of
God’s divine economy, of his incarnation: begotten of the Father before all ages, he deigned
to become one of us, a human being, while remaining fully God. The incarnation is perhaps
best attested to in the iconographic tradition of the Orthodox Church: for the icons, made of
material pigments, wood and other elements, are a testimony to the fact that the Son of God,
in assuming human nature which is a microcosm, in fact sanctified all matter—cosmically—
through his incarnation. We can therefore utilise matter in order to depict him; and we create
and venerate the icons insofar as they authentically depict—and, by God’s grace—participate
in their archetypes, whether in Christ or his saints. In the early eighth century, the Islamic
aversion to anthropomorphic imagery influenced the emperor Leo the Isaurian, who inherited
an empire in decline at the former’s gain. Seeing the veneration of icons as bringing God’s
displeasure, the emperor instigated an empire-wide destruction of sacred images, citing Old
Testament precedents (i.e. the second commandment) as a justification. In reality, the
veneration of icons drew attention away from the emperor and the imperial cult; iconoclasm
was just a matter of consolidating imperial control of citizens, who, as the successive waves
of iconoclasm buffeted the capital, displayed their love for their sacred images, some to the
point of martyrdom.

That icon veneration is not idolatry was made clear when the first major wave of iconoclasm
was halted by the empress St Irene, who held the seventh ecumenical council in the city of
Nicaea in AD 787. The doctrinal definition of that council affirmed:

…stepping out as though on the royal highway, following as we are the God-spoken
teaching of our holy fathers and the tradition of the catholic church—for we recognize
that this tradition comes from the Holy Spirit who dwells in her—we decree with full
precision and care that, like the figure of the honoured and life-giving cross, the
reverend and holy images, whether painted or made of mosaic or of other suitable
material, are to be exposed in the holy churches of God, on sacred instruments and
vestments, on walls and panels, in houses and public ways; these are the images of
our Lord, God and saviour, Jesus Christ, and of our Lady without blemish, the holy
God-bearer, and of the revered angels and any of the saintly holy men. The more
frequent they are seen in representational art, the more are those who see them drawn
to remember and long for those who serve as models, and to pay these images the
tribute of salutation and respectful veneration. Certainly this is not the full adoration
in accordance with our faith, which is properly paid only to the divine nature, but it
resembles that given to the figure of the honoured and life-giving cross, and also to
the holy books of the gospels and to other sacred cult objects. …Indeed, the honour
paid to the image traverses it, reaching the model; and he who venerates the image,
venerates the person represented in the image. 8

8
Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 135-36.

While iconoclasm returned briefly, again for political reasons, in the ninth century—to be
quashed by the empress St Theodora in a subsequent council in 843 (the ‘Triumph of
Orthodoxy’)—the distinction between veneration and adoration or worship remained, and
remains, important. As Orthodox Christians, we render worship to God alone, but we
venerate the sacred icons because the veneration given to the image is transferred to the
person represented in that image. Since the icons represent Christ, who is God, and the saints
who are imbued with God’s grace, then the Lord himself is venerated in each and every icon
we kiss and pay homage too; much like the sacred relics of the saints. The fact that the Lord
and his saints (the latter by his grace) are at work through the icons is made clear by the
countless testimonies of miraculous icons that have been venerated in the Church’s history.

The Orthodox Church therefore preserves a consistent representation of our Lord Jesus
Christ, revealed to us by the Lord himself, both in its doctrinal formulations and its images.
This representation has salvific import since a proper understanding of who he is conditions
our participation in him. That he is God means that he has all power over death, and that he is
fully man means that we can participate in his victory over death. That these representations,
in letter and art, accord with the experience of the saints that have come to know Christ even
in this life, is confirmed by the Church’s tradition, which acts as a corrective to the many
false beliefs and construals of the Lord in the public domain.