The Councils

When the Church has faced its hardest questions, about who Jesus is, about the Trinity, about how to reform itself, it has often answered them in council: the bishops gathered together with the Pope. The Catholic Church counts twenty-one ecumenical councils, from Nicaea in 325 to the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. Knowing a few of them by name is one of the best keys to understanding why Catholics believe what they believe.

What an ecumenical council is

An ecumenical council (from the Greek for "the whole inhabited world") is a gathering of the bishops of the whole Church. The Catechism explains that the college of bishops exercises its authority over the universal Church in a solemn way in an ecumenical council, and that there is no ecumenical council that is not confirmed, or at least recognised, by the successor of Peter (CCC 884). When the bishops together with the Pope solemnly define a teaching of faith or morals, the Church holds that the gift of infallibility, the Holy Spirit's protection from error, is present (CCC 891).

The pattern goes back to the apostles meeting in Jerusalem to decide whether Gentile converts must be circumcised (Acts 15).

The first seven councils

The first seven councils are accepted by both Catholics and Orthodox, and the first four by many Protestants as well. Most of them answered one question: who is Jesus Christ, and how is he related to the Father and the Spirit?

1. Nicaea I (325). Against Arius, who taught that the Son was a creature, the council confessed that the Son is "consubstantial" (of one substance) with the Father, true God from true God (CCC 465). It also produced the core of the Creed recited at Mass.
2. Constantinople I (381). It affirmed the divinity of the Holy Spirit and completed the Creed now called the Nicene or Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed (CCC 245).
3. Ephesus (431). Against Nestorius, it taught that Christ is one person, and so Mary is truly Theotokos, Mother of God (CCC 466, 495).
4. Chalcedon (451). It confessed one and the same Christ in two natures, divine and human, united without confusion, change, division or separation (CCC 467).
5. Constantinople II (553). It reaffirmed Chalcedon and clarified that there is only one person in Christ, the eternal Son (CCC 468).
6. Constantinople III (680–681). It taught that Christ has two wills, divine and human, the human will freely following the divine (CCC 475).
7. Nicaea II (787). Against the iconoclasts, who destroyed images, it defended the veneration of icons of Christ, Mary and the saints, because the Word truly became visible flesh (CCC 2131).

Landmark later councils

The councils after the first seven are recognised as ecumenical by the Catholic Church. Four stand out.

• Lateran IV (1215). Called by Pope Innocent III, it was the first council to use the language of transubstantiation, teaching that the bread and wine are "transubstantiated" into Christ's body and blood, and it asked every Catholic who has reached the age of discretion to confess at least once a year and to receive Communion at Easter.
• Trent (1545–1563). The Church's response to the Protestant Reformation. It taught on Scripture and Tradition, the canon of Scripture, justification, the seven sacraments and the sacrifice of the Mass, and confirmed that in the Eucharist the change of substance is fittingly called transubstantiation (CCC 1376). It also launched a deep reform: seminaries to train priests, and in its wake a new catechism, missal and breviary.
• Vatican I (1869–1870). It taught on faith and reason in Dei Filius, and in Pastor Aeternus defined the primacy of the Pope and the conditions under which his solemn teaching is infallible. The council was cut short when war broke out and Rome was captured in 1870.
• Vatican II (1962–1965). Opened by St John XXIII and closed by St Paul VI, it sought to renew the Church's life and its way of speaking to the modern world. Its sixteen documents include four constitutions:
  • Sacrosanctum Concilium, on the sacred liturgy;
  • Lumen Gentium, on the Church;
  • Dei Verbum, on divine revelation;
  • Gaudium et Spes, on the Church in the modern world.

How doctrine develops without changing

If the faith was given once for all to the apostles, how can councils define something new? The Church's answer is that they do not add to revelation; there will be no new public revelation before Christ returns (CCC 66). Instead, the Church grows in understanding of what it has always held. The Catechism names three ways this happens: through the contemplation and study of believers, through their deep experience of spiritual things, and through the preaching of the bishops (CCC 94).

Nicaea's word "consubstantial" is not in the Bible, but it was chosen to protect what the Bible says about the Son. A council usually speaks because a truth has been denied, and its definition puts into precise words what the Church already believed.

St John Henry Newman explored this in his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845). He argued that a true development is like the growth of a living thing, which keeps its identity as it matures: it preserves the same type and principles, and it does not contradict what came before.

Going deeper

• The Early Church: the world the first councils came from.
• What a Creed Is: how the councils shaped the Creed we pray.
• Scripture and Tradition: how the faith is handed on.
• Read next in the Catechism: CCC 74–95 on the transmission of revelation, and CCC 880–892 on the bishops and the Pope.