No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Book of the Councils: Nicaea I to Vatican II
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
The ecumenical and general councils of the Church have produced arguably the most important documents of Christianity after the Bible. How this ‘book’ of the councils came to be composed is the subject of this paper. In the composition, Christians have had to confront three problems similar to those involved in establishing the book of the Bible. First, which councils are to be considered ecumenical or general, paralleling the question of which books are to be included in the Bible. Secondly, which decrees are to be considered the authentic decrees of a particular council, paralleling the question of which chapters and verses make up a particular book of the Bible. Thirdly, which manuscripts or editions form the best text of a given decree, paralleling the search for the best texts of Scripture. There are, too, the additional issues of establishing some hierarchy in the importance of the councils and their decrees – the great creeds and doctrinal statements outrank, surely, most decrees of a purely disciplinary nature, just as the Gospels have a certain priority within the New Testament or Romans and Galatians outrank in importance the Pastoral Epistles – and secondly the difficulties of translating the original texts into the vernacular languages, alike for the councils as for the Bible. Alongside these similarities between the book of the councils and that of the Bible was the tension between Scripture and Tradition. How far could Tradition, represented cumulatively and retrospectively by the councils, interpret or develop the teaching of Scripture? This tension was never far below the surface, and erupted especially in the Reformation controversies.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2004
References
1 ‘Council’ and ‘synod’ are synonymous, ‘council’ will normally be used in this paper because it is more usual in English. The distinction between ‘ecumenical’ and ‘general’ councils should become apparent in due course.
2 See ODCC, 3rd edn (1997), ‘Occumenical Councils’, 1175.
3 References below to the conciliar decrees are taken from Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Norman P. Tanner, 2 vols (London and Washington DC, 1990) [hereafter Decrees].
4 Ibid., 1:3; G.L. Dossctti, Il simbolo di Nicaea e di Costantinopoli (Rome, 1967), passim.
5 Cf. Pietras, Henryk, ‘Le ragioni della convocazione del Concilio Niccno da parte di Costantino il Grande. Un’investigazione storico-teologica’, Gregoriamim, 82 (2001), 5–35 Google Scholar.
6 Kelly, J.N.D., Early Christian Creeds, 3rd edn (1972), 254–62.Google Scholar
7 Ibid., 296–301; Hanson, R.P.C., The Search for the Christian Doctrine of Goo1: The Arian Controversy 318–381 (Edinburgh, 1988), 812–13 Google Scholar; Hauschild, W.D., ‘Nicâno-Konstantinopolitanischcs Glaubcnsbckenntnis’, Theologische Realenzyklopàdie, 24 (Berlin, 1994), 444–56;Google Scholar Hall, S.G., ‘Past creeds and present formula at the Council of Chaleedon’, SCH, 33 (1997), 19–29 Google Scholar.
8 Acta conciliorum oecumenicorum, ed. E. Schwartz et al. (Berlin and Leipzig, 1914-), 1 (5 parts); Éphèse et Chaleédoine: Actes des conciles, ed. and tr. A.J. Festugièrc (Paris, 1982).
9 Henry Chadwick, The origin of the title “Oecumenical council”’, Journal of Theological Studies, 23 (1972), 132–5.
10 Decrees, 1:7-16; though ‘ecumenical’ appears in one manuscript for canon 13 (ibid., 1:12).
11 Ibid., 1:29.
12 Ibid., 1:83.
13 Ibid., 1:83-5.
14 Ibid., 1:85-6.
15 Ibid., 1:108-9, 124–5, 134–5.
16 Ibid., 1:157-8; Peri, V., ‘C’è un concilio occumcnico ottavo?’, Anmtarium historiae concilliorum, 8 (1976), 52–79 Google Scholar.
17 Bermejo, Luis M., Church, Conciliarity ana Communion (Anand, 1990), 68–90 Google Scholar.
18 Ibid., 77–8.
19 Decrees, 1:442.
20 For a fuller review of the scholarship, including recent improved editions of the acta of the councils, see Norman P. Tanner, The Councils of the Church: A Short History (Crossroad, NY, 2001), 6–11.
21 Decrees is the original-English bilingual edition.
22 V. Peri, ‘Il Numero dei concili ecumenici nella tradizione cattolica moderna’, Aevum, 37 (1963), 433–501; Yves Congar, ‘Structures ecclésiales et conciles dans les relations entre Orient et Occident’, Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques, 58 (1974), 355–90.
23 Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 66 (1974), 620.