The Seven Ecumenical Councils An Overview
In brief
Between 325 and 787 the whole Church met seven times in ecumenical council to defend the faith against error and to state it in words that could not be twisted. Each council answered a particular crisis — chiefly about who Christ is — and together they form the doctrinal backbone of Orthodoxy. Their fruit is confessed at every Divine Liturgy: the Creed, the title Mother of God, the two natures of Christ, and the holy icons all come to us settled by these councils.
One faith, defended seven times
The councils were not academic congresses. Each met because a teaching had arisen that, if accepted, would have emptied the Gospel of its power — most often by making Christ something less than fully God, or His humanity something less than fully real. Against each, the assembled bishops confessed what the Church had always believed and drew a clear boundary. To understand why a council is authoritative — and why reception by the whole Church, not merely an emperor's summons, is what validates it — see what an ecumenical council is.
Seven councils are received by the whole Orthodox Church. Here they are at a glance, each with the year it met and what it settled.
The seven at a glance
First Council of Nicaea (325). Condemned Arianism, which called the Son a creature, and confessed Him *homoousios* — of one essence with the Father. It gave the Creed its first form and set a common way of reckoning the date of Pascha.
First Council of Constantinople (381). Affirmed the divinity of the Holy Spirit against the Macedonians, who denied it, and completed the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed that Orthodox Christians still recite.
Council of Ephesus (431). Condemned Nestorianism, which so divided Christ as to make Him two subjects, and confessed the Virgin Mary as *Theotokos*, the Mother of God, because her Son is one divine Person.
Council of Chalcedon (451). Defined that Christ is one Person made known in two natures, divine and human, "without confusion, change, division, or separation" — fully God and fully man in a single hypostatic union.
Second Council of Constantinople (553). Reaffirmed the teaching of Chalcedon and of St. Cyril of Alexandria, condemning writings (the "Three Chapters") that had been used to give Nestorianism a foothold.
Third Council of Constantinople (680–681). Condemned Monothelitism and confessed that Christ, being truly God and truly man, has two wills and two energies, divine and human — the cause for which St. Maximus the Confessor had suffered.
Second Council of Nicaea (787). Ended the first assault of iconoclasm and restored the veneration of icons, carefully distinguishing the honor (veneration) given to images from the worship due to God alone.
How they still speak
None of this is museum history. Every time an Orthodox Christian recites the Creed, calls the Virgin "Theotokos," confesses Christ as true God and true man, or venerates an icon, he is living inside the settlements these seven councils reached. The Church keeps their memory not only in doctrine but in her calendar, commemorating "the Holy Fathers" of the councils on appointed Sundays.
The councils also teach the Church how she thinks. They show doctrine defined not by a single ruler but in council and received by the whole body — the conciliar mind of Orthodoxy at work. And the restoration of the icons at the seventh council was celebrated so joyfully that it gave the Church the Triumph of Orthodoxy, still kept on the first Sunday of Great Lent as a feast of the whole conciliar faith.