Ecumenical Council - Acceptance of The Councils

Acceptance of The Councils

Although some Protestants reject the concept of an ecumenical council establishing doctrine for the entire Christian faith, Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox all accept the authority of ecumenical councils in principle. Where they differ is in which councils they accept and what the conditions are for a council to be considered "ecumenical". The relationship of the Papacy to the validity of ecumenical councils is a ground of controversy between Roman Catholicism and the Eastern Orthodox Churches. The Roman Catholic Church holds that recognition by the Pope is an essential element in qualifying a council as ecumenical; Eastern Orthodox view approval by the Pope of Rome as being roughly equivalent to that of other patriarchs. Some have held that a council is ecumenical only when all five patriarchs of the Pentarchy are represented at it. Others reject this theory in part because there were no patriarchs of Constantinople and Jerusalem at the time of the first ecumenical council.

Read more about this topic:  Ecumenical Council

Famous quotes containing the words acceptance of the, acceptance of, acceptance and/or councils:

    “It cannot in the opinion of His Majesty’s Government be classified as slavery in the extreme acceptance of the word without some risk of terminological inexactitude.”
    —Winston Churchill (1874–1965)

    “Our acceptance of an ontology is, I think, similar in principle to our acceptance of a scientific theory, say a system of physics; we adopt, at least insofar as we are reasonable, the simplest conceptual scheme into which the disordered fragments of raw experience can be fitted and arranged.”
    —Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)

    “Cats of all kinds weave in and out of the text; Burroughs has clearly taken to them in a big way in his old age and seems torn between a fear they will betray him into sentimentality and a resigned acceptance that a man can’t be ironic all the time.”
    —Angela Carter (1940–1992)

    “How many councils and decrees
    Have perished in the simple prayer
    That gave obedience to the knee;”
    —Austin Clarke (1896–1974)