This is the third message in a series of messages on why stop short of the apostolic faith. Now I mentioned at the beginning of this series of messages that many sincere seekers who desire to return to the primitive apostolic faith end up only going back as far as the 8th century. And the primary reason for this is the myth of the seven ecumenical councils. And the greatest defenders and promoters of these seven councils is the Eastern Orthodox Church.
For example, I'm going to read to you a sample quotation from one of their foremost apologists, Timothy Ware, known today as Callistos Ware. He says this in his book," The life of the Church in the earlier Byzantine period is dominated by the Seven General Councils. These councils fulfilled the double task. First, they clarified and articulated the visible organization of the Church, crystallizing the position of the five great sees or patriarchates, as they came to be none.
Secondly, and more important, the councils defined, once and for all, the church's teaching upon the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith, the Trinity and the Incarnation. I'm still reading from him," The discussions at the councils at times sound abstract and remote, yet they were inspired by a very practical purpose, the salvation of man." The Seventh Council in defense of the holy icons seemed at first to stand somewhat apart.
But like the first six, it was ultimately concerned with the incarnation and with man's salvation. That's from pages 28 to 30 of his book, The Orthodox Church. Now from pages 203 through 210, he says," Recently, when two Orthodox scholars were asked to summarize the distinctive characteristics of their church, they both pointed to the same thing: its changelessness, its determination to remain loyal to the past, its sense of living continuity with the Church of ancient times.
We preserve the doctrine of the Lord uncorrupted and firmly adhere to the faith He delivered to us and keep it free from blemish and diminution as a royal treasure and a monument of great price, neither adding anything nor taking anything from it. This idea of living continuity is summed up for the Orthodox in the one-word tradition.
Now he's quoting from John of Damascus," We do not change the everlasting boundaries which our fathers have set," wrote John of Damascus, still quoting," But we keep the tradition just as we received it." End of quotation. But I'm still reading from Timothy Ware. That was the end of John of Damascus' quote.
Timothy Ware continues," The Orthodox Christian of today sees himself as heir and guardian to a great inheritance received from the past, and he believes that it is his duty to transmit this inheritance unimpaired to the future." The doctrinal definitions of an ecumenical council are infallible. Thus, in the eyes of the Orthodox Church, the statements of faith put out by the Seven Councils possess along with the Bible an abiding and irrevocable authority. Well, at first glance, that sounds very good to us seekers.
And yet at the same time, there are statements that I just read there that should trip up all kinds of buzzers and alarms to us if we think about it. Unfortunately, to many seekers, those alarms are acquainted by the claims made by the Orthodox Church. As I just read to you, its changelessness, its determination to remain loyal to the past, its sense of living continuity with the Church of ancient times.
We preserve the doctrine of the Lord uncorrupted and firmly adhere to the faith He delivered to us and keep it free from blemish and diminution as royal treasure and a monument of great price, neither adding anything nor taking anything from it. Well, I mean, that clause right there is the very thing that I'm seeking.
It's the whole purpose of scroll publishing to preserve the faith and adhere to it as it was handed down from Jesus to His apostles and handed by His apostles to the church without adding anything, without taking anything away. I mean, that's what I'm after. So in that sense, it would seem like the goal I have, the goal the Eastern Orthodox Church has are one and the same thing. And it's for that reason that at one time I looked very seriously into joining the Eastern Orthodox Church.
However, as I dug further, I soon found that those claims, they sound good on paper, but they're not true. And the assertions that they make about the Seven Councils are really simply glorified myths. During the next hour, we're going to dissect these claims made by the Eastern Orthodox Church and see whether they really stand up to close scrutiny. Reading again from Timothy Ware, he says," The life of the Church in the earlier Byzantine period is dominated by the Seven General Councils.
These councils fulfilled a double task. First, they clarified and articulated the visible organization of the Church, crystallizing the position of the five great sees or patriarchates as they came to be known. Now, those two statements there that the church of the Byzantine period is dominated by the Seven Councils. That's true. And that it crystallized the position of the five great patriarchies. That's true as well.
For example, Canon 6 of the Council of Nicaea says," The bishop of Alexandria shall have jurisdiction over Egypt, Libya, and Pentapolis, as also the Roman bishop over those subject to Rome. So too, the bishop of Antioch and the rest over those who are under them. If any be made a bishop contrary to the judgment of the Metropolitan, let him be no bishop.
And then Canon 3 of the Council of Constantinople says," The bishop of Constantinople shall have the prerogative of honor after the Bishop of Rome, because Constantinople is New Rome." Okay, so that is what happened at the council. The problem or the question we should be asking is setting up those patriarchs, is that something apostolic in origin or even apostolic in concept? Well, this is what Jesus told His followers. We read this last night. I want to read it again. Matthew 23:6 through 12.
He said," They," talking about the Pharisees," love the best places at feasts, the best seats in the synagogues, greeting in the marketplaces, and to be called by men rabbi rabbi. But you do not be called rabbi for one is your father, or rather one is your teacher, the Christ. And you are all brethren. Do not call anyone on earth your Father. For one is your Father, he who is in heaven, and do not be called teachers. For one is your teacher, the Christ. But he who is greatest among you shall be your servant.
And whoever exalts himself will be humbled. And he who humbles himself will be exalted. I read to you yesterday from Eusebius citing excuse me, Clement of Alexandria. He says that Clement of Alexandria says that Peter, James, and John, after the Savior's ascension, although preeminently honored by the Lord, did not contend or quarrel for glory. Rather, they appointed James the Just that's James, the brother of Jesus, as bishop of Jerusalem.
Do you remember the quotation I read to you from Irenaeus the first night in this series of three messages? He said," It is unlawful to assert that the apostles preach before they possess perfect knowledge, as some do even venture to say, boasting themselves as being improvers of the apostles. For after our Lord rose from the dead, the apostles were energized with power from on high when the Holy Spirit came down upon them. They were completely filled and had perfect knowledge.
They departed to the ends of the earth, preaching the glad tidings of the good things sent to us from God. It's in volume 1, page 414 of the Ante-Nicene Fathers. And yet, when we go back and look at those seven councils, just looking at the quote that Timothy Ware, you know we have to acknowledge that these councils were trying to improve the model that Jesus and His apostles left the church. Did Christ set up five patriarchies? Did He set up certain bishops to be over other bishops? Did the apostles do that? No.
You don't find anything like that in the Scriptures. The 12 Apostles never took that sort of authority and glory upon themselves. You don't hear Paul saying," No, don't dare appoint a bishop unless I first approve him. And if it's done without my consent, then he's no bishop at all." No, that's not how it works. Paul gladly tells Timothy and Titus to be ordaining bishops or overseers.
And in the New Testament, I think most scholars would acknowledge that a bishop and an elder were basically one in the same position. So this isn't something apostolic. It's not a matter of we don't change the faith. We add nothing or take anything away. You have added something. You've added something very big when you set up a worldwide hierarchy and set certain men not only as most prominent in their own congregation. Away from the concept of plural leadership, you set up one bishop as the leader.
But then even worse, you then set up the bishops of major worldly centers of power, Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople, Rome, as having authority over other churches in their area. Well, if this didn't come from Jesus or His apostles, which clearly it didn't, where did it come from then? Well, many are not aware that the word diocese was a term of Roman government, talking about the pagan Roman Empire.
Diocese were districts that the Empire was divided into, and the Emperor and Senate set up governors over these various diocese. So here's what the Church did. Interestingly, right after Constantine decided to promote Christianity, and he is the one who called and presided at the first council. In fact, all seven councils were called by Roman emperors. And so it's very interesting after the world gets involved, you have an unbaptized Roman emperor calling a meeting of the church.
And it's interesting right after that happens, suddenly you find the church being set up with a government that mirrored that of the Roman Empire. But what would Jesus have said about all of this? Well, we don't have to guess because he's already told us in advance. Let me read to you the Scriptures. We find then the mother of Zebedee's sons came to him with her sons, kneeling down and asking something from him that him is Jesus.
And he said to her," What do you wish?" She said to him," Grant, that these two sons of mine may sit one on your right hand and the other on the left in your kingdom." And when the ten heard it, they were greatly displeased with the two brothers. But Jesus called them to Himself and said," You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lorded over them and those who are great exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you.
But whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant, and whoever desires to be first among you. Let him be your slave. Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. Well, in short that the administrative changes the seven councils made, in doing that, they were acting flatly against Jesus Himself and what He had directed for His church. So let's not talk about preserving the doctrine of the Lord uncorrupted.
Those seven councils were not preserving the doctrine or teaching of the Lord uncorrupted. They were corrupting it. And that's not a little thing when you set up the church and change it so that it's being run like a worldly empire and where men are given great power of authority, just like the world gives its rulers because power corrupts. Now I want to go back and reread to you that second statement that Callistos Ware made.
He said," Secondly and more important, the councils defined once and for all the church's teaching upon the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith, the Trinity, and the incarnation." Does that sound like something good to you? Well, it shouldn't. Why? Well, why is because of what the Scripture is saying? Jude 3 says," Contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints." So now, was it the apostles who once and for all delivered the faith, or was it the Seven Council?
John 16:13, Jesus told His apostles," When He, the Spirit of Truth has come, He will guide you into all truths." We looked at those verses the first night of our discussion. Galatians 1:18," But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you, then what we have preached to you, let it be accursed." We talked about how the faith was complete. It was handed down not needing anything to be added to it or taken away.
See, the Eastern Orthodox Church, sure, it's like to say that we preserve the faith uncorrupted, but then that faith is getting defined over centuries. But that is not what the Scriptures say that," Oh, what we're giving you isn't quite complete. You're going to have to clarify this a lot." No, it says," It has once for all been handed down. It is finished.
It is complete." And we've already seen how the early Christians, the pre-Nicene Christians viewed it as heretical for anyone to think that they were improving the apostles. So if the seven councils were necessary, then the apostles didn't do their job right. I mean, we have one or two choices. Either the councils are improvements over what the apostles left, or they are corruptions of what they left. There's no middle ground.
I mean, if you have to have these councils, if they're necessary, and if what they say is accurate, then they have improved what the apostles handed down to us. They are an improvement on the New Testament. And at least the Eastern Orthodox Church is consistent. They put these seven councils on the same level of Scripture, and they tell you that that's what they do. On the other hand, if the faith was complete, then these councils were corruptions.
And by seeing corruption, it doesn't mean that the definition is necessarily incorrect. It just means God didn't choose to define things so specifically, and nobody had the right to go beyond scripture in defining the faith. And when we put these seven councils under close scrutiny, we see that they were really corruptions of the faith. And that's what we're going to do right now.
Well, you can't scrutinize them in one hour, but I'm going to go over each of these councils, which I have spent quite a long time dissecting because, as I said, at one time, I very seriously considered becoming Eastern Orthodox. So let me just go over these seven councils with you. The first council, and probably the most famous, is the Council of Nicaea. This council marks the greatest turning point in the history of the Church, that is after the New Testament period.
And unfortunately, it was not a good turning point. What did the Council accomplish? Well, first of all, it set forth the Nicene Creed and began the defeat of Arianism. The battle over Arianism went on for many decades after the council. Now, if you listen to my message on the Trinity, you know that I firmly hold to the Nicene Creed. I think it's a good exposition of the pre-Nicene faith as to matters of theology. Arianism does represent an erroneous view of Christ's divinity.
Well, you may be sensitive, what's there to object to? Well, remember that Satan's basic strategy is to always mix his poison in with something good. I think it was Clement of Alexandria who used that as an illustration. If you want to poison someone, you're going to put poison in his favorite drink or his favorite food. If he hates broccoli, you're not going to mix poisoning with the broccoli because he's probably not going to eat it anyway. Oh, no. You mix it in whatever his favorite food happens to be.
That's the way you put it in. Maybe the dessert. Oh, he loves a chocolate mousse or something like that. That's what you put the poison in. Satan is not done. He is wicked, but he is not done. And he sees the same thing. If I'm going to corrupt the church, I have to give the church something good. For example, Constantine and all that he did. I think he did it probably out of pure motives. You know I can't read his heart or mind. God can.
And he did things that were very nice with the church, rebuild buildings that had been burned down during the persecution and that sort of thing. But then his influence totally corrupted the church. The scriptures say that Satan likes to appear as an angel of light. And the serious problem that the Nicene Creed represents is that it attempts to improve what the apostles left to us. For example, it makes orthodoxy turn on the use of a word that is not even in Scripture. That word is homousi.
We talked about this in the message on the Trinity, and I agree with that word. I don't have a problem with it. The word is, as I said, however, not ever used in the Scriptures, is not even used in the second century of the church. It's not till the third century that you find just a very few writers who even use the word. And some scholars would question whether even those quotes are legitimate or not, or whether they have been post-Nicene editors monkeyed a little bit with the text.
But regardless of when it first came up, it was never the litmus test of Orthodoxy. If God had felt that that term was so necessary for the salvation of mankind, he would have made certain that it was used prominently in the Scriptures, but he doesn't. And again, just for clarification, I have no problem with the term. I think it's Orthodox as they intended it there at the Council of Nicaea. Now, there are some very unorthodox, erroneous interpretations put upon that word.
But the problem is either that's an improvement. We need this because it improves what the Bible says or it's a corruption. You're adding man's views to what God has inspired and saying," We need to go a little bit further than the Scriptures." And because the council recognized that God had not used that term in Scripture, they found it necessary to claim that their creed was newly inspired by the Holy Spirit. And like I said, that's what the Orthodox Church says today.
Constantine said this," That which has commended itself to the judgment of 300 bishops cannot be other than the doctrine of God, seeing that the Holy Spirit dwelling in the minds of so many dignified persons has effectively enlightened them, respecting the divine will." So can't you see that this council was an enormous turning point because it opened up the idea that Christianity can be improved. And of course, the way to do that wasn't with some rotten, terrible, heretical term.
But no, using a term that is correct. It's Orthodox, how those bishops intended it. But see, it's not scriptural. It goes beyond the Scriptures. It says that our Christian faith can be more precisely defined than what the apostles had done.
And the canons from that council says," The church can be better organized and better governed than what Jesus and His apostles set up." Another very serious aspect of the First Council of Nicaea was, as I mentioned before, it was called by the Roman Emperor Constantine, and it represents a key turning point in the marriage of church and state, which marriage forever changed the face of the institutional church.
In fact, the emperor not only called the council, he paid the travel expenses of the bishops who came to it, and he lavished them with gifts. Not only that, he actually presided at the council. Imagine 300-plus supposedly spirit-filled bishops allowing a pagan emperor to preside at a council of the church. See, right there, that tells me a lot about the powers of discernment of those men. Yet, it gets even worse.
It was Constantine who proposed the wording of the Nicene Creed, and he used his persuasive skills to persuade just about everyone there to sign the Creed. Unfortunately, it gets even worse than that. Constantine then applied the secular arm of authority to enforce the decision of that council. Arius, who was declared a heretic at the council, and he was, he was banished to a distant province. See, in the past, he would have been excommunicated from the church.
Now he's not only excommunicated, he's kicked out of the city he lives in and is sent to a remote area of the empire. Then Constantine ordered that all of the writings of Arius be brought out and burnt. This is our first example of Christians burning works of other Christians that are deemed to be heretical. And it set a precedent that we all know too much where that precedent went. Oh, but it gets much worse.
Finally, Constantine imposed the death penalty on anybody who was caught harboring the writings of Arius, just to have his writings in your home under a basket somewhere if you were found out you were to be brought out and put to death. And yet none of the bishops present at that council objected to this. What a change in the nature of the organized, visible, institutional church.
Now, one council marks, like I say, a major perhaps and I think it is the major turning point in the history of Christianity after the New Testament if by Christianity we mean Christendom the outward institutional church. Now, there were groups of believers like the Donatists and Novatianists who did not accept that council. I mean, they were in agreement with the Nicene Creed, but they did not accept the council as being from God.
In fact, when the bishops returned to their local churches, there were quite an uproar all throughout the empire by the local congregations. What have you done? You've done what? You've added something to the creed because see, the basic creed before then was what we called the Apostles' Creed. And everybody saw that as inviolate. You can't change that. And the reason is that the Apostles Creed is just a simple summary of what you find in the New Testament.
It certainly adds nothing or takes nothing away from the New Testament. It's a very condensed statement of the basic beliefs of Christianity and that it had always been sufficient. So why now? Suddenly, do you all go and change the creed? Adding a word that's not even in the Scriptures, even if it is a correct term, but saying," You have to believe this to be a Christian." There was a lot of uproar over the Council of Nicaea.
It took many decades before it was finally set in stone, and it took the strong arm of the government to bring that about. And the other bad thing, which we've already seen, the Council of Nicaea gave official positions of prominence and authority to the Bishop of Rome, the Bishop of Alexandria, and the Bishop of Constantinople, and also gave special recognition, although under those three, the Bishop of Jerusalem. Again, contrary to the very model that Jesus had set up, let's move on to the second council.
This is the Council of Constantinople. Now, the issue here was the nature of the Holy Spirit. The issue at the First Council was the nature of Jesus' divinity. Now we're looking at the nature of the Holy Spirit. The creed that supposedly was agreed upon at the Council of Constantinople changed the Nicene Creed to add a section to it about the divinity of the Holy Spirit. And again, like the Nicene Creed, I don't have a problem with what the Creed of Constantinople states about the Holy Spirit. It's not heretical.
It's consistent with what the primitive Christians believe. It's consistent with the New Testament. Yet at the same time, it goes way beyond any direct statement in Scripture. Counsel the Creed of Nicaea, basically just one word that it goes beyond Scripture. Everything else is pretty well right there in Scripture itself. But the language added to Constantinople, although it doesn't contradict Scripture, it certainly goes way beyond what the Scriptures say.
And then you end up as a result with improving the apostles, improving the apostolic faith. Because once again, either something was lacking and you had to add this on because something was lacking in what the apostles handed down, or you were corrupting the faith in doing this. And this is what Gregory of Nazianzus said, and I think I've read to this passage to you before the first night.
And he says this, and this was made in defense of the language that and we're going to talk about this a little bit more, supposedly was added to the Nicene Creed of the Council of Constantinople. He said," The Old Testament proclaimed the Father openly and the Son more obscure." The New Testament manifested the Son and suggested the deity of the Spirit. Now, the Spirit Himself dwells among us and supplies us with a clearer demonstration of Himself.
For it was not safe when the Godhood of the Father was not yet acknowledged to openly proclaim the Son, nor when the Godhood of the Son was not yet received to burden us further if I may use so bold an expression with the Holy Spirit. So he knew that they were improving or thinking they were improving the Scriptures. He acknowledges the Scriptures aren't so explicit on the Holy Spirit that it suggests the deity of the Spirit. He knew all of that.
But he says," See, now it's like the difference between the Old and New Testament, how much more light they had in the time of the apostles than what the Jews had in the Old Testament period. Well, now the Holy Spirit is dwelling in us. I thought He was during the New Testament too, but anyway, now He's dwelling in us and now we have much greater enlightenment that they had back there in the 1st century. See, this is a revolutionary change in the thinking of professing Christians.
And this council is a milestone in the decline and fall of the institutional church for another reason. After the Council of Nicaea, the church had said that that creed that was agreed upon at Nicaea was inspired of God and it was unalterable. If you try to change one article of it, you're going against the inspiration of God. Now, here at Constantinople, just a little over 50 years later, the years 381, they're already changing it. And that pattern has never ceased.
Despite the Eastern Orthodox's claim of being changeless, what you see is through the centuries, it kept getting changed, more things were added, more things were added. And there's more to the story than that. In many ways, the Council of Constantinople is the paradigm example of how these supposed seven ecumenical councils have been mythicized. First, the Council of Constantinople was attended only by 150 bishops. And it's hardly something you can call ecumenical. Ecumenical means the whole world.
You've got 150 bishops there. And remember, in those days, every city, every town had a bishop. So 150 would represent a very, very small percentage of the bishops of that day. And interestingly, it wasn't even designated or even viewed as an ecumenical council until nearly a century after it had been held. Now, I said they supposedly at that council changed the Nicene Creed because we have no surviving documents of the Council of Constantinople that contains that Creed.
We have documents about the Council, but none of the documents we have have that creed in it. There's no mention of that creed until the Council of Chalcedon in 451, which is almost 300 years later. So what we call today the Creed of Constantinople is quite possibly totally fraudulent. I mean, that it never was passed by the Council of Constantinople.
Another thing that is very strange about this and why it represents the mythology of the Seven Councils is that there had been numerous councils between the Council of Nicaea in 325 and the Council of Constantinople in 381. So Eastern Orthodox will give you the idea that well, you have the Nicene Council, and then 50 years later, you have the Council of Constantinople, and then there were five others. Well, there were lots of councils between there.
And for example, there was a council of Sardica in 342, the Council of Seleucia in AD 359. And there's nothing in particular about the Council of Constantinople that distinguishes it in character from these other councils. It didn't have more bishops present than those other councils had. It didn't have more imperial authority from the emperor than those other councils. It's an arbitrary selection. Oh, we're going to take this council and say it's one of the seven.
But this other council, we don't like the decision they came up with. So we shove it under the rug. I mean, if you're going to look at general councils that purported to be representing the whole church, there are far, far more than seven. Of course, the Roman Catholic Church, you know I forget how many they have.
It would be a whole lot more than seven because they would believe that there's still been ecumenical councils ever since, all throughout the Middle Ages, but they weren't attended by the Eastern Orthodox. So the Eastern Orthodox Church doesn't acknowledge them.
In fact, even to this day, if you ask an Eastern Orthodox Christian, and I don't mean just a layperson, if you ask a scholar in their church, what makes those seven councils special or different than the other church councils that were held in those same centuries, you're not going to get a uniform answer. And that's because, in essence, there is no answer. It's merely a matter of myth, a matter of tradition that the Eastern Orthodox Church has created. Because there were lots and lots of councils.
They had the same number of bishops or even more. They were officially called by the emperor, which, of course, should make us want to reject all of them, not accept them. But like you say, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the seven councils that it accepts, were all called by Roman emperors. By the time of the Council of Constantinople, I think to any objective observer who has embraced primitive Christianity, you can see that the very character of the visible or institutional church had changed.
It was now a state religion. At the Council of Nicaea, it was not the state religion, but it was the religion promoted by Constantine. Council of Constantinople, it was now the state religion, and it was against the law to be a pagan. And so the church when I say church, just to keep myself from having to repeat this all the time, I'm now talking about the institutional visible church. In the second century, I don't think there was any difference between the visible church and the invisible church.
By the time of the Council of Constantinople, I think there's a very clear difference. And I'm talking only about the visible church. There was an invisible church. And by invisible, I don't mean that you can't find evidence of it or no one knew about it. I mean, it's been ignored by the history books. It's only in that sense been, quote," invisible." But there were a lot of believers who didn't go along with any of these things that were happening.
But as I said, by the Council of Constantinople, the church is thoroughly married to the state. Wicked rulers who murdered their own brothers and relatives in order to obtain the throne were accepted by the church, and they were allowed to interfere in the internal affairs of the church. When they called the council that the church bishops came running, even though these were wicked men, they should have been put out of the church and wicked women as well.
Generally speaking, at this point, the bishops would only denounce the rulers if the rulers were heretical on theological matters. If they were heretical on the essence and morality of Christianity, well, that was something different. In fact, in the East, I think we can clearly see that the whole visible church had become subservient to the state. As I said, if the emperor called the council, they immediately obeyed. The spirit of the world had entirely utterly filled the institutional church.
Killing bishops, armed riots over the election of bishops. Things like this had become commonplace. They weren't even shocking. So it was for a good reason that a large number of Christians living in that time refused to acknowledge the state church as being the real church of Christ. And it's for the same reasons today that I think even more Christians reject that whole visible church as really being the true church of Jesus Christ.
As we move into the fifth century, what we find is that the prominent bishops of the Eastern Roman Empire were all embroiled in very bitter rivalries against each other. In particular, the bishops of Antioch, Constantinople, and Alexandria jostled with each other, each one trying to get the ascendancy over the other one. And one of the canons at the Council of Constantinople in 381 had given the bishop of Constantinople the second place of honor just behind the Bishop of Rome.
And this particularly irked the bishops of Alexandria because up until that time, they had held the second place of honor after Rome. And Rome didn't like it either because now Constantinople had come out of nowhere. It wasn't even one of the churches where the apostles had preached. And suddenly, it was made one of the five major bishoprics. And then now it's being moved up to position two. Obviously, the bishops of Rome started thinking, well, what's next?
It's going to become number one because now the capital of the Roman Empire was Constantinople. It was the capital city. And again, we see such a marriage between the world and the church that because it's the capital of the empire, suddenly it becomes the second most important bishopric in the church. And all of that is so contrary as we've seen to what Jesus set up and what he taught.
Anyway, so you had this rivalry, particularly between Alexandria and Constantinople, but also between Antioch and Alexandria and Antioch in Constantinople, and Rome was in there too. And so the bishop of Alexandria, all he would have liked so much to unseat the Bishop of Constantinople if he could find him in any kind of scandal or heresy or anything like that. Well, finally, the opportunity came.
The emperor and empress of the empire at that time had selected Nestorius, who was from Antioch, to become the new bishop of Constantinople. Yes, things had degenerated so much that now the emperors, not only were they calling councils, but they were appointing who was going to be the bishop of various cities. I mean, such a marriage between church and state.
When Nestorius wasn't in Constantinople very long before he noticed that a lot of the people in his church there were referring to Mary as the Theotokos, that is, as it's translated into English, Mother of God. Some would say it should be translated God-bearer, but we all know the term that the Roman Catholic Church uses is Mother of God.
And so Nestorius is hearing people call her Mother of God, he began to preach against that title saying they should call her the Mother of Christ because he saw the people were very close to deifying Mary. Now, Nestorius fully believed in the divinity of Christ. In fact, he had been a strong opponent of the Arians, and to his discredit, he had encouraged the emperor to persecute the Arians who were still around. So the problem wasn't one dealing with the divinity of Christ or the incarnation.
It was dealing with the issue of Mariology. And yet neither Rome nor Eastern Orthodoxy will acknowledge that. Well, of course, the people in the church, the congregation there in Constantinople were very upset with Nestorius. Remember, he was an outsider who the emperor and empress had brought in. And so they would even interrupt in the middle of his sermons. You know Someone would jump up and say," Mary is the mother of God." Well, soon, quite an opposition party arose against Nestorius.
And as was very typical of the times, if you wanted to do somebody in, then you would say," Oh, he doesn't believe in the divinity of Christ." That's often used even today when we want to undermine somebody we don't like. Well, before long, Rome jumped into there saying," Wow, this is an opportunity to demote the status of Constantinople." And so there was a division now between Nestorius, a rift, between him and Pope Celestine in Rome.
Well, naturally, as you can imagine, Cyril, who was the bishop of Alexandria at that time, oh, he couldn't resist this. This was now his opportunity to gain the ascendancy back over Constantinople. I mean, I could just picture him rubbing his hands in glee when he realized that his hated rival in Constantinople was now getting himself into hot water. So pretty soon, Cyril was denouncing Nestorius, and he began stirring the monks up in Egypt against him.
But before long, the whole issue of Christology was drawn into this, which was really not the core issue. And although both of the camps essentially believed the same things about Christ and the incarnation, they did express themselves in different language because, by this time, as I have already said, the church felt they could improve on the New Testament. And so they went beyond the language of the New Testament, and that's why they were having disputes.
They'd stick with the biblical language, there would be no dispute. Now, Nestorius explained, and I think today most scholars, whether they're Protestant, Roman Catholic, whatever, I think acknowledge this, that you know Nestorius did not believe like his opponents accused him. I mean, his own writings, he explained that theologically, he had no problem with the term Theotokos. By it, you mean simply that Jesus was divine and that Mary carried the divine Son of God in her body.
But he felt, I think history has shown quite rightly that the term was open to great misinterpretation, so it was better not to use it. And again, it is not a biblical term. Well, the simple thing about all of this is that no one really wanted to try to understand the other one, including Nestorius. I said he wasn't any angel either in this. They were all much more interested in catching their rival bishop in a theological error. You know, I've met people like that today.
If they hear error somewhere, their desire isn't," Well, let me hopefully explain this to the person in private, show them from the Scriptures, and maybe I can help him see that what he's saying is in error, and no doubt, he doesn't mean to be doing that." It's instead," Ah, I caught so-and-so in error." They said so-and-so. Boy, let me go out and publicly denounce them before I've even talked to them in private.
As was typical of the church at that period, then the emperor got involved in the whole thing, and he called for a council to be held in Ephesus, which would be neutral. You know Either Alexandria or Constantinople would have been viewed non-neutral ground. And this was in the year 431, about 50 years after the Council of Constantinople. Well, when the delegates started arriving in Ephesus, they soon divided into two opposing camps before any of the sessions ever got underway.
You have to remember in those days, it wasn't a matter of everyone flying to Ephesus, you know leaving the day before and flying there and then the council starts. These people traveled from great distances. And so they didn't get there at the same time. And so often I mean, it would take a month or more just for all of the delegates to arrive. So you would go there and stay in an inn or in a monastery, maybe some place offered to you.
And then I say, then while you're waiting for everyone else, then you start finding out who's on your side and who isn't, and you start forming these political parties, et cetera. Well, the Bishop of Ephesus, where the council was being held, had a grudge against Nestorius since Nestorius was trying to bring the Bishop of Ephesus under the authority of Constantinople. So the Bishop of Ephesus, having an axe to grind, he got together with Cyril of Alexandria, who also had an axe to grind.
And so they got together and they began to plot how they could unseat Nestorius and bring disrepute on the whole bishopric of Constantinople, shove it back down where it had been. Well, the bishop of Antioch, and that was you remember where Nestorius was from. So the delegates from Antioch could be predicted that they would support Nestorius who had been one of their men. Well, he wrote a letter to the Bishop of Ephesus saying their delegation had been delayed because they had a long distance to come.
But that they were coming, please wait for them. Well, this was the opportunity Cyril wanted because he realized," Well, they're going to support Nestorius." And so once they get here, we might have a deadlock, or they might even win. So they just hurriedly convened the council before the delegates ever got there from Antioch. They quickly condemned Nestorius and excommunicated him from the church. Well, after this was all done, then the delegates from Antioch arrived.
And not just from Antioch itself, not just that city, but from the whole eastern part of the world where the church was at Edessa and on into the Persian Empire, because Christianity had spread very early to the Persian Empire. So you had all these delegates from the east. And I say they had a long way to come. Well, they get there and they find guys have already held this sort of kangaroo court before anyone was even there to take another side and it condemned Nestorius.
Well, of course, they were quite indignant, and so then they held their own council, and they excommunicated Cyril and the Bishop of Ephesus. So you have two councils of Ephesus. Which one is the one from God? Neither one being done in a godly manner. Well, then an emperor, rather a representative from the emperor arrived. And he tried. This is terrible that it takes someone from the emperor to try to bring Christians together. And so he tried to reconcile everyone, but he couldn't prevail.
So finally, everyone had said," Well, let's let the emperor make the decision." And after some deliberation, he decided he would depose Nestorius. But what was the fallout from the Council of Ephesus? I think to anybody who is filled with the Spirit of God and can discern the New Testament spirit of what authentic Christianity is, and see just how low the visible church had sunk by this time is the first one.
Were to believe that these men were given guidance by the Holy Spirit who acted in such a carnal spirit, totally opposed to everything Jesus taught and what the New Testament teaches.
But far worse than that, this council, at least the first Council of Ephesus, the one that met before the Eastern representatives came, by giving the official stamp of approval to the title Theotokos or Mother of God, they unleashed a wave of devotion to Mary, and it did ultimately lead to her practically being deified by people who were part of that visible church. You can see this in Rome. You can see this in Eastern Orthodoxy. You don't see it in the New Testament. You don't see it in the primitive church.
But now Mary somehow jumps way ahead of any of the apostles, some ways greater than Christ is Father, because I would venture to guess that more Catholics pray to Mary than who pray to God the Father. And so I think history has vindicated Nestorius on that particular point. He said the use of that term might be theologically correct, and that's Theotokos, mother of God. I don't think she would have agreed to that term. And yet it's very, very dangerous and is open to misinterpretation.
And that's what has exactly happened. And it works the great detriment of the Church. Well, a few decades after that corrupted Council of Ephesus, the bishops of the East, Tom by the Far East, they sent a letter to the I believe it was to the emperor of Rome. Maybe it was to the bishop of Constantinople saying that hereafter they would manage their own affairs in the East independently of both Constantinople and Rome. And that Church of the East is still around today.
It has lost most of its spiritual vitality, but to this day, it has still never accepted Mother of God. The question I ask is, how could anyone possibly call the Council of Ephesus Ecumenical? Its decision was not the decision of all the bishops of the church. You had a very split council there meeting in two different stages because of their animosity towards each other. In fact, the decision was made by the emperor all along.
And what's more, the portion of the church that is in the Eastern Empire, as I've said, they never accepted that term. So you can only say it's ecumenical by saying they're not a part of the church. And it can't even remotely be called the faith that the Lord handed down. Did he himself give his own mother that term? No. He never called her by that title. Did the apostles? No, you won't find anything in the New Testament, any title for Mary. The second century, you can read all the writings from the second century.
Nobody calls Mary by that term. It's a major alteration of the faith. And we'd heard before, you can't add they had said you can't add to the creed handed down at Nicaea because it's inspired of God. And then 50 years later, they did add to it, or at least it was claimed that they did. Somewhere down the line, they added to it. And now they're adding a whole new thing, the term Theotokos. Now, they did add that to get around in a technical basis. They did not add it to the Creed.
It's not part of the Nicene Creed as we know it today, but it is part of their defined faith. And it said," Well, you have to use that term or else you don't have a proper understanding of the incarnation." Well, did the New Testament Christians not have a proper understanding of the incarnation? Do Protestants have an improper understanding of the incarnation?
I've heard a lot of accusations being made by Eastern Orthodoxy and by Rome against evangelicals and Protestants, but I've never seen anyone accuse them of not having a proper understanding of the incarnation. So that's just a smokescreen. That's a rationalization for adding something to the faith that isn't even remotely in Scripture, nor can be suggested by Scripture, of giving Mary a title like that, because the New Testament gives titles to no one other than Jesus himself.
Well, let's move quickly to the fourth council. This is the Council of Chalcedon. Now, if Ephesus was bad, I can't understand how any Orthodox person who has any knowledge of history could look someone else in the eye and say that Chalcedon was an ecumenical council. Well, let's look briefly at what the Council of Chalcedon did, sometimes referred to as Chalcedon. I think Chalcedon is the preferred pronunciation. What it did is it gave a theological definition of the incarnation.
And again, I have no particular problem with the definition that it gives. I mean, it's not heretical, but I do have a major problem with trying to improve what the apostles left. I mean, you claim that this is a faith that's been handed down. It's never been altered. Give me a break.
I mean, if you pulled a Christian, just went into any church in the second century and pulled a Christian out of his seat and said," Explain the incarnation and define it." I don't think he would have had anyone come up with the definition that was given at the Council of Chalcedon. Again, not because it was a bad definition or explanation, but it is so precise and detailed. It's not the faith of the average Christian. They probably never thought about things that deeply, and it's certainly not in the Scriptures.
The irony is that definition of Chalcedon is so precise that, like I say, you won't find even today very many laypeople who would give you that explanation of the incarnation. In fact, I've sat and listened to seminary trained pastors attempt to explain the definition of Chalcedon and end up saying just the exact opposite of what that definition says. So are they lost or are they heretics? Like I say, they're trying to defend it, and they don't even understand.
And are we to believe that our salvation is tied up with that definition? You know That's what Callistos Ware had argued that," Oh, these were important because our salvation is tied to these things. Our salvation is tied to referring to Mary as the Mother of God. It's tied to a definition that, like I say, I'm guaranteed to be hard to anybody in those pews at an Orthodox Church who could understand it. If it's what we have to believe to be saved, the vast majority of Christians are in serious trouble.
And how unlike it is the simple faith that Jesus handed down. I'm not going to read to you the definition. You can, I'm sure, find it on the internet or at your library. Chalcedon is C-H-A-L-C-E-D-O-N. Just do a search on the internet for that, and you can read what it says. You'll also read a lot of propaganda along with it.
But not only do we have a problem, do I have a problem with trying to define things so closely that the Scriptures don't, is that the council wasn't even remotely ecumenical, or at least the decision was. Representatives from the largest section of the visible church geographically wasn't even present. And that is the whole church that lay east of Antioch, east of it or I should maybe say east of Edessa.
The whole church that it was now you know all throughout the Persian Empire, India beginning to go even into China. That geographically was actually the largest block of Christianity, at least as to an institutional church of that time. It wasn't the largest block in terms of numbers of people. They weren't even present at that council.
But even more importantly is that two of the patriarchs who were at that council, the bishop of Alexandria and the Bishop of Antioch, they refused to accept the decision of that council. So you didn't have any unanimous decision. I don't think you have that in any council. But here you have two of the patriarchs that had been set up by earlier councils say," We don't go along with this." And they still don't accept it today.
Now, the Eastern Orthodox church will say," Yeah, we have a bishop of Alexandria and a bishop of Antioch, but the people they have there are not the successors of the original bishops of Antioch and Alexandria. The successors of the original bishops is the Coptic Church in Egypt and the Jacobite or Jacobite church in Antioch.
The men the Eastern Orthodox Church have there are ones or descendants you know in lineage from the bishops that then the emperor went and had appointed for Alexandria and Antioch when the bishops of those cities refused to accept the definition of the council at Chalcedon. Well, how does the Orthodox Church get around this very obvious contradiction to say this is an ecumenical council when everyone wasn't even present and an important part of the church refused to accept it?
Well, their answer is they're not part of the church. Well, why aren't they part of the church? Because they didn't accept the Council of Chalcedon. If you don't accept Chalcedon, you're not part of the church. So it's ecumenical because everybody in the church accepts it, because anyone who doesn't accept it is not part of the church. Well, if that's not circular reasoning, I don't know what is. Now the fifth and sixth councils I'm going to pass over because they are not historical milestones particularly.
We're going to move right up to the Seventh Council, which has had much greater effect on the visible church, or maybe more accurately, it should be called the Eighth Council. That's because in AD 754, the Emperor called the Council, which was for a while designated as the Seventh Ecumenical Council. There were 338 bishops present. The issue was the veneration and worship of icons. Well, the council met and they condemned the religious use of statues of pictures and icons.
Now, that seventh council had all the same earmarks of any of these other councils. It had more bishops present than many of the ones that are called ecumenical. You had, to my knowledge, a fairly unanimous decision coming out of it, maybe a couple of dissenters, but it was definitely a more unified decision than the Council of Chalcedon. So why isn't it the 7th Ecumenical Council? Well, because the Orthodox don't like the decision they came up with.
And 30 years after the council, the emperor who had called it died. And the Empress Irene became the de facto ruler of the empire because the successor on the throne, her son, was still a minor, so in effect, she's the one who ran the empire. Well, she was devoted to icons, so she calls a council. You have about the same number of bishops that you had in that seventh one.
And now this time, the council says," It's not that it is all right to worship or venerate images." In fact, he said," Christians are required to do so." It says this, speaking about what it calls the venerable and holy images. It says," To these should be given due salutation and honorable worship." Now, word worship. Again, don't say," Well, David, you're calling worship. They don't call it worship." That's what they use the word proskuneo, the Greek word.
Not indeed that true worship of faith, latria, which pertains alone to the divine nature. But to these, as to the figure of the precious and life-giving cross, and to the Book of the Gospels, and to the other holy objects, incense and lights may be offered according to ancient pious custom. For the honor which is paid to the image passes on to that, which the image represents, and he who worships the image, worships in it, the subject represented.
Thus we follow Paul who spoke in Christ and the whole divine apostolic company and the Holy Fathers, holding fast the traditions which we have received. We salute the venerable images. We place under anathema those who do not do this. Anathema to those who do not salute the holy and venerable images. Anathema to those who call the sacred images idols. Well, the Greek word anathema be something devoted to evil to damnation. That was their decision.
Did you notice how they try to couch this by talking about the apostles and holding fast the traditions which we have received, which is a quotation from Paul to the Thessalonians? That's a tradition that the apostles handed down. Well, I'm not going to go into detail in this message because I've previously made a message on the whole issue of how the early church viewed images and icons. And I would encourage you to listen to that message where I'm able to go into more depth on that particular subject.
But I think any person who has read the Scriptures knows that is not something the apostles taught whatsoever. And anyone who has read the writings of the pre-Nicene church knows very clearly that they were totally opposed to uses of images of any kind. I mean, they weren't opposed to art. You find little pictures drawn in the catacombs, but you won't find any pictures in the catacombs that are pre-Nicene that would even remotely resemble an icon. What was this eighth council, as I call it?
They call it the Seventh Council, but there'd already been the Seventh Council that had all the same earmarks, but they don't like the decision. So they shove it under the rug and call the eighth one, the seventh one. And of course, as I said, there's many other councils that have the same earmarks that they don't call ecumenical either because they don't like the results.
And yet most of the visible church at that time, which you know I would view as a very corrupted church, it wasn't even represented at that council. The whole Western church did not accept this council, nor did the church in the Far East, lying east of Antioch. It didn't accept the council. In fact, in 794, just 10 years after the council, 300 bishops from France and Germany met at the Council of Frankfurt, and they condemned this so-called Seventh Ecumenical Council and declared it to be null and void.
So how can you say this was an ecumenical council? When such a large block of the church refused to accept it, when it overturned what another council had just said 30 years before. In fact, the armies in the east didn't accept it because they were losing battles and they were thinking that it was probably because of having images and icons that was causing God to withdraw His protection. And in fact, they were able to overturn it and icons were outlawed again by the emperor.
But then later on, you have another emperor on the throne and she restored the use of icons and they stayed ever since. More important than that, the decision of the seventh ecumenical council, you know so-called, it's not even remotely the faith of Jesus and the apostles. When did they ever command such a thing that we have to give proskuneo or worship to icons and images? And if we don't, we're anathema.
How can the Eastern Orthodox say with a straight face," We add nothing to the faith nor take anything away." That's added an enormous article to the faith. You can say, like as I mentioned, the Council of Nicaea, well, it's in harmony with Scripture, but you know that Word isn't in Scripture. But see, it started the press of it. And then Constantinople, the first council, went even further going beyond Scripture.
By the time you get to this so-called seventh ecumenical council, you're commanding things that would actually be unscriptural. I'm going to read to you just one quotation, and then I'll refer you to the message I have on icons. I'm not going to go into depth here. But the Council of Elvira, this was a council held in the fourth century, you know long before Ephesus or any of that.
Canon 36 of the Council of Elvira says this," There shall be no pictures in churches, lest what is worshipped and adored be depicted on walls." So they had been forbidden originally. And that's just one example of the quotations to say this was a faith that had been handed down from the apostles. You have all this historical evidence that the faith handed down from the apostles was just the exact opposite. Well, in conclusion, we can definitely say the seven ecumenical councils are a myth.
First, the claims that are being made for them are not honest. They were not councils that merely defined the existing faith. They completely, by the end of them, altered the apostolic faith. Secondly, they weren't ecumenical, except for the Council of Nicaea, they never represented the entire Christian world. A major portion of the visible church at that time rejected the Third Council and a much larger portion of the Church would reject it today.
Two of the four patriarchies that had been set up at the Council of Nicaea rejected the Fourth Council, and they continued to do so down to this day. We've seen that the so-called Seventh Council was specifically rejected by the West at that time. Later, the Roman Catholic Church came to accept it, but it continues to be rejected by a large number of Christians today in the West, and I would say by 100% of authentic Christians.
We've discussed the fact that there were far more than seven general councils that were held. And many of those others that are not accepted have all of the same earmarks as the so-called seven that are accepted by the Eastern Orthodox Church. The Roman Catholic Church, as I mentioned, claims a lot more ecumenical councils. In fact, it's 21 councils that they say there have been 21 ecumenical councils.
But see, the Eastern Orthodox would say," No, there haven't been 21 because we weren't at those other councils." And so they weren't ecumenical. But see, the Roman church says," Yes, they were ecumenical because the Eastern bishops were not part of the church." And if you don't accept those, then you're not part of the church. So therefore, there were 21 Ecumenical Councils. Isn't this the same argument the Eastern Orthodox used in claiming seven?
Oh, well, if you don't accept Chalcedon, if you don't accept the Council of Ephesus, if you don't accept the so-called Seventh Council, well, you're not Christian. You're not part of the church. And so they are ecumenical. See, the same circular reasoning that you use to promote yourself, you're going to fall by that same reasoning as well. The Coptic Church, the Armenian Church, and the Oriental Orthodox churches, like the Church of India, they only recognize three ecumenical council.
The Church of the East, that is the church that is the descendant of the church that was planted in Persia, it only acknowledges two councils. The Anglican Church has traditionally acknowledged four councils. So I would ask, would someone please tell me how these councils could make infallible pronouncements of the church when the church cannot even agree on how many there were? In short, the story about the seven ecumenical councils is merely a myth.