Chorbishop Maxim of Novo Brdo and Panonia
An Excerpt from
“The First Ecumenical Council — Its Meaning and Significance for the Church
Today,” published on August 1, 2025, on the website of the Diocese of Raška and
Prizren in Exile.
(…)
On this occasion, in this village
of God, Lelić, we have assembled yet another similar council, as a festal bridal
chamber in which the Church of Christ dwells and through which she is
manifested and revealed in all her fullness and beauty, with the aim of
celebrating the patronal feast of this monastery, but also the jubilee—that is,
the 1700th anniversary of the holy First Ecumenical Council. We
therefore commemorate the Council held in the year 325 in the Roman Empire, in
the province of Bithynia, at Nicaea, present-day İznik, where, as is reckoned,
one-sixth of all the bishops of the oikoumene at that time assembled,
and the Council sat from June 14 to August 25. [8]
The Council addressed, first of
all, an Epistle to the Churches of God that were most threatened by the Arians
[9]—that is, those in Alexandria, Egypt, Pentapolis, and Libya. [10]
Before this Council, among
others, three significant councils were known in the Church and had received
ecumenical recognition. The first was the Council of Jerusalem of the
Holy Apostles in the year 51, by which the conciliar principle for resolving
all essential questions of faith and ecclesiastical good order was established
in practice. At that Council the key, model, and principle of true conciliarity
in the Holy Spirit within the Church were given in the words: “It seemed
good to the Holy Spirit and to us” (Acts 15:28), words which indicate the
true source and authority of the decisions of that Council and of every
genuinely Orthodox council.
Thus, first to the Holy Spirit,
and afterward to us. “In this lies the entire theandric pragmatics and
theandric methodology of the first Holy Apostolic Council, and together with it
of the Holy Ecumenical Councils and the Holy Local Councils; the pragmatics and
methodology of the theandric conciliarity of the Holy Orthodox Church…” [11]
Holiness—that is, the possession
of the grace of the Holy Spirit—is the principal source, inspiration, and
guidance of all Ecumenical and Local Councils in the Church. For the true
worshippers shall worship, that is, pray and gather together, in
Spirit and in Truth (John 4:24), that is, in the grace of the Holy Spirit
and in the confession of the truth of the faith of Christ.
The preserved succession of
apostolic grace and the preserved truth of the faith of Christ, the Orthodox
Faith, are the very heart of the Church and of her Holy Tradition, and also the
foundation of every ecclesiastical assembly and conciliar gathering. By these
the Church is truly the Church; by these, councils are truly councils of the
Church. It is precisely at the holy councils of the Church that the inspiration
of the Holy Spirit is manifested, by which the conciliar Fathers clarify and
expound the truths of the Faith given to the Holy Apostles by Christ the
God-Man.
Every Ecumenical Council [in
particular] is a defeat of heresy and falsehood and a triumph of the Church,
for it is precisely the triumph of grace and truth, given by Christ the
God-Man, in the Holy Spirit. Thus: “God the Holy Spirit is the conciliar,
catholic, ecumenical, theanthropic power of the Church, for He is the soul in
the body of the Church.” [12]
For this reason, the councils of
the Church, and especially the Ecumenical Councils, are the direct work of the
Holy Spirit, without Whom no one can confess that Jesus is the Christ (1 Cor.
12:3); that is, without the Holy Spirit no one can come to know the truth of
the theanthropic Orthodox Faith, since its origin is from Heaven, divine, given
and revealed by Christ and the Holy Spirit, and not the fruit of empty human
speculation.
For this reason, many err today,
failing to understand that the Church, as a theanthropic organism, as the
direct activity of the Holy Spirit in this world, consists in the fullness not
only of grace, but also in the entirety of the truth of the Orthodox Faith, and
that without both of these elements there is no Church, no salvific,
theanthropic fullness of the Church. For grace is from the Holy Spirit, Who is
the Spirit of Truth, and He does not abide where the truth of Christ—that is,
the unchanged Orthodox Faith—is not confessed.
More precisely, the truth of the
Orthodox Faith is itself the chief indication and sign of the presence and
possession of the fullness of the grace of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, the
grace of the Holy Spirit and the true confession of the Faith are signs of the
authenticity of the Church, but also of every council within the Church; and
without these essential characteristics, councils are merely gatherings of
people who have gone astray, whatever their rank or title may be.
Yet, according to canonical
tradition, the final judgment concerning the presence and possession of grace
within an ecclesiastical body belongs to a council of the Church, and by no
means to self-appointed individuals who, contrary to the canons, arrogate and
ascribe to themselves the role of some sort of “infallible apparatus” for
determining the presence of grace—conceited individuals wrongly guided by
subjective feelings and opinions, or rather by their own prideful spiritual
delusion. If, by economy, amid turmoil within the Church and until the final
conciliar condemnation and cutting off of heretics, hirelings who by God’s
permission have become shepherds within the Church nevertheless have grace
acting through the Holy Mysteries for the sake of the deceived, unwitting, yet
faithful people, this grace acts to the judgment and condemnation of the
heretics who falsely present themselves as shepherds, while in their hearts
they are ravening wolves who, by preaching a false faith, scatter the flock of
Christ.
For this reason, the holy
councils of the Church, especially the Ecumenical Councils, were convened in
order to render judgment at times of crisis in the Church and to separate the
falsehood of heresy from the truth of the Orthodox Faith, but also to separate
the wheat from the tares—that is, to cut off false shepherds, the preachers and
bearers of heretical contagion, whose word, like poison, eats away at the Body
of the Church (2 Tim. 2:17).
Such cutting off, official
condemnation, and anathema are therefore acts within the authority of a
council, and not of individuals within the Church, however zealous and correct
in the Faith they may be. Individuals, however, through their struggle against
heresy, contribute to the convening of councils, awaken the slumbering flock,
and set in motion the conciliar mechanism of the Church; they activate her
spiritual immunity so that, as the healthy organism of Christ the God-Man, she
may cut off, condemn, and expel from herself the foreign body—that is,
individuals diseased through unrepentant persistence in heresies and errors.
Thus the holy Patriarch Alexander
of Alexandria first convened a council in Egypt in 320–321, attended by about
one hundred bishops from Egypt and Libya, at which Arius was condemned together
with his heresy and deposed; [13] and when this proved insufficient, because
the heresy was spreading beyond the borders of Egypt, the First Ecumenical
Council was also convened.
Orthodox councils are therefore
the most powerful remedy against every heretical falsehood that rises up
against the Church and corrupts her apostolic and patristic teaching. The
Ecumenical Councils are those moments when the Church, agitated by the storm of
heretical waves, assaults, and confusion, “came to herself”; that is, through
the zeal of Orthodox individuals within her, she gathered together her
grace-filled strength and capacities and, by the power of the Holy Spirit by
Whom she is guided, and with the truth of the Orthodox Faith as her instrument,
cut down every weed of falsehood and heresy throughout history.
In response to every dangerous
falsehood of the heretics, the Church assembled and gave her conciliar answer
in the Holy Spirit, by which the Faith was not only defended at that moment,
but also clarified and established for all future generations. For “conciliarity
has its divine language in the Holy Ecumenical Councils.” [14]
(…)
NOTES
8. Archpriest-Stavrophor Dr. Radomir Popović, ECUMENICAL
COUNCILS: The First, Second, Third, and Fourth — Selected Documents —, Book I,
Belgrade, 2012, p. 73.
9. Archpriest-Stavrophor Dr. Radomir Popović, ECUMENICAL
COUNCILS: The First, Second, Third, and Fourth — Selected Documents —, Book I,
Belgrade, 2012, p. 72.
10. Archpriest-Stavrophor Dr. Radomir Popović, ECUMENICAL
COUNCILS: The First, Second, Third, and Fourth — Selected Documents —, Book I,
Belgrade, 2012, p. 70.
11. Venerable Father Justin, Dogmatics of the Orthodox
Church III, Valjevo, 2004, p. 219.
12. Venerable Father Justin, Dogmatics of the Orthodox
Church III, Valjevo, 2004, p. 219.
13. “We, the bishops of Egypt and Libya, assembled together,
numbering about one hundred, have delivered over to anathema (a curse) all
those of one mind with Arius who spread such an impious teaching, as well as
those who support them. Those, however, who side with Eusebius (of Nicomedia)
have received them among themselves and are striving to mingle truth with
falsehood, piety with impiety. But they do not succeed in this undertaking, for
the truth stands firm, and there is no communion between light and darkness,
nor any concord between Christ and Belial (2 Cor. 6:14).” Archpriest-Stavrophor
Dr. Radomir Popović, ECUMENICAL COUNCILS: The First, Second, Third, and
Fourth — Selected Documents —, Book I, Belgrade, 2012, p. 55.
14. Venerable Father Justin, Dogmatics of the Orthodox
Church III, Valjevo, 2004, p. 227.
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