I asked Google if there were decisions of church councils that were later rejected by the church. I got lists of several cases. The first list was titled ‘Major Rejected or Overturned Council Decisions’, the second list ‘Doctrinal Shifts Affecting Acceptance’.
It should be noted that the lists did not include debated decisions that have been rejected by the children of the Reformation - there would be a large number of such disputed canons.
These cases demonstrate that all the decision of the church councils were not correct or that the interpretations within the church changed through the centuries.
We can always find excuses why the decisions of the church councils were wrong. If the Pope makes a doctrinal statement that is later rejected by the church, we can always claim that the Pope did not really do it ‘ex cathedra’. Whatever excuses we find, those councils or Popes were clearly not lead to all truth by the Holy Spirit. If these councils made errors, why must we believe that none of the other councils made errors?
Your claim that the Holy Spirit has lead the councils of the RCC to truth in all the questions that matter is a claim that the Holy Spirit has not lead the other Christians, at least not in matters where the doctrines of the RCC differ from the interpretations of the other denominations.
You are free to believe it but I question such an interpretation. Is that really what Jesus meant - that the Holy Spirit will lead the church of Rome to all truth but not the other Christians?
Well, first point to clarify is that the Catholic Church has never claimed that every statement or decision made by every council is guaranteed to be correct in all respects. Councils historically address many different kinds of matters: doctrinal definitions, theological explanations, disciplinary rules, political disputes, and pastoral judgments. These do not all carry the same level of authority.
In Catholic theology, the guidance of the Holy Spirit does not mean that every historical decision made by church leaders is perfect. Rather, it means that the Church as a whole is preserved from definitively teaching error in matters of faith and morals when it speaks in a binding and universal way.
Many examples that are sometimes presented as “rejected council decisions” involve disciplinary rules, political conflicts, or theological formulations that were later clarified, not dogmatic definitions that were formally reversed. For instance, the complex history surrounding the Council of Constance includes decrees later judged problematic because they attempted to subordinate the papacy to a council. What was later rejected there was not a dogma about faith, but a particular theory about church governance that arose in a very turbulent historical moment.
Similarly, the distinction between ordinary papal teaching and a definitive ex cathedra definition is not an after-the-fact excuse invented to avoid difficulties. It reflects the longstanding recognition that the teaching authority of the Church operates at different levels and not every papal statement is intended as a definitive doctrinal judgment.
Because of this, the historical reality that some councils made prudential or disciplinary mistakes does not contradict Christ’s promise in the Gospel of John 16:13 that the Spirit will guide the Church into all truth. That promise has traditionally been understood as a protection against the Church definitively binding the faithful to error in essential matters of faith, not as a guarantee that every historical decision or theological formulation will be flawless.
In fact, what the history of doctrine more often shows is not reversal but development. As new questions arise and new challenges appear, the Church is compelled to clarify more precisely what it believes. This process was famously analyzed by John Henry Newman in his work on the development of doctrine: the core of the faith remains the same, but its articulation becomes more explicit over time (The best examples of this are the doctrines of the Trinity and transubstantiation. Both are simply more precise articulations of truths that had been believed and taught from the beginning: namely, that Jesus is God, distinct from the Father, who is also God—yet not a separate God—and that the Eucharist is truly, and not merely symbolically, the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. Both of these beliefs have been held by the Church from the beginning).
Also, acknowledging that the Holy Spirit guides the Church does not require denying that the Spirit can also work among other Christians. Catholic theology has long recognized that the Spirit is active beyond the visible boundaries of the Catholic Church. The Catholic claim is more specific: that Christ entrusted a particular responsibility for safeguarding and articulating the apostolic faith to the Church’s teaching office.
So the historical fact that councils sometimes contained disciplinary errors or were shaped by political circumstances does not invalidate the deeper theological claim. Rather, it highlights the distinction between the human processes through which the Church deliberates and the narrower but important promise that, in matters essential to the faith, the Church will not ultimately be led into binding error.
I think this has also been demonstrated during the pontificate of Pope Francis, whom I personally believe held some (many) erroneous views. Yet he was never able to impose any doctrinal error on the Church.
And another well-known historical example is the case of Pope John XXII in the fourteenth century. During his pontificate, John XXII expressed in a series of sermons the opinion that the souls of the righteous do not immediately enjoy the beatific vision after death, but must wait until the final judgment to see God face to face. This view caused considerable controversy among theologians, many of whom argued that it contradicted the traditional belief of the Church that the souls of the just enter into the vision of God immediately after death, once they have been purified. What is significant in this episode is that John XXII never attempted to define this opinion as a binding doctrine of the Church. He presented it as a theological position in his preaching rather than as a definitive teaching of the magisterium. The controversy continued until the end of his life, and shortly before his death John XXII acknowledged that the matter required further clarification and retracted his earlier opinion. Soon afterward, his successor, Pope Benedict XII, definitively settled the issue in the constitution Benedictus Deus (1336), which affirmed that the souls of the just do indeed behold the divine essence immediately after death.
This episode shows that a pope may hold or express erroneous theological opinions as a private theologian, but this does not mean that he can impose doctrinal error upon the Church through a definitive act of teaching.
As I said, the Holy Spirit also works outside the visible boundaries of the Catholic Church (And, as I have demonstrated some posts above, the Catholic and Orthodox Churches recognize one another as sister Churches possessing apostolic succession and valid sacraments). Nevertheless, I believe that the promise in Gospel of John 16:13 implies, among other things, that Christians would not have been allowed to remain in profoundly erroneous beliefs about something as central and sacred as the Eucharist for fifteen centuries ( and it’s no coincidence that the two “sister Churches” with apostolic succession firmly affirm that the Eucharist is truly the Flesh and Blood of our Lord). I talk about the Eucharist often because It really is a paradigmatic example.
I hesitate to send this thread on yet another doctrinal tangent, but as @knor mentioned earlier, various ideas about the nature of the Eucharist were circulating within the church in early centuries, including a ‘memorial’ view which I personally hold. In judging church doctrine generally, I am not so much interested in what the later church fathers said, or what various councils determined (I think such sources may contain some wisdom, but also are not infallible and have promoted many “accretions” to theology over the years). Instead I focus on the scriptures themselves as the prime repository of apostolic teaching. It is fascinating how the “fellowship love feast” in the early church communities (around which Paul instructs the proper conduct), evolved into a rigid ceremony involving priests and sacrifice (went back to Jewish temple constructs). This historical trend was studied by Dr. Tom Wadsworth in his seminary Ph.D… Again, I hesitate to link to a full youtube video, but I found this history of the devolpment of the Eucharist fascinating:
They were circulating indeed, I even quoted Ignatius of Antioch, writing around AD 107, only a generation after the apostles, writing about some people stating that: “They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ.”(Letter to the Smyrnaeans 7)
But this doesn’t mean that this view was accepted throughout the Church and not considered erroneous. In fact, it means exactly that: it was considered erroneous from the beginning.
I even quoted historians like J. N. D. Kelly who writes: “The early Church’s belief in the real presence is unmistakable.”
(Early Christian Doctrines, p. 197)
Which doesn’t mean that alternative views were completely absent, but that they were judged as errors and incompatible with the apostolic teaching.
There is a reason the Early Church held a realist view of the Eucharist, and that same teaching was transmitted without interruption for the following fifteen centuries.
I am not making a doctrinal argument here so much as a historical one: from the beginning, the Church received and celebrated and taught the Eucharist as the true flesh and true blood of Christ, and those who denied this were regarded as being in error from the very outset. Denial of that realism was already treated as heterodox.
We may claim that the early Church was wrong about the doctrine of the Eucharist from the very beginning, but if we accept that claim, then we must also ask: what else could they have gotten wrong? Perhaps even the canon itself, since consensus on the canon emerged much later than consensus on the nature and meaning of the Eucharist ( even the divine inspiration of the Gospel of John was disputed). Or perhaps they could have erred even about the nature of God Himself.
Once we enter in the rabbit hole of subjectivism there is hardly a way out of it.
Ignatius of Antioch was writing within living memory of the apostles.
The difficulty is that the same Church which affirmed that the Eucharist is the true flesh and true blood of Christ is also the Church that later resolved the disputes concerning the canon (namely which Scriptures were actually divinely inspired), a matter that remained highly contested and unsettled until a later stage.
As you have cited repeatedly Ignatius, I make a comment about his context. My information comes partly from the book ‘The Apostolic Fathers. Greek texts and English translations’ (ed. Michael Holmes), partly from the little I have read from various church history texts.
Ignatius, the bishop of Antioch, wrote his letters (seven) in a stressful context. He had been arrested and was transported towards his death in Rome. According to what I read, the fear Ignatious had was not his approaching death, it was a deep worry of what would happen to the church in Antioch after his death. There seemed to be a risk of division, although I do not know why. The letters suggest that some type of gnostic teaching may have been involved because Ignatius defends so strongly the grace that comes through the incarnated and resurrected Jesus in flesh and blood.
The following is based on what I remember from the letters - I did not read them again for this comment.
Ignatius explains in one of his letters that he knows the scriptures and has tried to convince others with the scriptures but that did not work. Instead, he advocates the principle that everyone should stand behind one leader, the bishop, because there would be no divisions if everybody is following one leader. Ignatius takes this claim to the extreme by writing that where the bishop is, there is the church. I interpret this polemic saying from the viewpoint of his general argument - if everybody stands behind the one bishop, then the local church is standing where the bishop is.
Although Ignatius claimed that he knows the scriptures, the letters do not show that knowledge, except that he knew the basic gospel. Rather, the letters give the impression that his knowledge of scriptures was not at such level that Ignatius could have convinced others by invoking to core teachings in the scriptures. In such a situation, the leadership model was an alternative solution to cases where disagreements about teachings threatened the unity of the local church.
Ignatius became highly valued especially because he was a bishop that was killed because of his faith (martyr). Because Ignatius was highly valued, his letters became widely read in churches. Because of this, the letters of Ignatius can be seen as an important factor in the process that strengthened the position of bishops.
Ignatius makes also some comments about doctrinal questions. One important point was Jesus as incarnated, flesh and blood. The comment about the Eucharist was in such a context where Ignatius condemns those who deny the grace we have received through the incarnated and resurrected Jesus. So yes, Ignatius seemed to believe that ‘Eucharist is the flesh of our savior Jesus Christ’ but he does not explain what he meant with this because that was not his focus. As the ‘where the bishop is, there is the church’ comment shows, Ignatius had a tendency to use polemic claims to strengthen his viewpoint.
The writings of the Apostolic Fathers show the diversity of voices and focus within the early church. There was no unified voice or structure of doctrines. There seemed to be an agreement about the core gospel, especially about the grace given through the incarnated and resurrected Jesus, but otherwise the interests, focus and interpretations about the less central matters varied.
Ignatius is one voice in the diversity of the early church. Interesting but I do not take his opinions as authoritative texts.
I cited Ignatius, but I also cited other Church Fathers, all of whom agreed that the Eucharist is truly the Flesh and Blood of Christ. Ignatius was merely the most ancient one.
I also cited numerous modern historians, and they agree that the early Church held an essentially universal realist understanding of the Eucharistic sacrament. This means that the doctrine according to which the Eucharist is truly the Flesh and Blood of Jesus was not simply one view among many others; rather, it was the teaching consistently upheld by the early Church from the beginning. As I said, I have cited many historians who confirm this.
Which doesn’t mean that alternative views didn’t exist, it only means that they diverged from what the early Church and early Christianity believed at large. It means that it diverged from the orthodox view.
I will make just one more comment to illustrate how the use of language does not always mean what you seem to believe.
When we have the Lord’s Supper/Holy Communion in our church and are giving the bread and wine, we use the words ‘the body of Jesus, given for you’ and ‘the blood of Jesus, given for you’. Although we use those expressions, it does not mean that we would believe that the bread has somehow transformed to the flesh of Jesus or that the wine would have somehow transformed to the blood of Jesus.
The expressions reflect participation at such a deep level that the bread is ‘the body of Jesus’ and the wine is ‘the blood of Jesus’, although they are just bread and wine.
I know that it is your interpretation, absolutely. I was just arguing that the early Church held, virtually universally, a profoundly different view regarding the Eucharist.
“The early Christian identification of the eucharistic bread and wine with the Lord’s body and blood continued unchanged”
J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (London: A. & C. Black, 1977), p. 212.
Kelly again: “Almost everywhere” the more popular doctrine was that the elements were “converted into the Lord’s body and blood.”
J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (1977), pp. 443–444.
“Realist language about the presence of Jesus Christ was common, often with an anti-heretical thrust”
Everett Ferguson, Church History, Volume One: From Christ to Pre-Reformation (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), p. 115.
“ The bread and wine become Christ’s body and blood”
Henry Chadwick, The Early Church, rev. ed. (London: Penguin, 1993), p. 267.
“ The doctrine of the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist did not become the subject of controversy until the ninth century.”
Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, vol. 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100–600) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), p. 166.
Pelikan again (whom I had already quoted previously in another post) in the very next page: “no orthodox father of the second or third century declared the presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist to be no more than symbolic”
Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, vol. 1 (1971), p. 167.
And the following is the citation from Pelikan (who is a Lutheran by the way) I had already made before
Jaroslav Pelikan (LUTHERAN HISTORIAN), The Christian Tradition, Vol. 3: The Growth of Medieval Theology: “The doctrine of transubstantiation was an attempt to give precise conceptual form to the ancient belief in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.”
(Pelikan, p. 206)
Philip Schaff (PROTESTANT CHURCH HISTORIAN), History of the Christian Church: “The doctrine of the real presence was universally held in the early Church, though not yet defined in scholastic terms.”
(Vol. 2, p. 201)
But by your argument Constantinople and Antioch and Jerusalem and Alexandria all have equal claim to infallibility – and arguably so do Wittenburg and Moscow and Canterbury and probably Uppsala and Oslo.
There is no promise of infallibility to individual apostles’ successors, and that includes Peter’s or Paul’s.
They did it the way the early church did it – bishops were elected, and no recognition from others was required.
Validly ordained in the NT does not require the approval of anyone but the local bishop, probably not more than that of the local presbytery.
And that definition leaves out what actually makes a sacrament: the words of Christ.
Basically this boils down to humans institutions declaring that their preferred ways of doing things are the only right ways, regardless of whether they fit scripture or not.
But so far by your hermeneutic the scriptures are inconsistent. The assumption of consistency is what led to the doctrine of the trinity: it takes all the elements into account and summarizes them.
If I might add to this discussion, the view of eucharist from RCC couldn’t be held very early in the Church because of internal witness from the Bible and also from historical facts available to us.
Drinking/eating blood was strictly prohibited among the Jews and even Christian Jews. Even the very first council of Jerusalem presided over by Peter and other apostles themselves gave this instruction,
Acts 15:28-29 For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell.”
It is therefore unthinkable that while the apostles who were all Jews and so were many prominent figures in the Church in the first century were still alive, they would interpret the eucharist as drinking the true physical blood of Jesus.
Actual historians (included Lutherans) I’ve quoted said the exact opposite and I’m afraid they might have a little more knowledge and insight on the subject.
I disagree. His hermeneutic is consistent. Consistently heretic, I would argue.
Which is precisely what the people who fall into heresy don’t do: they pick and choose some isolated texts and ignore the others or reinterpret the others in light of their erroneous view which they hold with pride despite the corrections. The only sensible thing to do is pray for them.
not sure if that is your way of gracious dialogue by calling people heretic. You might perhaps disagree with the way I view hermeneutics, but calling people as heretic is a bit much.
I don’t have the authority to declare you an heretic, but you certainly employ a method that leads to heresy.
This is simply a fact, and this is demonstrated by the fact that your hermeneutical approach is leading you to refuse the most important Christian doctrine, that is, that Jesus is our GOD and Saviour.
By the way, what I’m saying is a linguistic fact: heresy comes from the Greek hairesis which means choice. Which is exactly what you have been doing from the beginning: choosing which texts made more sense to you or deserved to be absolutized in spite of the others, instead of holding them together.
You said that it’s unthinkable that the early Church believed in the real presence. That claim of yours is historically inaccurate, plain and simple. And you don’t appeal to the Scripture, you appeal to the passages that seem to confirm your preconceived notions. Aside from the fact that the Scripture have been formed and declared divinely inspired by the same authority you don’t recognize.
In context that’s word of mouth or letters from the Apostles. Using it to defend accumulated human doctrines is contrary to that and to other apostolic admonitions.
That’s the sola scriptura found in the Fathers: not that everything has to come from the Bible, but that everything must be measured by it (which is what “canon” means).
I think that’s a legitimate distinction: it doesn’t mean that God’s mind in its essence changes, it means that the nature of that essence resulted in a change in reaction due to changing circumstances. Indeed without such a possibility it is rather risky to say that God is relational, because in relationships things change.
I think of it in terms of principles and applications: God’s principles never change, but the application of those principles can depend on the situation.
Interesting point. It makes me think of when God told David that if he went to some particular city the people there would hand him over to enemies – but David didn’t go, so they didn’t hand him over.
The question is whether that doctrine actually states what the scripture teaches. Why does it not refer instead to His character rather than to some Aristotelian category?
I think the point is that the accumulation and invention of doctrine by various churches, including Rome, is “personal and subjective judgment”.
No authorities determined what was inspired, they merely affirmed what the various churches had already concluded. The declarations of bishops and councils were just the culmination of a bottom-up phenomenon.
Are you saying that my statement that the Jews and even christian Jews were strictly against eating/drinking blood historically inaccurate? Wow.
I would like you to point me to any post of mine where I reject Jesus as our God and Saviour. Are you accusing me without evidence?
Sure, passages that is taken from Scripture. Isn’t that how we all do it?
I never said that I rejected that authority. I just said that whatever decision made by that later authorities after the apostolic age, must be evaluated in light of the Scripture. It was basically the same claim made by Martin Luther or all other reformers.
BTW, you haven’t replied to Acts 15:28-29.
For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell.”
That wasn’t an establishment of a doctrine, it was an imprimatur on a certain philosophical interpretation of that doctrine (and one of the sillier moments in church history, since transubstantiation goes against plain statements of Paul). The doctrine itself, generally referred to as “the Real Presence”, was not in doubt until quite late (though what the church believed fits with “consubstantiation” [which BTW is actually what most priests believe] better).
Which is essentially what Luther et alli did: they refused to accept a definition that added to what the scriptures say. Lutherans are often said to hold to “consubstantiation”, but in reality that term fits how the church has always believed far better than “transubstantiation”.
That can only be maintained if you play games with the grammar Paul uses when he says, “The bread which we break…” That’s a clear affirmation that it’s still bread, it is just also the Body of Christ.
