The Councils of the Church

by Philip Schaff

To respond to various disagreements, the Christian church has often held councils to clarify matters of doctrine, and to lay down various rules for governing the church. The prototypical council is recorded in the Biblical book, 'The Acts of the Apostles'.
In this case a serious disagreement arose over the need for coverts to the faith to be circumcised. As a result, a council was held in Jerusalem in the presence of the apostles. They decided there was only a need to 'abstain from food offered to idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood'.

Since the time of the apostles numerous disagreements have arisen in the church over issues ranging from the nature of Christ to the place of images or icons within the context of worship. The councils assembled were of often local affairs, meant to deal with issues within a province. But in more far-reaching matters, general or 'ecumenical' councils were called, which were supposed to involve the entire Christian church.

The councils in this work cover the period of the first seven ecumenical councils, until the year 787 AD.

Included are:
1. Carthage under Cyprian (257 AD)
2. Ancyra (314 AD)
3. Neocaesarea (315 AD)
4. Nicaea I (325 AD)
5. Antioch in Encaeniis (341 AD)
6. Gangra (343 AD)
7. Sardica (344 AD)
8. Constantinople I (381 AD)
9. Constantinople (382 AD)
10. Laodicea (390 AD)
11. Constantinople under Nectarius (394 AD)
12. Carthage (419 AD)
13. Ephesus (431 AD)
14. Chalcedon (451 AD)
15. Constantinople II (553 AD)
16. Constantinople III (680 AD)
17. Constantinople"Trullo"Quinisext (692 AD)
18. Nicaea II (787 AD)

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Published March 21st 2016

Philip Schaff

Philip Schaff was educated at the gymnasium of Stuttgart, and at the universities of Tübingen, Halle and Berlin, where he was successively influenced by Baur and Schmid, by Tholuck and Julius Müller, by David Strauss and, above all, Neander. At Berlin, in 1841, he took the degree of B.D., and passed examinations for a professorship. He then traveled through Italy and Sicily as tutor to Baron Krischer. In 1842 he was Privatdozent in the University of Berlin, where he lectured on exegesis and church history. In 1843 he was called to become professor of church history and Biblical literature in the German Reformed Theological Seminary of Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, then the only seminary of that church in America.
On his journey he stayed in England and met Edward Pusey and other Tractarians. His inaugural address on The Principle of Protestantism, delivered in German at Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1844, and published in German with an English version by John Williamson Nevin was a pioneer work in English in the field of symbolics (that is, the authoritative ecclesiastical formulations of religious doctrines in creeds or confessions). This address and the "Mercersburg Theology" which he taught seemed too pro-Catholic to some, and he was charged with heresy. But, at the synod at York in 1845, he was unanimously acquitted.
Schaff's broad views strongly influenced the German Reformed Church, through his teaching at Mercersburg, through his championship of English in German Reformed churches and schools in America, through his hymnal (1859), through his labours as chairman of the committee which prepared a new liturgy, and by his edition (1863) of the Heidelberg Catechism. His History of the Apostolic Church (in German, 1851; in English, 1853) and his History of the Christian Church (7 vols., 1858-1890), opened a new period in American study of ecclesiastical history.
In 1854, he visited Europe, representing the American German churches at the ecclesiastical diet at Frankfort and at the Swiss pastoral conference at Basel. He lectured in Germany on America, and received the degree of D.D. from Berlin.
In consequence of the ravages of the American Civil War the theological seminary at Mercersburg was closed for a while and so in 1863 Dr. Schaff became secretary of the Sabbath Committee (which fought the “continental Sunday”) in New York City, and held the position till 1870. In 1865 he founded the first German Sunday School in Stuttgart. In 1862-1867 he lectured on church history at Andover.

Schaff was a member of the Leipzig Historical Society, the Netherland Historical Society, and other historical and literary societies in Europe and America. He was one of the founders, and honorary secretary, of the American branch of the Evangelical Alliance, and was sent to Europe in 1869, 1872, and 1873 to arrange for the general conference of the Alliance, which, after two postponements on account of the Franco-Prussian War, was held in New York in October 1873. Schaff was also, in 1871, one of the Alliance delegates to the emperor of Russia to plead for the religious liberty of his subjects in the Baltic provinces.

He became a professor at Union Theological Seminary, New York City in 1870 holding first the chair of theological encyclopedia and Christian symbolism till 1873, of Hebrew and the cognate languages till 1874, of sacred literature till 1887, and finally of church history, till his death. He also served as president of the committee that translated the American Standard Version of the Bible, though he died before it was published in 1901.
His History of the Christian Church resembled Neander's work, though less biographical, and was pictorial rather than philosophical. He also wrote biographies, catechisms and hymnals for children, manuals of religious verse, lectures and essays on Dante, etc. He translated Johann Jakob Herzog's Real-Encyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche into English.
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