§ 65. THE ECUMENICAL COUNCILS. 3iii
gree of its conformity to the Holy Scriptures ; while the Gieek and Roman churches make Scripture and tradition coordinate. The Protestant church justly holds the lirst four general councils in high, though not servile, veneration, and has received their statements of doctrine into her confessions of faith, because she perceives in them, though compassed v^ith human imperfection, the clearest and most suitable expression of the teaching of the Scriptures respecting the Trinity and the divinehuman person of Christ. Beyond these statements the judgment of the churcli (which must be carefully distinguished from theological speculation) has not to this day materially advanced ; — the highest tribute to the wisdom and importance of those councils. But this is not saying that the IS'icene and the later Athanasian creeds are the non jplns ultra of all the church's knowledge of the articles therein defined. Rather is it the duty of theology and of the church, while prizing and holding fast those earlier attainments, to study the same problems ever anew, to penetrate further and further these sacred fundamental mysteries of Christianity, and to bring to light new treasures from the inexhaustible mines of the Word of God, under the guidance of the same Holy Spirit, who lives and works in the church at this day as mightily as he did in the fifth century and the fourth. Christology, for example, by the de^'elopment of the doctrine of the two states of Chi-ist ir the Lutheran church, and of the three ofl&ces of Christ in tlie Reformed, has been substantially enriched ; the old Catholic doctrine, which was fixed with unerring tact at the council of Chalcedon, being directly concerned only with the two natures of Christ, as against the dualism of Nestorius and the monophysitism of Eutyches.
With this provision for further and deeper soimdings of Scripture truth. Protestantism feels itself one with the ancient Greek and Latin church in the bond of ecumenical orthodoxy. But toward the disciplinary canons of the ecumenical councils its position is still more free and independent than that of the Roman church. Those canons are based upon an essentially anprotestant, that is, hierarchical and sacrificial conception of church order and worship, which the Lutheran and Anglican
346 TnmD period, a.d. 311-590.
reformation in part, aLcI the Zwinglian and Calvinistic almost entirely renounced. Yet this is not to say that much may not Btill be learned, in the sphere of discipline, from those touncils, and that perhaps many an ancient custom or institution is not worthy to bo revived in the spirit of evangelical freedom.
The moral character of those councils was substantially parallel with that of earlier and later ecclesiastical assemblies^ and cannot therefore be made a criterion of their historical importance and their dogmatic authority. They faithfully reflect both the light and the shade of the ancient church. They bear the heavenly treasure in earthen vessels. If even among the inspired apostles at the council of Jerusalem there was much debate,' and soon after, among Peter, Paul, and Barnabas, a violent, though only temporary collision, we must of course expect much worse of the bishops of the JSTicene and the succeeding age, and of a church already interwoven with a morally degenerate state. Together with abundant talents, attainments, and virtu 65,^ there were gathered also at the cquncils_^gnorance, intngues, and partisan passions, which had already been excited on all sides by long controversies preceding, and now met and arrayed themselves, as hostile armies, for open combat. For those great councils, all occasioned by controversies on the most important and the most difficult problems of theology, are, in fact, to the history of doctrine, what decisive battles are to the history of war. Just because religion is the deepest and holiest interest of man, are religiiiuapassions wont to be the most violeiiL.and.bitter_; especially in a time when all classes, from imperial court to market stall, take the liveliest interest in theological speculation, and are flrawn into the common vortex of excitement. Hence the notorious rabies ilieologorum was more active in the fourth and fifth centuries than it has been in any other period of history, excepting, perhaps, in the great revolution of the sixteenth century, and the confessioncl polemics of the seventeenth.
"We have on tins point the testimony of contemporaries and
' Acts IV. 6: VioKKr\% o-y^TjTrjiTfcos yivo}xivi\^\ which Luther indeed renden quite too strongly: "After they had wrangled long." The English versions from Tyiidale to King .Tames translate : " much disputing."