Dogma, Drama & Dudgeon
A GENERAL council," says the Most Rev. Thomas Roberts, retired Roman Catholic Archbishop of Bombay, "is a football match at which all the players are bishops." It is an apt likeness, for church councils of the past* were often tense and bitter.
The first eight councils were largely concerned with defining church doctrine. In the process of stamping out heresies, the fathers extracted from the message of Scripture the essential dogmas of the Trinity. Condemning the thought of an Alexandrian priest named Arius, First Nicaea ruled that Christ was...