The Councils We Share
Three great Councils are received in full by every Orthodox Christian alive. They contain everything necessary to confess Christ rightly.
Why councils at all
Because the Church settled disputes this way from the beginning. When the first serious question arose, whether Gentile converts must keep the Law, the Apostles and elders gathered in Jerusalem, debated, and wrote a decision beginning “it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us” (Acts 15:6-29). Every later council is an imitation of that.
Note what a council is for: to end division. Not to create it. Every one of the great councils was called because the Body was tearing.
Nicaea: 325
Against: Arius, who taught the Son was a creature.
Confessed: The Son begotten of the Father, of one essence with the Father, true God of true God.
Note: St Athanasius of Alexandria was among its leading figures. A saint of both families.
Constantinople: 381
Against: Those denying the full divinity of the Holy Spirit.
Confessed: The Holy Spirit, Lord and Giver of life, proceeding from the Father, worshipped and glorified with Father and Son.
Note: Completed the Creed as we still recite it.
Ephesus: 431
Against: Nestorius, whose teaching was understood to divide Christ into two subjects.
Confessed: One Christ, one Son, one Lord, and therefore the Virgin Mary is truly Theotokos.
Note: Led by St Cyril of Alexandria, whose Christology is the common inheritance of both families.
Ephesus is the hinge. Everything both families hold about the union of God and man in Christ was already settled here, twenty years before Chalcedon. And Ephesus is received by both.
And afterwards
The Eastern Orthodox receive four further Ecumenical Councils, Chalcedon (451), Constantinople II (553), Constantinople III (680-681) and Nicaea II (787), seven in all. The Oriental Orthodox receive the first three as Ecumenical.
Be precise about what is at stake. On the doctrinal content those later councils defended, that Christ is one Person truly God and truly man; that His humanity is complete, including a human will; that icons may rightly be venerated, the Oriental Orthodox already believe every point. They venerate icons and always have. They confess the completeness of Christ’s humanity. What differs is the formal reception of the councils as Ecumenical, along with the canonical and personal questions bound to them: the anathemas each side pronounced on particular Fathers.
That is a real question and it belongs to the bishops. But it is a question about reception and about the memory of saints, not about whether we believe the same thing concerning Christ.