The history of the Christian church is in many ways a history of theological debate. From its inception, the church has faced doctrinal and practical challenges that have threatened the message of the gospel and the unity of the church. These challenges required believers to define doctrine clearly and develop strategies for disseminating orthodox Christianity in various contexts and among various people groups. For centuries now, church leaders have followed the example the apostles left in Acts 15 in addressing difficult questions by means of a church council. There have been many such councils throughout the history of the church, but many believers are largely unfamiliar with their history and significance. Joseph Kelly’s The Ecumenical Councils of the Catholic Church attempts to reverse this by surveying the key figures, events, and decisions of the twenty-one ecumenical counsels recognized by the Roman Catholic Church.

Written more for the general reader than the scholar, Kelly’s book seeks to “focus on the councils and try to illuminate their historical situations so that we can see each council against the backdrop of its era but without overburdening the historical record” (p. 9). In pursuing this purpose, Kelly concisely presents the reader with a brief sketch of the events leading up to each council, a description of the council’s proceedings, and an analysis of its lasting effects. Because most council decisions had ramifications for later councils, Kelly’s treatment flows nicely from one council to the next and resembles in many ways an introduction to church history generally since these councils take place in virtually every major period of church history.

Tracing and analyzing each council as Kelly presents it exceeds the limits of this appraisal. Therefore, the remainder of this review focuses on two of Kelly’s theological presuppositions through which he interprets the councils and that influence his conclusions.

First, Kelly presupposes that Scripture and theological tradition have equal authority:

As currently constituted, that is, in union with the pope, the ecumenical council is the supreme teaching authority in the Catholic Church. Its doctrinal decisions have, for Catholics, the same authority as Scripture and the traditional teachings of the episcopal magisterium, that is, the bishops’ role as teachers in the church. (p. 3)

This quotation reveals how much importance Roman Catholics place on the ecumenical councils, and it helps the reader understand why Kelly wishes to inform the laity about the decisions of the councils. Decisions made by ecumenical councils, according to Kelly, are “the supreme teaching authority in the Catholic Church.” This presupposition naturally impacts the author’s evaluation of the respective councils in that the councils are not necessarily judged in relationship to their affinity to Scripture itself. A Protestant who is committed to the principle of sola Scriptura will no doubt evaluate the councils differently, focusing on whether a council’s decision has biblical warrant. Fortunately, this presupposition remains largely in the background and does not normally detract from the presentation of historical events.

Second, Kelly presupposes doctrinal development. This concept has its roots in the teaching of John Henry Newman (1801–90), who taught that the church’s doctrine can and does change in accordance with new scientific and intellectual discoveries. Kelly illustrates the point by appealing to the fact that an Augustinian concept of original sin can longer be accepted by the church since evolutionary science has demonstrated that the Genesis account, with its tale of Adam and Eve, is not true history (pp. 3–4). The idea of doctrinal development naturally has profound ramifications for a history of church councils. For Kelly, the councils are capable of producing new doctrine, and some of the instances of doctrinal developments he considers are rather surprising. Kelly writes,

For example, trinitarian references or allusions to Christ’s divinity abound in the New Testament, and so the bishops claimed that their teaching drew out what the Bible did not say fully, but, at the same time, they recognized that they had indeed taught something new. Later generations would call this process the doctrine of development (p. 25).

Here Kelly makes it sound as if the doctrine of Christ’s deity was, at least in some way, a new belief for the church beginning around a.d. 325. A few pages later, Kelly notes that even the Gospel of John reflects the “growing belief in Christ’s divinity” that would become universal in the next century (p. 34). Doctrinal development also becomes important in Kelly’s understanding of the Reformation in that he attributes the rapid growth of Protestantism to lay people not understanding the nuances of doctrinal development. He writes, “Since the Catholics relied upon development of doctrine for much of the elements of their faith, Luther’s Bible showed Germans that many Catholic teachings and practices, such as the seven sacraments, had no explicit biblical foundation” (p. 130). Finally, Kelly’s commitment to doctrinal development impacts his treatment of Vatican I and Vatican II: Vatican I is “anti-Modernist” (p. 178), while Vatican II “embraced the modern world” (p. 202).

While Protestant readers will rightly have serious objections to Kelly’s two presuppositions, they will still profit from reading what is a good overall treatment of the ecumenical councils.

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