19.

 Although it is not mentioned in the textbook, can you name one set of local councils which dealt with the same subject, and which obtained ecumenical authority and inclusion in the Synodikon of Orthodoxy?

            Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos devotes the entire last chapter of his book The Mind of the Orthodox Church to the Synodikon of Orthodoxy. Giving background information, he explains that through the ages, various heresies appeared that denied God's revelation and made use of philosophy and conjecture. When some heresy would spring up, the Holy Fathers would oppose it at the place where it appeared. (The heretic Arius, for example, was confronted by the Council of Alexandria, but when his heretical opinions began to be disseminated beyond the borders of Alexandria as well, the subject was confronted by the First Ecumenical Council). In their confrontations with the heretics, the Holy Fathers who formed the Synods did not seek to find the truth by making conjectures by reasoning and imagination. Instead, they attempted to formulate in words the already-existing revealed Truth, of which they also had in their own personal experience. The mind of the Church is linked to, and is in harmony with, the decisions of the Fathers of the Church as it has been expressed with conciliar authority.

            The metropolitan also explains that the decisions of the Synods on dogmatic topics are called provisions, and more generally speaking, each decision of the Synods is called a synodikon. Thus, there is a symbolical tome and a synodical provision, and moreover, each Synod has its own synodikon.

            Concerning the Synodikon of Orthodoxy, it is a text contained in the Lenten Triodion and is read on the first Sunday of Great Lent, the Sunday of Orthodoxy, whence its name. This text contains the decisions of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, which refer to the veneration of holy icons. To it, there was later added the definition of faith of the hesychastic councils of the fourteenth century, which addressed St. Gregory Palamas' confrontation with the heretic Barlaam. Thus, the Synodikon of Orthodoxy comprises the decisions of both the Seventh Ecumenical Council and the councils of the fourteenth century. It is a holy text, one which, as the metropolitan explains, sums up the entire orthodox teaching of Christ's Church.