Council of Arles

The Council of Arles was a church council held in 314 at Arles (Latin Arelate, in present-day southern France), a city in the Roman province of Gaul. A council is a gathering of representatives from various regional churches to settle matters of doctrine and discipline. Several later church councils also met at Arles, but the name "Council of Arles" usually refers to the council of 314.

Background

During the persecution under Emperor Diocletian (which began around 303), clergy in North Africa who had surrendered copies of Scripture and church property to the authorities were called traditores ("those who handed over"). Around 311, Caecilian was made bishop of Carthage (a bishop being the cleric responsible for the church of a region), and accusations arose that Felix of Aptunga, who had consecrated him, had been a traditor. The bishops of Numidia refused to recognize Caecilian and set up Majorinus as a rival bishop. When Donatus succeeded Majorinus, this group came to be known as the Donatists. The Donatists held that sacraments administered by clergy who had abandoned the faith during persecution were invalid.

In response to an appeal from the Donatists, Emperor Constantine referred the case to a council at Rome in 313, presided over by Miltiades, bishop of Rome. That council ruled in favor of Caecilian. When the Donatists refused to accept the verdict, the emperor summoned bishops from a wider area to examine the matter again.

Proceedings

The council met in August 314. Marinus, bishop of Arles, is said to have presided. Sylvester I, bishop of Rome, did not attend in person but sent presbyters and deacons as his representatives. Bishops gathered from Gaul, Italy, Hispania (Spain), North Africa, and Britannia (Britain); the surviving list of signatories is reported to contain a little over thirty bishops. Because the list includes the names of three bishops from Britain, the council is frequently cited as evidence for the existence of the early British church.

The council reaffirmed Caecilian's position and rejected the charges brought by the Donatists. It also adopted some twenty canons, whose main provisions were as follows:

• Easter is to be observed on the same day by the whole church, with the date announced by the bishop of Rome.
• Those who received baptism within heretical groups in the name of the triune God are not to be rebaptized but are to receive only the laying on of hands. This decision departed from the North African practice of rebaptism.
• Clergy proven by public records to have handed over the Scriptures or similar items are to be deposed. However, ordinations they had previously performed are recognized as valid.
• A bishop is not to be consecrated by a single bishop but by at least three bishops together.
• Other canons addressed the movement of clergy, the treatment of apostates, and related matters. One canon concerns military service, though its meaning is disputed.

Outcome and Influence

The Donatists appealed to the emperor once more. Constantine heard the case personally at Milan in 316 and likewise sided with Caecilian. The empire suppressed the Donatists by force for a time but later turned to a policy of toleration, and the Donatists remained a major force in North Africa for a long time afterward. In the early fifth century, Augustine, writing against the Donatists, developed the argument that the efficacy of the sacraments depends on Christ rather than on the moral worthiness of the minister. The council's decision on baptism and the laying on of hands is regarded as an early instance of this reasoning.

As a church council convened by the emperor, the Council of Arles served as a precedent for the Council of Nicaea (325), held eleven years later. The question of establishing a single date for Easter was also taken up again at Nicaea.

Assessment

The Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church regard this council as a regional council of part of the West and do not count it as a council of the whole church (an ecumenical council). Opinions differ regarding the emperor's direct involvement in a church dispute. Some critics see it as the point at which the church began to rely on state power, while others regard it as a practical measure to prevent schism.

During the Reformation, Luther, Calvin, and other mainstream Reformers drew on Augustine's reasoning to hold that baptism received in the Roman church need not be repeated. They also criticized the Anabaptists, who advocated believer's baptism, by likening them to the Donatists. The Anabaptists and the churches in their tradition reject this comparison, maintaining that their concern was not the worthiness of the minister but baptism grounded in a profession of faith. Among Korean churches, too, denominations differ on how to recognize baptism received in other denominations. Many Baptist churches take baptism by immersion following a profession of faith as the standard (see Baptism and Immersion).

After Korea's liberation in 1945, the question of penitential withdrawal and reinstatement for ministers who had taken part in Shinto shrine worship became a major source of conflict within Korean Presbyterianism. Some writers have explained this conflict by comparison with the Donatist controversy.