Update and New Blog Series

As expected, my New Year's/Lenten Resolution to work on Greek every day has gone by the wayside since the birth of my son (he will be 4 months old tomorrow!), so my plans to do that on my blog have followed accordingly.  At least I've been keeping up about once a week, but that has slowed progress significantly.  And with the political season kicking into gear (since that's what I do in real life), it'll probably stay stagnated like that for the next year or more.

Besides which, Pr. Jonathan Fisk over at Worldview Everlasting does excellent Greek Tuesday videos almost every week (I would highly recommend starting with his recent video on the Lord's Prayer from Luke), and those are much better than anything I could come up with on my humble little blog--so go watch and enjoy!

However, I'd like to have a little more depth to this blog besides just Heresies (as much fun as those are), and occasional theological screeds.

Hump day is now "Church Council Wednesday", which I'll start in the next few weeks (depending on when I have time to queue up my first set of posts on the topic).  I'm not going to go crazy in-depth because there are a plethora of sites that do so already--some of which I will link to in my posts--but I will give a basic overview of each council: reason(s) called, major players, controversies, related heresies, and results of the council.

I've done some research already into them, and have compiled the following color-coded list.  The key below will show you which councils are recognized as ecumenical by which groups.  If I've missed a council, or mislabeled one, please let me know.

Key:

Universally recognized as Ecumenical

Recognized as Ecumenical by the Roman Catholic Church

Recognized as Ecumenical by the Eastern Orthodox Church

Not recognized as Ecumenical by any church body

• Council of Jerusalem (Apostolic Council) (50)
• First Council of Nicaea (325)
• First Council of Constantinople (381)
• Council of Ephesus (431)
• Second Council of Ephesus (449)
• Council of Chalcedon (451)
• Second Council of Constantinople (553)
• Third Council of Constantinople (680-681)
• Quinisext Council (Council in Trullo) (692)
• Council of Hieria (754)
• Lateran Council (769)
• Second Council of Nicaea (787)
• Fourth Council of Constantinople (869-870)
• Fifth Council of Constantinople (879–880)
• First Council of the Lateran (1123)
• Second Council of the Lateran (1139)
• Third Council of the Lateran (1179)
• Fourth Council of the Lateran (1215)
• First Council of Lyon (1245)
• Second Council of Lyon (1274)
• Council of Vienne (1311-1312)
• Council of Constantinople (1341–1351)
• Council of Pisa (1409)
• Fifth Council of Constance (1414-1418)
• Council of Siena (1423–1424)
• Council of Basel, Ferrara and Florence (1431-1445)
• Fifth Council of the Lateran (1512-1517)
• Council of Trent (1545-1563)
• First Synod of Jerusalem (1583)
• Second Synod of Jerusalem (1672)
• First Vatican Council (1870)
• Second Vatican Council (1962-1965)

I'm also planning on an "Early Church Father of the Month" series, beginning with a list by century of Early Church Fathers.  There are a number of excellent resources online where you can read many of their works, particularly the more "obscure" Fathers (it's much harder to find their writings intact and/or in print), which I've started compiling as well.  I am hopefully that I can get that series up and running this Fall.

Since Google Reader has gone away (I've done much grumbling over this), I've begun listing all the confessional Lutheran blogs I follow on the side.  I haven't quite finished that list yet, but the majority is up there now.

Finally, a little project of mine (the genesis for all the content of this blog, in fact) will hopefully be getting more attention now that I'm sleeping most of the way through the night again.  Stay tuned for more on that in the coming months.