Appendix 1: The Ecumenical Councils and Conciliarity

This article is a chapter taken from a work by Antoine Kartachev, a Russian theologian and churchman who served as the last Procurator of the Holy Synod before the restoration of the Moscow Patriarchate in 1918. Written in the early twentieth century, the text addresses the question of convening a future Orthodox council, examining the ecclesiological and historical conditions that would determine its form and legitimacy. The approach combines historical analysis with theological reflection on the nature of conciliarity in the Orthodox Church. The central idea is that conciliarity does not constitute a mere institutional mechanism, but a constitutive dimension of the very being of the Church. The contribution of this text lies in the articulation between the heritage of the ecumenical councils and the ecclesial challenges specific to the author's contemporary Orthodoxy.