The relationship between the Church and ecumenical council is reduced to essential questions, as if the council is an institution that has canonical authority itself therefore its dogmatic decisions are valid as such. In this case the acceptance is only an act in which the Church assimilates, interpret and develop the decisions of the Councils.
If the council is dependent upon the acceptance of the Church, then his decisions become valid after the acceptance by the Church, because the infallibility of the Council depends on the infallibility of the Church, and not the other way. In general, the ecumenical councils were interpreted themselves with the legitimate voice of the Church without their formal acceptance of the Church. For this reason, those that did not accept the decisions of the Councils were not considered Orthodox. The Catholic historian De Vries maintains that cannot be proved that an ecumenical council was corrected by the Church or by another council, therefore a council is ecumenical even before the acceptance by the Church, as is the Fourth Ecumenical Council of Chalcedony (AD 541).
For the Church, the ecumenical Council was not simply an ecclesiastical institution that is not in junction with the Church. The ecumenical councils even if the emperors called them, did not have an imperial institution. The emperors sign the synod acts without voting or to influence the decisions, leaving to the bishop's full autonomy in debates.
The Church has worked from beginning with the Synods, which corresponds even with her being of a community of faith. In this sense, the synod is not only an expression of the Church, but an institution that corresponds to the structure of the Church, of conciliator organism. On the other hand the universal Church has a synodical structure, that is she is constituted as a universal community of local communities.
The place of the synod in the structure of the Church is evident only if is considered the sacramental basis and the principle of synodality. If the synod is considered only on the canonical aspect, then we can consider the non-permanent character and non-obligatory of it. The council should be in relationship with the sacramentality of the Church, therefore to be considered as an authentic and permanent institution of the Church. The council's structure of the Church is observed in the act of ordination of a bishop (gr. episcopos - supervisor, pastor, guide), when the new bishop makes the confession of faith in front of a group of bishops and is consecrated in function of more bishops that partake from the same chalice.
