The Definition and the Non-Chalcedonians

Chalcedon defined Christ as one person and one hypostasis “acknowledged in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.” The Definition is the charter of Orthodox Christology; but its “in two natures” was rejected by those who held Cyril’s “one incarnate nature,” and the Oriental Orthodox Churches separated. This file presents the Definition, the disputed canon 28, and — from both sides, without polemic — the terminology question, the nature of the separation, and the modern dialogues and Agreed Statements.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Chalcedonian Definition

The council’s crowning act was the Definition of Faith (Horos), adopted at its fifth session on 22 October 451 after intense negotiation — the bishops at first wished to rest on Cyril’s letters and the Tome alone, but the imperial commissioners and the Roman legates pressed for a fresh, precise formula, and a committee produced the text (Acts of Chalcedon, Session 5; Price and Gaddis, The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, 2005, vol. 2). The Definition first ratifies Nicaea and Constantinople, receives Cyril’s synodical letters and Leo’s Tome as their authentic interpretation, and then defines:

“Following the holy Fathers, we all with one voice teach… one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, acknowledged in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation (en dyo physesin asynchytōs, atreptōs, adiairetōs, achōristōs); the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring into one Person (prosōpon) and one Subsistence (hypostasis), not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ.”
(Council of Chalcedon, Definition of Faith, 451; trans. Percival, NPNF, Second Series, vol. 14)

The four adverbs are the boundary-stones of orthodox Christology. “Without confusion” and “without change” exclude Eutyches, who mingled or altered the natures; “without division” and “without separation” exclude Nestorius, who split the one Christ into two subjects. The Definition holds together, in one formula, everything the previous councils had won: the one subject of Ephesus and Cyril (one prosōpon, one hypostasis) and the full, unimpaired duality of Godhead and manhood of the Antiochene tradition and of Leo (two physeis, each keeping its property). It is, in the settled judgment of the Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and most Protestant Churches, the definitive grammar of the Incarnation.

Canon 28

Chalcedon also issued disciplinary canons, of which the twenty-eighth is the most consequential and the most contested. Canon 28 renewed canon 3 of Constantinople I and granted the see of Constantinople “equal privileges” (isa presbeia) with Old Rome, ranking second after it, and gave Constantinople the right to ordain the metropolitans of the civil dioceses of Pontus, Asia, and Thrace — again on the stated ground that Constantinople is New Rome, the city of the emperor and senate (Council of Chalcedon, canon 28; trans. NPNF, Second Series, vol. 14). The Roman legates, absent when it was passed, protested it the next day, and Pope Leo refused to confirm it, insisting that the order of sees rests on Petrine apostolicity (Rome, Alexandria, Antioch as Petrine sees), not on imperial standing (Leo, Epistles 104–106; Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology, 1979, on canon 28 and the two theories of primacy). Canon 28 thus crystallizes the ecclesiological fault line between East and West: primacy grounded in imperial-conciliar order versus primacy grounded in the Petrine apostolate. The Orthodox Church received the canon and holds it as authoritative; Rome long refused it — and the Petrine theory of universal primacy on which that refusal rested is a doctrine the Church has examined and not received, though the question of primacy remains central to every East–West dialogue.

The Separation of the Non-Chalcedonians

Chalcedon healed one rift and opened another that has never closed. Large parts of the Christian East — above all Egypt, with much of Syria and Armenia — rejected the Definition. To them, “in two natures” (en dyo physesin) sounded like a betrayal of Cyril and a concession to Nestorius: Cyril had confessed “one incarnate nature of God the Word” (mia physis tou Theou Logou sesarkōmenē), and to number two natures after the union seemed to divide the one Christ (Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought, 1975, on the anti-Chalcedonian reaction; Davis, The First Seven Ecumenical Councils, 1990). Over the following century, despite imperial efforts at reconciliation (the Henotikon of Zeno, 482; the Fifth Council’s Cyrillian re-reading of Chalcedon in 553 — see Constantinople II: The Three Chapters), the breach hardened into separate hierarchies. The result is the family of Churches now called Oriental Orthodox — the Coptic, Syriac (Syrian), Armenian, Ethiopian, Eritrean, and Malankara (Indian) Churches — which receive the first three Ecumenical Councils but not Chalcedon and those after it.

A crucial clarification, and the whole point of the modern dialogues: the Oriental Orthodox are not Eutychians. They condemn Eutyches as firmly as the Chalcedonians do; they confess Christ fully God and fully man, consubstantial with the Father in Godhead and with us in manhood, the humanity in no way diminished or absorbed. Their formula is “one united nature” out of two — divinity and humanity united without confusion, without change, without mixture, without separation — for which they prefer the term Miaphysite (from mia, “one,” + physis), reserving “Monophysite” for the Eutychian heresy they reject (see the fair statement in Orthodoxy: The Seven Ecumenical Councils). It should therefore be a settled rule of honest treatment — and it is this collection’s rule — not to call the Oriental Orthodox “Monophysites” as if they held Eutyches’ error; they do not.

The Terminology Question — Both Sides

At the heart of the fifteen-century separation lies a genuine and still-debated question: is the difference between “in two natures” (Chalcedonian) and “one united nature out of two” (Miaphysite) a difference of doctrine or of terminology? Per the methodology of this collection, the two positions are set out in their strongest form, and not adjudicated.

`[Disputed: whether the Chalcedonian and Non-Chalcedonian Christologies differ in faith or only in the use of the word physis.

(a) The convergence view — that the difference is fundamentally terminological. On this reading, “nature” (physis) did not mean the same thing on both sides. The Cyrillian/Miaphysite tradition used physis to mean the one concrete, living reality of the incarnate Christ (close to “hypostasis”), so that “one nature” affirms his unity, not the loss of his humanity; the Chalcedonian tradition used physis abstractly for “that which each thing is” (Godhead, manhood), so that “two natures” affirms the completeness of both, not a division of the person. Since each side affirms exactly what the other means to affirm — one Christ, fully God and fully man, unconfused and undivided — and condemns exactly what the other condemns (both Nestorius and Eutyches), the two are held to profess “the same authentic Orthodox Christological faith” in different words. This is the position of the official Joint Commission’s Agreed Statements (Anba Bishoy, 1989; Chambésy, 1990), of theologians such as V. C. Samuel and, among the Eastern Orthodox, of John Romanides and others, and it is supported by the observation that the mature Cyril himself accepted “two natures” language in the Formula of Reunion of 433 (McGuckin, St. Cyril of Alexandria, 1994; Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought, 1975).

(b) The real-difference view — that a genuine doctrinal and ecclesial difference remains, not to be dissolved by terminological analysis. On this reading, the Chalcedonian confession of the abiding duality of natures “in” the one hypostasis, and the corresponding doctrine of the two wills and two energies defined at the Sixth Council (which the Non-Chalcedonians did not receive), express something the Miaphysite formula tends to obscure; and there remains the hard fact that the Oriental Orthodox reject four councils the Eastern Orthodox hold to be ecumenical and dogmatically binding — including the condemnation of Dioscorus and Severus, whom they venerate as saints — and reject the Tome of Leo. Critics of the reunion (including on the Athonite and traditionalist Eastern Orthodox side, and voices within the Oriental Orthodox Churches wary of compromising their own tradition) hold that reception of Chalcedon and of the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Councils, and the removal of the mutual anathemas, cannot be waived, and that the Agreed Statements moved too fast. Named opponents on the Eastern Orthodox side include the objections raised by monastics of Mount Athos and by hierarchs who declined to ratify the Statements.

The two sides are not adjudicated here; the collection reports that the official dialogue reached the convergence conclusion while full synodal reception has not followed on either side.]`

The Modern Dialogues and Agreed Statements

An official theological dialogue between the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches, prepared by unofficial consultations from the 1960s, produced two Agreed Statements of its Joint Commission: the First (Anba Bishoy Monastery, Egypt, 1989) and the Second (Chambésy, Geneva, 1990). The Second Agreed Statement concluded that the two families “have always loyally maintained the same authentic Orthodox Christological faith, and the unbroken continuity of the apostolic tradition,” differing in the use of terms but not in the substance of the faith, and recommended the lifting of the mutual anathemas and the restoration of communion (Second Agreed Statement of the Joint Commission, Chambésy, 1990). Yet — and this is the decisive fact as of the mid-2020s — these Statements have not received full synodal reception on either side, several Churches and monastic centers (notably on Mount Athos) having raised objections, and communion has not been restored (see the same sober note in Orthodoxy: The Seven Ecumenical Councils). The dialogue thus stands as a genuine and hopeful convergence that awaits, and may not receive, the ratifying reception of the whole Church — a living illustration of the reception principle set out in Section 01 (see Ecumenicity and Reception). This collection presents the dialogue fairly, as neither a completed reunion nor a failure, but as an open question the Churches continue to weigh.

See Also

References

  • Council of Chalcedon (451). Definition of Faith; Canon 28. In Percival, ed., NPNF, Second Series, vol. 14; and in Price and Gaddis (below).
  • Price, Richard, and Michael Gaddis. The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon. 3 vols. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2005.
  • Leo the Great. Epistles 104–106 (on canon 28). Trans. NPNF, Second Series, vol. 12.
  • First and Second Agreed Statements of the Joint Commission of the Theological Dialogue between the Orthodox Church and the Oriental Orthodox Churches (Anba Bishoy Monastery, 1989; Chambésy, 1990).
  • Davis, Leo Donald. The First Seven Ecumenical Councils. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1990.
  • McGuckin, John A. St. Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy. Leiden: Brill, 1994.
  • Meyendorff, John. Christ in Eastern Christian Thought. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1975; Byzantine Theology, New York: Fordham University Press, 1979.
  • Samuel, V. C. The Council of Chalcedon Re-Examined. Madras: Christian Literature Society, 1977 (a representative Oriental Orthodox study).