Council of Chalcedon
- When
- 451 AD
- Where
- Chalcedon
- Kind
- Division
Defined Christ as one person in two natures. The Coptic, Syriac and Armenian churches rejected the formula, becoming the Oriental Orthodox.
Chalcedon defined Christ as one person in two natures, divine and human, without confusion, change, division or separation — a formula built on Leo's Tome and intended to hold the middle against both Nestorius and Eutyches. To the churches of Egypt, Syria and Armenia it read as a concession to the language Ephesus had condemned, and they held instead to Cyril's "one incarnate nature of the Word". They did not accept the council, and the empire spent the next two centuries alternately coercing and courting them. Fifteen hundred years later, dialogues between the Oriental Orthodox and both Rome and Constantinople concluded that the two sides confess the same faith in different vocabularies, which is the finding of those dialogues rather than a verdict of this site. Its canon 28, again raising Constantinople, was rejected by Rome.
Bodies it bears on
Began here
Who stands here
- Leo the Great
c. 400–461
His Tome was read out and substantially adopted
Either side of it
The whole timeline, from the apostolic communities to the present.