Chalcedon · 451

“The Definition of the Synod at Chalcedon.” A ὅρος was a boundary stone marking the edge of a field. The councils used the word for a doctrinal definition, which sets limits within which the church confesses Christ. The Definition does not explain how Christ is God and man; it fences off the ways of getting it wrong.

The Definition of Chalcedon, AD 451, in Greek, Latin and English

Tap a word to light up its counterparts and open its parsing, New Testament usage, dictionary entries and Reformed echoes. Drag the column names to reorder the languages.

Reformed reception Three articles Further reading

Reformed reception

How the Reformation confessions took up Chalcedon’s language. Tap an underlined phrase to see the words of the Definition behind it; tap a word in the Definition to find the confessions that echo it.

Three articles

Three modern studies, each read against the Definition above. Page references are to the printed articles.

Gerald Bray, “Can We Dispense with Chalcedon?”

Themelios 3.2 (January 1978), 2–9. Bray answers the two standing charges: that the Definition imposes Greek philosophy on Scripture, and that it is docetic. His case is that its logic comes from the New Testament.

“Chalcedon did not adopt philosophy: it took some basic philosophical words and forged a theology based on Scripture. Its logic is a systematization of the logic inherent in Scripture, not a philosophical corruption of primitive texts.”

On the central phrase, he notes that the Definition says Christ is “made known in two natures” and does not say how:

“Chalcedon contented itself with the mystery that Jesus was one person ‘made known in two natures’.”

Against the charge of docetism, he argues that the humanity serves the revelation of God. Leo’s “impersonal” humanity means only that Jesus was never a mere man, and “was not a split personality”. And of Robinson’s functional christology:

“The Chalcedonian position is nothing like this—Jesus’ humanity in orthodox thought is not a barrier but a means to the perception of God.”

Thomas Weinandy, “The Council of Chalcedon: Some Contemporary Christological Issues”

Theology Digest 53:4 (Winter 2006), 345–56 (PDF). Weinandy first reads the Definition closely. It says “one and the same” three times and “the same” five times, and from that he concludes:

“There is only one subject or person; there is only one ‘who,’ and that one ‘who’ is the one Son or Word of God.”Weinandy, 346

From this he draws three truths that any later christology must keep:

“First, it is truly the Son of God who is man. … Second, it is truly man that the Son of God is. … Third, the Son of God truly is man.”Weinandy, 347

He then applies them. On method, christology is ontologically “from above” (the Son assumes a human nature) and epistemologically “from below” (we know who he is through his human words and deeds). On miracles, an act such as raising Lazarus is one the Son performs as man:

“Miracles are what is traditionally termed ‘theandric’ actions, that is, divine deeds done humanly.”Weinandy, 349

On suffering, it is the Son who suffers, in his human nature:

“…what is redemptive is not that the Son of God suffered as God, but that he truly suffered as man.”Weinandy, 350

And on the person of Christ, “person” names a “who” and not a missing extra part. Jesus has a full human body, mind and will, but his identity is the Son’s (352–53).

M. Highton, “Christology”

In Davie et al. (eds), New Dictionary of Theology: Historical and Systematic, 177–78. Highton is brief about what the Definition does not do:

“Chalcedon did not offer a coherent metaphysical theory of how this unity-in-distinction was possible, but rather laid down a set of parameters and provided a language that allows the emphases of both sides to be articulated.”Highton, 177

That fits the ὅρος at the top of this page: a boundary, with the four adverbs marking its edges. He also sets out the two technical terms behind “one Person and one Subsistence”. Christ’s human life has no reality of its own outside the union (anhypostasia) and is given its reality only in and by it (enhypostasia).

Further reading

Start here

  • Gerald Bray, “Can We Dispense with Chalcedon?”, Themelios 3.2 (1978), 2–9.A short defence of the Definition against the charges that it is Greek, docetic and unbiblical.
  • Thomas Weinandy, “The Council of Chalcedon: Some Contemporary Christological Issues”, Theology Digest 53:4 (Winter 2006), 345–56 (PDF).What Chalcedon said, the three truths that follow from it, and how they bear on miracles, suffering, Jesus’ self-knowledge and personhood.
  • John Webster, “The Place of Christology in Systematic Theology”, in The Oxford Handbook of Christology (OUP, 2015), 611–25.On method.

Weinandy

  • Thomas Weinandy, “The Doctrinal Significance of the Councils of Nicaea, Ephesus, and Chalcedon”, in Francesca Aran Murphy (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Christology (OUP, 2015), ch. 35 (PDF).The fuller treatment. It opens with the same three incarnational truths and works through each council.
  • Jesus the Christ (Our Sunday Visitor, 2003).His one-volume Christology.
  • In the Likeness of Sinful Flesh: An Essay on the Humanity of Christ (T&T Clark, 1993).
  • Does God Change? The Word’s Becoming in the Incarnation (St. Bede’s, 1985), and Does God Suffer? (University of Notre Dame Press, 2000).The first, pp. 63–66, is where the lecture sends readers for Chalcedon; the second for the suffering of the Son.

The sources

  • Leo I, Epistle 28 to Flavian (the Tome), NPNF² 12.
  • Cyril of Alexandria, Epistles 4 and 17, ed. Wickham.His Second and Third Letters to Nestorius, the latter with the twelve anathemas.
  • Athanasius, On the Incarnation, NPNF² 4.
  • Aloys Grillmeier, Christ in the Christian Tradition, vol. 1 (Mowbrays, 1975).
  • R. V. Sellers, The Council of Chalcedon (SPCK, 1953).Cited by Bray on “made known”.

Chalcedon and Scripture

  • Morna Hooker, “Chalcedon and the New Testament”, in Coakley & Pailin (eds), The Making and Remaking of Christian Doctrine (Clarendon, 1993), 73–93.
  • Donald Macleod, The Person of Christ (IVP, 1998).

Reformed

  • John Calvin, Institutes II.xii–xiv; John Owen, Christologia, Works vol. 1, 223–57.

Definition: Greek and Latin as printed in Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, vol. 2 (1877), with Schaff’s English. The Greek follows ἐν δύο φύσεσιν, with the variant ἐκ δύο φύσεων in brackets. Alignment and parsing are by sense and were prepared for this page.

New Testament: Greek from the SBL Greek New Testament (CC BY 4.0) with lemmas from MorphGNT (CC BY-SA); Latin from the Vulgate and English from the King James Version (public domain). Counts are occurrences of the lemma in the SBLGNT; for the article, pronouns, prepositions and particles they are from the Nestle 1904 text via Macula Greek (CC BY 4.0).

Lexicons: Abbott-Smith, Manual Greek Lexicon of the NT (1922; public domain, digital edition by the Abbott-Smith project); Liddell–Scott–Jones (9th ed., 1940) and Lewis & Short (1879) from the Perseus Digital Library’s TEI editions (CC BY-SA 4.0), cached in the page and shortened; each LSJ entry links to the full text on Logeion.

Confessions: Thirty-nine Articles (1563/1571), Belgic Confession (English as in Schaff, vol. 3), Westminster Confession and Larger Catechism (1647–48); Second Helvetic Confession in Bullinger’s Latin from Schaff, vol. 3, with an English translation prepared for this page.