Chalcedonian
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Chalcedonian refers to churches and theologians which accept the definition given at the Council of Chalcedon (451 a.d.) of how the divine and human relate in the person of Jesus Christ. While most modern Christian churches are Chalcedonian, in the 5th - 8th centuries of the common era the ascendancy of Chalcedonian Christology was not always certain. Many Armenians were also Chalcedonians [1], especially in the region of Cappadocia and Trebizond inside the Byzantine Empire, who engaged in polemics against the Armenian church. [2]
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[edit] The Chalcedonian Definition
The Chalcedonian understanding of how the divine and human relate in the person of Jesus is that the two natures (divine and human) are united in one person (Christ). This view, known as the hypostatic union, became the official theological understanding after it was endorsed by the Council of Chalcedon. The opposing view, that the person Jesus had only one nature, was known as Monophysitism.
[edit] Dissent from the Chalcedonian view
In accepting the hypostatic union, those present at the Council of Chalcedon rejected the Trinitarian heresies of the Arians, Modalists, and Ebionites (these views had also been rejected at the Council of Nicaea in 325 c.e.).
Those present at the Council also rejected the Christological views of the Nestorians, Eutychians, and the Monophysites. Later interpreters of the Council held that Chalcedonain Christology also rejected Monothelitism and Monergism. Those who did not accept the Chalcedonian Christology were collectively known as non-Chalcedonian. Those who held to the non-Chalcedonian Christologies called the doctrine of the hypostatic union dyophysite.
