|
Commemorated on July 16
The Fourth
Ecumenical Council, at which 630 bishops participated, was convened in the
year 451 in the city of Chalcedon under the emperor Marcian (450-457). Still
back in the time of the emperor Theodosius II (408-450), the bishop of
Dorileuseia Eusebios in 408 reported to a Council held at Constantinople under
the holy Patriarch Flavian (Comm. 18 February), concerning a personage of one
of the monasteries of the capital, the archimandrite Eutykhios, who in his
undaunted zeal against the soul-destroying heresy of the Nestorius – went to
the opposite extreme and began to assert, that within Jesus Christ the human
nature under the hypostatic union was completely absorbed by the Divine nature,
in consequence of which it lost everything characteristic of human nature,
except but for the visible form; wherein, such that after the union in Jesus
Christ there remained only one nature (the Divine), which in visible bodily
form lived upon the earth, suffered, died, and was resurrected.
The Constantinople
Council condemned this new false-teaching. But the heretic Eutykhios had
patronage at court, and was in close connection with the heretic Dioskoros, the
successor to Sainted Cyril (Comm. 18 January) upon the patriarchal
cathedra-seat at Alexandria. Eutykhios turned to the emperor with a complaint
against the injustice of the condemnation against him, and he demanded the
judgement of an Ecumenical Council against his opponents, whom he accused of
Nestorianism. Wanting to restore peace in the Church, Theodosius had decided to
convene a Fourth Ecumenical Council in the year 449 at Ephesus. But this
Council became branded in the chronicles of the Church as the "Robbers
Council". Dioskoros, appointed by the emperor to preside as president of
the Council, ran it like a dictator, making use of threats and outright
coercion. Eutykhios was exonerated, and Saint Flavian condemned. But in the
year 450 the emperor Theodosius died. The new emperor Marcian raised up onto
the throne with him the sister of Theodosius, Pulcheria.
Restoring peace to
the Church was a matter of prime importance. An Ecumenical Council was
convened in the year 451 at Chalcedon. The Patriarch of Constantinople, Saint
Anatolios (Comm. 3 July) presided over the Council. Dioskoros at the first
session was deprived of his place among those present, and at the third session
he was condemned with all his partisans. The Sessions of the Council were 16 in
all. The Chalcedon holy fathers pronounced anathemas against the heresy of
Eutykhios. On the basis of Letters Saint Cyril of Alexandria and Pope Saint Leo
the Great, the fathers of the Council resolved: "Following the holy
fathers, we all with one accord teach to confess as one and the same the Son,
our Lord Jesus Christ, perfect in Divinity and perfect in humanity, truly God,
truly man, of Whom is a reasoned soul and a body, One in Essence with the
Father through Divinity and that Same-One one-in-essence with us through
humanity, in all things like unto us except for sin, begotten before the ages
from the Father in Divinity, but in these latter days born for us and our
salvation from Mary the Virgin Mother of God in humanity. This self-same
Christ, Son and Lord, the Only-Begotten, is in two natures perceived without
mingling, without change, without division, without separation [Greek:
"asugkhutos, atreptos, adiairetos, akhoristos"; Slavic:
"neslitno, neizmenno, nerazdel'no, nerazluchno"], such that by
conjoining there be not infringement of the distinctions of the two natures,
and by which is preserved the uniqueness of each nature conjoined in one Person
and One Hypostasis, – not split nor separated into two persons, but rather the
One and Self-same Son, the Only-Begotten, the Word of God, the Lord Jesus
Christ, as in antiquity the prophets taught of Him and as the Lord Jesus Christ
Himself taught us, and as the Creed-Symbol of the fathers has passed down to
us".
In the two final
Sessions of the Council, 30 Canon-rules were promulgated concerning ecclesial
hierarchies and disciplines. Beyond this, the Council affirmed the decrees not
only of the three preceding Ecumenical Councils, but also of the Local
Councils of: Ancyra, Neocaesarea, Gangra, Antioch and Laodiceia, which had
occurred during the IV Century.
© 1996-2001 by translator Fr. S. Janos.
|
Close window |