Council of Chalcedon

The Definition ratifies a chain of prior authorities — the Nicene creed as pre-eminent, the 150 fathers of Constantinople, Cyril's synodical letters, and Leo's Tome to Flavian — then forbids anyone to produce a different faith. It grounds itself in the prophets of old time, the teaching of Christ, and the creed of the fathers together. Canon 1 extends the same principle to church order.

WORTH CORRECTINGChalcedon is where the pattern is clearest: Scripture, prior councils, and named patristic documents are received as a single normative deposit.

"no one shall be suffered to bring forward a different faith, nor to write, nor to put together."Definition

The definitive statement: one and the same Christ, perfect in Godhead and perfect in manhood, consubstantial with the Father as to his Godhead and consubstantial with us as to his manhood, made like us in all things sin excepted — to be confessed in two natures "unconfusedly, immutably, indivisibly, inseparably," the distinction of natures not taken away by the union but the property of each preserved in one person and subsistence.

WORTH CORRECTINGA textual crux worth knowing: the surviving Greek reads ek duo physeon ("of two natures") while the old Latin has in duabus naturis ("in two natures"), and the session record supports "in" — the bishops were asked to choose between Dioscorus, who accepted "of two natures" but not that there were two natures, and Leo, and answered "We believe as Leo."

"in two natures, unconfusedly, immutably, indivisibly, inseparably"Definition

The Definition is entirely Christological — two natures in one person, without confusion, change, division or separation — and defines nothing about the nature Christ assumed beyond its completeness: "truly man, of a reasonable soul and body." What the fall did to that nature is not its subject. By 451 the question was long since live, so this is searched and not located rather than never framed.

WORTH CORRECTINGThe Definition's insistence that Christ is "consubstantial with us as touching his manhood; made in all things like unto us, sin only excepted" is the closest it comes. It is a Christological safeguard, not an anthropology — reading a doctrine of original sin out of the "without sin" clause would be exactly the over-reading this map exists to refuse.

consubstantial with us as touching his manhood; made in all things like unto us, sin only exceptedThe Chalcedonian Definition (451)

Nothing in the Definition touches the basis on which God chooses the saved. Chalcedon exists to settle how the two natures are united in one person, and it does that and stops. The category was available in 451 — Augustine had been dead twenty-one years and the semi-Pelagian dispute was still running in Gaul — so this is a council declining a question, not a council that never met it.

This one and the same Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son [of God] must be confessed to be in two natures, unconfusedly, immutably, indivisibly, inseparably [united]The Chalcedonian Definition (451) — the whole of what the council settled

Not located in the doctrinal act. The Definition does not treat baptism, and canon 1, the only canon read for this map, simply ratifies the canons of previous synods. Chalcedon's baptismal theology is therefore Nicaea's and Constantinople's by ratification rather than anything it states itself.

WORTH CORRECTINGOne caution against reading this as "Chalcedon never mentions baptism." Canon 14 does, incidentally — it forbids the children of clergy in mixed marriages from being baptised among heretics. That is a disciplinary rule about where a baptism happens, not a doctrine of what baptism is or who may receive it, and the canon was not part of the reading behind this entry.