Council of Chalcedon Convened
October 8, 451
From October 8 to November 1 in AD 451, 630 bishops or their delegates convened at Chalcedon (directly across the Bosporus from Constantinople) for what came to be numbered as the Fourth Ecumenical Council. They assembled at the summons of Emperor Marcian to consider and judge the teaching of a monk/theologian named Eutyches, who contended that the divine and human natures in Jesus Christ were fused or mingled to form a third reality.
In their critique and condemnation of this teaching, the bishops were chiefly guided by a letter (Tome) of Pope Leo I of Rome, who declared that in Jesus Christ, divinity and humanity, losing nothing of their distinction, were joined in a single person. The bishops at Chalcedon adopted this formula as dogma, affirming that God’s Son was “of one being (homoousios) with the Father with respect to his divinity and of one being (homoousios) with us with respect to his humanity.”
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Patrick Henry Reardon is pastor emeritus of All Saints Antiochian Orthodox Church in Chicago, Illinois, and the author of numerous books, including, most recently, Out of Step with God: Orthodox Christian Reflections on the Book of Numbers (Ancient Faith Publishing, 2019).
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