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Handout #74 |
Dogmatic definition of the Council of Chalcedon 451 A.D. |
| The wise and
salutary Creed of Nicaea and Constantinople, therefore, derived from
divine grace, suffices for the perfect acknowledgment and confirmation of
godliness ... But since those who, taking in hand to set aside the
preaching of the truth by heresies of their own, have uttered vain
babblings, some daring to pervert the mystery of the dispensation, which
for our sakes the Lord undertook, and denying the propriety of the name
Theotokos, as applied to the Virgin, and others bringing in a confusion
and mixing of natures, and fondly feigning that there is but one nature of
the flesh and Godhead, and by this confusion absurdly maintaining that the
divine nature of the only-begotten is passable -for this reason, the holy,
great, ecumenical council now in session, being desirous of precluding
every device of theirs against the truth, teaching in its fullness the
doctrine which from the beginning has remained unshaken, has decreed, in
the first place that the Creed of the 318 fathers (Nicaea) remain
inviolate; and on account of those who impugn the Holy Spirit, it ratifies
and confirms the doctrine delivered subsequently, concerning the essence
of the Spirit, by the 150 holy Fathers (Constantinople 381 A.D.), who were
assembled in the imperial city, which they made known to all, not as
though they were supplying some omission of their predecessors, but
distinctly declaring by written testimony their own understanding
concerning the Holy Spirit, against those who were endeavoring to set
aside his sovereignty ...
Wherefore following the holy Fathers, we all with one voice confess our Lord Jesus Christ one and the same Son, the same perfect in Godhead, the same perfect in manhood, truly God and truly, man, the same consisting of a reasonable, soul and a body, of one substance with the Father as touching the manhood, like us in all things apart from sin; begotten of the Father before the ages as touching the Godhead, the same in the last days, for us and for our salvation, born from the Virgin Mary, the Theotokos, as touching the manhood, one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way abolished because of the union, but rather the characteristic property of each nature being preserved, and concurring into one person and one subsistence ... T. H. Bindley,Oecumenical Documents of the Faith, Methuen 1906, pp. 191-3. |
