Councils and Synods

The Council of Chalcedon

Also Known As Council of Chalcedon Short form. The atlas files this entry under a longer name and readers reach for the shorter one. · Chalcedon Short form. The atlas files this entry under a longer name and readers reach for the shorter one.

Christian Councils

Citation Formats

General Reference

Divinity Atlas. "The Council of Chalcedon." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://dev-divinity.interactiveatlas.org/councils-and-synods/the-council-of-chalcedon.

APA Style

Divinity Atlas. (n.d.). The Council of Chalcedon. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://dev-divinity.interactiveatlas.org/councils-and-synods/the-council-of-chalcedon

BibTeX

@misc{divinityatlas-the-council-of-chalcedon,
  author = {Divinity Atlas},
  title = {The Council of Chalcedon},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://dev-divinity.interactiveatlas.org/councils-and-synods/the-council-of-chalcedon},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

The largest of the ancient councils, called by the emperor Marcian, which defined Christ as one person in two natures and deposed the archimandrite Eutyches. It read the Tome of Leo, the Roman bishop's letter, into its record, and its twenty-eighth canon again raised Constantinople to a rank Rome refused to recognise. Its definition became the standard of Christology for the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and most Protestant churches. The churches of Egypt, Syria, Armenia and Ethiopia rejected it, and the Oriental Orthodox communion dates its separate existence from this council.

Facts

The Event

Principal Partiesthe subject's own account

Pope Leo I, whose Tome was accepted by the majority of the assembled bishops, against the miaphysite teaching of the archimandrite Eutyches and his supporter Dioscorus of Alexandria; the council's two-nature definition of Christ led to the lasting separation of the Oriental Orthodox churches from Chalcedonian Christianity. 1

Disputed

How Its Legacy Is Contested

Whether the miaphysite position the council rejected differs in substance from the one it defined, or only in vocabulary. Agreed statements since the twentieth century have said the faith is the same. 2

The canonical separation continues while the Christological difference is increasingly described as terminological by both sides.

Consequences

Lasting Consequence

The first lasting division in Christianity. The churches of Egypt, Syria, Armenia and Ethiopia rejected the definition and form the Oriental Orthodox communion. 2

Learn More

Peter Has Spoken Through Leo

Chalcedon was called after a council at Ephesus in 449 had rehabilitated Eutyches and roughly handled his opponents, an assembly Leo of Rome called the robber synod. The new emperor Marcian, with Pulcheria, summoned a fresh council, and several hundred bishops gathered across the water from Constantinople, the largest such assembly the church had held.

The pivotal document was a letter. Leo had written to Flavian of Constantinople setting out a Christology of two natures in one person, each doing what is proper to it in communion with the other. Read at the council, it drew the acclamation that Peter had spoken through Leo, which is the single most quoted sentence in the history of papal claims and which the Eastern bishops who shouted it did not understand as the Latin church later would.

The definition that followed does not read like a creed. It rehearses the creeds of Nicaea and Constantinople, endorses Cyril's letters and Leo's tome, and then adds the minimum wording judged necessary: one and the same Christ, made known in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation, the difference of the natures not removed by the union. It is a fence rather than a portrait, drawn to keep two errors out, and the churches that received it have treated it as the boundary within which Christology must stay.

Canon Twenty-Eight and the Rank of Constantinople

The council did not only define. Its twenty-eighth canon restated and extended the claim made at Constantinople in 381, giving the see of the imperial city equal privileges with Rome and second rank after it, and assigning it jurisdiction over three civil dioceses. The papal legates protested, having withdrawn before the session, and Leo refused to confirm it while confirming everything doctrinal the council had done.

What makes this more than an administrative squabble is the reasoning. The canon grounds ecclesiastical rank in the political standing of a city. Rome's own position, on that logic, derived from its having been the seat of empire, and would follow the empire when it moved. The Latin answer was that Roman primacy rests on Peter and is therefore independent of politics entirely. Both positions are visible in the record of this council, held by parties who had just agreed unanimously about Christ.

The pattern is worth naming because it recurs. Churches divide over authority at least as often as over doctrine, and disputes about who may decide are harder to settle than disputes about what is true, since there is no agreed forum in which to settle them. Chalcedon produced the Christology most of the world's Christians confess and, in the same weeks, sharpened the constitutional quarrel that eventually split the church that confessed it.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Belongs to Tradition

Christianity

Critiqued By

Oriental Orthodoxy

The Oriental Orthodox churches rejected the definition of 451 and date their separate existence from this council.

Source The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of DoctrineJaroslav Pelikan

Element Of

Anglicanism

The Chalcedonian definition of two natures in one person is the Christology the Church of England receives and teaches.

Source The Thirty-Nine Articles of ReligionChurch of Englandthe holders' own account

Calvinism (Reformed)

Reformed churches receive the definition, and the insistence that the two natures remain unconfused is worked hard in the Reformed account of the Lord Supper.

Source The Westminster Confession of FaithWestminster Assemblythe holders' own account

Eastern Orthodoxy

Eastern Orthodoxy receives Chalcedon as the fourth ecumenical council and its definition of two natures in one person as the measure of orthodox Christology.

Source The Definition of Faith of the Council of ChalcedonCouncil of Chalcedonthe holders' own account

Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople

Constantinople receives Chalcedon as the fourth council, and the twenty-eighth canon of that council is the ground of the see rank in the Orthodox order of precedence.

Source The Orthodox ChurchTimothy Ware (Kallistos Ware)

Greek Orthodox Church

The Greek church receives Chalcedon as the fourth of the seven councils.

Source The Orthodox ChurchTimothy Ware (Kallistos Ware)

Lutheranism

The Lutheran confessions receive the Chalcedonian definition and build their teaching on the communication of attributes upon it.

Source The Creeds of Christendom, with a History and Critical NotesPhilip Schaff

Maronite Church

The Maronite church is Chalcedonian and has been in communion with Rome without interruption since the twelfth century.

Source Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 volumesNorman P. Tanner (ed.)

Presbyterianism

Received in the Westminster tradition as the settled statement of how the two natures are joined in the one person of the Mediator.

Source The Westminster Confession of FaithWestminster Assemblythe holders' own account

Russian Orthodox Church

The Russian church receives Chalcedon as the fourth of the seven councils.

Source The Orthodox ChurchTimothy Ware (Kallistos Ware)

Saint Thomas Christians

The Saint Thomas Christians of Kerala are divided by the question. Their successor churches sit on both sides of Chalcedon, some in communion with Rome, some with the Oriental Orthodox, so the community as a whole holds no single position on it.

Source The Church of the East: An Illustrated History of Assyrian ChristianityChristoph Baumer

Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church

The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church receives Chalcedon with the whole Byzantine inheritance, and with the later Roman councils besides.

Source Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 volumesNorman P. Tanner (ed.)

Rejected Here

Armenian Apostolic Church

The Armenian church did not attend, being at war in the year the council met, and formally refused its definition at Dvin in the following century.

Source The Armenian People From Ancient to Modern TimesRichard G. Hovannisian (ed.)

Coptic Orthodoxy

The Coptic church refuses the Chalcedonian definition and dates its separate life from that refusal, holding that two natures confessed after the union divide the one incarnate Word.

Source Two Thousand Years of Coptic ChristianityOtto F. A. Meinardus

Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church

The Eritrean church holds the Tewahedo Christology of its Ethiopian mother church and refuses the Chalcedonian definition with it.

Source The Definition of Faith of the Council of ChalcedonCouncil of Chalcedonthe holders' own account

Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church

The Tewahedo name of the church is itself the position: one made nature, against the two natures the council defined.

Source The Definition of Faith of the Council of ChalcedonCouncil of Chalcedonthe holders' own account

Oriental Orthodoxy

Oriental Orthodoxy refuses the Chalcedonian definition, holding that it divides the one incarnate nature of the Word, and dates its separation from the imperial church to that refusal.

Source The Definition of Faith of the Council of ChalcedonCouncil of Chalcedonthe holders' own account

Held Differently

Assyrian Church of the East

The Church of the East was not represented and does not number Chalcedon among its councils, yet its own Christology confesses two natures in Christ in terms a reader would recognise as close to the definition it never received.

Source The Church of the East: An Illustrated History of Assyrian ChristianityChristoph Baumer