Chalcedonian Christology

Catalog description

After the Scriptures and the Nicene Creed, the Chalcedonian Definition is the single most influential statement of Christ's identity in the history of Christian theology. It defines the orthodoxy of the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches; it plays a major role in the magisterial Protestant traditions; and it remains an important resource for constructive theologians today. Yet to many of equally orthodox pedigree, the doctrine of Chalcedon is misleading at best and dogmatically corrupt at worst. Despite the intention of Emperor Marcian to unify the Christian world, the council that he tightly controlled instead led to a permanent schism in Eastern church; it heightened East-West tensions in the centuries that followed; and it produced significant theological difficulties in later periods, from the Christological disagreements among Western medieval scholastics to fierce debates between Lutheran and Reformed theologians to more recent discussions of the perceived Nestorianism of much nineteenth-and twentieth-century Western theology. Instructor consent required.