ABSTRACT
The Council of Chalcedon is the latest of the oecumenical councils before the fall of the western Empire, and the last to promulgate a definition which is agreed to remain authoritative in churches which describe themselves as catholic. In much twentieth-century mapping of early Christian controversies, Antioch and Alexandria figure as the tropics of Christology, the equator having been discovered at last in 451 at the Council of Chalcedon. Antiochene and Alexandrian thinkers barely differ with respect to the human suffering of Christ. The positions of Diodore, Theodore, Nestorus and Theodoret are all marked by a strong aversion to any mingling of divine and human attributes, and to any diminution of Christ’s humanity. The formula of reunion goes on to affirm that Christ is consubstantial with the Father in his divinity. Eutyches appealed to the throne, and the president of the council that convened at Ephesus in 449 was Dioscorus, Cyril’s nephew and an enemy to the Formula of reunion.
