AN ANCIENT VOICE THAT IS NEVER SILENCED

Jesus then focuses on Peter alone, looks into his eyes directly, and puts him on the spot with the question: “And you, who do you say that I am?” We can imagine Peter stuttering, surprised, and uneasy. He offers an answer: “Thou art the Christ (Anointed), the Son of the Living God!” Jesus blessed Peter for his response and said to him: “No one has revealed this to you except my Father Who is in heaven!”  I’m sure Peter was relieved that “the heat was off of him!”

The same question filters through today’s commemoration of the Fathers of the 4^th Ecumenical Council.  “Who do you say that I am?”  The Fourth Ecumenical Council was convened in 451 A.D., in the city of Chalcedon (in present day Turkey), under Emperor Marcian. The Council met to challenge the false doctrine of an archimandrite of a Constantinople monastery, Eutychius, who rejected the human nature of the Lord Jesus Christ. Refuting one heresy and defending the divinity of Jesus Christ, he himself fell into an extreme, and taught that in the Lord Jesus Christ human nature was completely absorbed in the Divine, and therefore it followed that one need only recognize the Divine nature. In short, Eutychius taught that Jesus was only God masked by a human form – mistakenly thing he was doing the Church a favor.

The Council of 650 bishops condemned and repudiated the false doctrine of Eutychius and defined the true teaching of the Church, namely that our Lord Jesus Christ is perfect God, and as God He is eternally born from God. As man, He was born of the Holy Virgin and in every way is like us, except in sin. Through the incarnation, birth from the Holy Theotokos, divinity and humanity are united in Him as a single Person, infused and immutable. This Council affirmed the teaching of St. Cyprian of Carthage: “Let nothing be innovated except that which has been handed on.” This, as were all the seven Ecumenical Councils, was about “truth.” Chalcedon affirmed a Biblical truth – that Christ was fully human and fully divine. To think or teach otherwise, no matter how good your intentions may be, was/is, in fact, heresy.

What about us in 2020? What possible relevance does this ancient Council have for our life, our spirituality, our Church in an age of pandemics, protests, and genuine pain and confusion?  Today’s commemoration has three lessons for us. It teaches us a Christ-truth, it teaches us a Church-truth and, finally, it teaches us an US-truth.

A Christ-truth  The Council of Chalcedon answers that indicting question to St. Peter: “Who do you say that I am?”  Chalcedon laid down that Christ was revealed in two natures without confusion, change, division, or separation.  The late Orthodox theologian, Fr. Michael Pomazansky, wrote: “Chalcedon laid down that the difference between the divine nature and the human nature of Christ is not abolished because they constitute one person.   When we say the Creed, we say with the Fathers of Chalcedon that Jesus makes us able to become divine; that God has entered human life; that our neighbor bears the marks of glory; that our obligation is to see His real nature and realize that the divine/human person of Christ is our pathway to Heaven itself.” That is the Christ-truth – He is God become intimate with us because He became one of us yet remained forever “God from God, light from light, true God of true God.” Christ is heaven drawn near us. He is a “second chance” for our salvation and healing because He is one of us. Chalcedon made it possible for us to appreciate the truth of Christ’s person – and approach Him without fear!  “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.” (John 14:1)  That is the Christ-truth we remember today.

A Church-truth You and I do not believe alone, in isolation. Just as Chalcedon, much like the initial Council of Jerusalem in 49 AD,  was a symbol of the collective nature of the Church oikoumenikos foikoumenē) , its decision-making ability, its “common nature” is anticipated in the person of the Lord. The Orthodox Church reflects the communion of the Thrice-Holy God – the Divine community.

His Eminence Metropolitan Maximos, formerly of Pittsburgh, affirms the importance of holding fast to the Church tradition of our faith: “The tradition of the Church is nothing else but the life of the Church, a life in the Holy Spirit. From a Christian point of view, the Church is not a mere human society such that we could identify tradition with the history of this society. The Church is the living Body of Christ, with a history as far as its human members are concerned, but also with an internal life that escapes the eye of the historian, and is only seen by the eye of faith. In this sense we distinguish between an inner force which guides that history and a spirit which inspires it, this force and Spirit being the Holy Spirit of God, and the external, human manifestations of the life of the Spirit in the Church.”  Chalcedon’s Jesus is the sacrament of holy community, of the ability to share and break open our faith with each other. As Jesus was never alone, always having His Father in and near Him, so it is with us – we believe together, as one body in which the Holy Spirit of God “lives and moves and has His being!” You are never alone in your believing.

An Us-truth   Ultimately, the Council of Chalcedon is about our spirituality.  The truth they defended for all times, is a truth about us. It is about the guilt of sin being healed in us.  It is about God as merciful, not as the Divine Punisher.  It is about accepting the gift of hope in times when the darkness overwhelms us, problems persist in us, hopelessness pursues us relentlessly. The Divine/human person of Jesus is God’s promise that for those who “walk through the valley of the shadow of death” – life will never be ended, simply changed.  Who do we say Jesus is? He is the human face of God. He shares our humanity, He felt our tiredness, He cried real tears, He reached into the mess of many human hearts to touch them with healing and wholeness – all as the God-Man.

If it is true (and we believe it to be) that Orthodox spirituality is the process of coming closer everyday to the God of love, then we already have a head start – in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.  It was the theologian, Fr. Carl Peter, who reminded us: “To the Church of believers, this doctrine is essential and precious.  The doctrine of the seven Councils is living, it develops, it meets the needs of every era and epoch — but always remains in substance, the same. What we believe is, in a sense, the same as St. Augustine’s description of God: “Unchanging but changing all things.”  This conviction forms the foundation of our spirituality. It is the Us-truth of Chalcedon’s God-inspired teachings.

The Council of Chalcedon is not a fiction of the human mind. Its source is not the cleverness of ambitious people. What we commemorate is part of our faith patrimony.  As St. Irenaeus of Lyons notes: “Where, therefore, the gifts of the Lord have been placed, there it behooves us to learn the truth, namely, from those who possess that succession of the Church which is from the Holy Apostles and among whom exists that which is sound and blameless in conduct, as well as that which is unadulterated and incorrupt in speech.”  I pray that the power of God which comes to us from the 4^th Ecumenical Council and all the others, fill your faith with strength, with the certainty that God will keep His promises, and with the quiet peace that comes from believing that the same God dwells in your ;heart.

Preserve and protect, O God, the Orthodox faith and all Orthodox Christians, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen!

Faithfully in the Lord,
Fr. Dimitrios