This day in Christian History the Council of Chalcedon drafted it’s Definition of faith which became the standard for Christological Orthodoxy in the West. It states in part:
Following the holy Fathers we teach with one voice that the Son [of God] and our Lord Jesus Christ is to be confessed as one and the same [Person], that he is perfect in Godhead and perfect in manhood, very God and very man, of a reasonable soul and [human] body consisting, consubstantial with the Father as touching his Godhead, and consubstantial with us as touching his manhood; made in all things like unto us, sin only excepted; begotten of his Father before the worlds according to his Godhead; but in these last days for us men and for our salvation born [into the world] of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God according to his manhood. This one and the same Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son [of God] must be confessed to be in two natures, (1) unconfusedly, immutably, indivisibly, inseparably [united], and that without the distinction of natures being taken away by such union, but rather the peculiar property of each nature being preserved and being united in one Person and subsistence, not separated or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son and only-begotten, God the Word, our Lord Jesus Christ, as the Prophets of old time have spoken concerning him, and as the Lord Jesus Christ hath taught us, and as the Creed of the Fathers hath delivered to us.
The full text of the Chalcedonian Definition of Faith can be read here at Monachos.net. Other important events from this day can be seen below.
451: During the Fifth Session of the Council of Chalcedon, the final form of the Chalcedonian Creed was drafted. It became the Early Church’s highest and most enduring “definition” of the person and work of Jesus Christ.
1844: The “Great Disappointment” began when this latest date, set for the return of Christ by religious leader William Miller, passed without event. Over 100,000 disillusioned followers returned to their former churches, or abandoned the Christian faith altogether.
1899: American Presbyterian missionary James B. Rodgers, 34, baptized his first Filipino converts to the Christian faith, thus inaugurating the beginning of Philippine Protestant churches.
1952: The complete Jewish Torah was published in English for the first time. A collection of oral and written commentary (dating 200 BC to AD 500) on the first five books of the Old Testament, the Torah comprises the basic religious code of Judaism.
1966: Swiss Reformed theologian Karl Barth declared in a letter: ‘God makes no mistakes.’
Source: William D. Blake. Almanac of the Christian Church, Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1987. Additional information supplied by the author. Contact via E-mail: William D. Blake. (pilgrimwb@aol.com)
Other Source: The Story of Christianity by Justo L. Gonzalez.
