Page 89 - THE ARMENIAN CHURCH_Neat

90 The Armenian Church

4) Unlike the decisions of the Councils
of Nicea and Constantinople, those of the
Council of Ephesus were not received
unanimously by the church. To clarify the
christology of Ephesus and to contain the
growing controversy within the church,
another council was convened in 451 in Chal-
cedon. By confessing Jesus Christ as truly
God and truly man, and rejecting the
teachings of Eutyches and Nestorius, the
Council of Chalcedon stated that "one and the
same Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God
must be confessed to be in two natures, un-
confusedly, 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
6
and being united in one person…". The council
not only failed to heal the wound created
in the church, it further deepened and
broadened it. The council's fathers gave
different interpretations to the key words
used in respect to the person of Christ: ousia
(essence), hypostasis (person), physis (nature)
and prosopon (person). And thus in the Coun-
cil of Chalcedon the followers of Antiochian
christology saw their victory, and the Alex-
andrians their defeat.
For the Armenian Church, the Council
of Chalcedon deviated from the orthodoxy
of the Council of Ephesus, and by distin-
guishing sharply the two natures in Christ,