Chalcedon and the Real World  

Posted by Joe Rawls in

The fifth-century Council of Chalcedon issued an authoritative pronouncement on the way in which Jesus Christ combines divinity and humanity in his own person. For most Christians something this seemingly abstruse is completely off the radar; many mainline Protestants deny it altogether. However, Christopher Evans has a somewhat more immediate take on this doctrine.

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Part of the importance of Chalcedon is that the Divine Person took up human nature...The Word did not merely become a particular human person, but the Divine Person became the whole humanity and took up each particular within Himself....

What this thinking does is make all flesh iconic of the Second Person. Even if our own eyes are blind to God's glory. And if all flesh is iconic, how we approach each creature must be tuned to a similar reverence with which we bow at the Thrice-Holy.

This is to say that the same way of thinking that dares think of rocks as mere raw resources and plants as long-term investments and animals as little more than factory cogs is involved in thinking of minority peoples and women as not in the image of God, not capable of representing Christ, as even refractive of God's glory. Such thinking is radically anti-Incarnational no matter how traditional, no matter how covered in Patristic cloth. It is contra-Chalcedon. And it is destroying the earth.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 12, 2009 at Monday, October 12, 2009 and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments feed .

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