We live in times overwhelmed with images created by man, in a postmodern epoch where each person struggles to produce the most convincing image of himself and his idea, where people try to attract the most people they can through their self image in order to impress and to impose their “icon” (or artificial resemblance) or, better yet, their “idol,” on others (as St Andrew says : “αὐτείδωλον ἐγενόμην”, “I have become an idol to myself”; Canon of St. Andrew of Crete, Ode IV). It is an era which offers falsehood, delusion, and fantasy without transcending the antinomies and limitations of history.

Your Eminence, beloved brother in the Holy Spirit and co-celebrant, Your Graces, and dear pious assembly of the fullness of the Church, the living icons of God.

We live in such times; yet, this moment in time – The Sunday of Orthodoxy, the feast of the Icon – proposes an alternative image: one Divinely-revealed rather than human-made, one that is convicting rather than convincing, one that is iconic rather than idolatrous – the Icon of God.

This Icon represents humanity having received the opportunity to circumscribe and depict the Transcendent God, which only became possible once God became man, expressing his Divinity in human form, bringing the Kingdom of God into the Divine Liturgy, and demonstrating the reality of the Resurrection by asking one of His disciples to verify what he saw by touching Christ’s hands, feet, and side (Jn 20:26). Similarly, the language of the Fathers about Icons, especially that of the 7th Ecumenical Council, has to do with both seeing and beholding the vision of God. But this language introduces a significant problem, evident in these questions: What is the real image of God? What is the real image of man? What is the real image of this world? Does the Icon depict a Platonic ideal? Or does it represent Greco-Roman art? Or does the iconic image capture the corrupted world of Pieter Brueghel or Salvador Dali? Maybe, we Christians also offer an image which very often obscures the image of the Kingdom. Do we not, instead of iconizing the transfigured world of Paradise, most often represent the mere fallen world? This problem faces us in our present-day Church and it is necessary to ask ourselves: maybe our image of the world and the Church overshadows the true image of the Kingdom?

What is the difference between the Icon and the image, between the Divine Image and the image of this world? The two are altogether different.

The first, and significant, difference is that the Icon is not naturalistic; it does not represent something ephemeral, but rather it represents both a Person and a personal relationship. One of the most significant points to emerge from the 7th Ecumenical Council is that one Divine Person – the Son of God – became man, demonstrating that we cannot speak about God or imagine God without the Person who revealed God to us. An image which does not refer to the Person of Christ is an image which refers to the corrupted world and thus leads to death. The Icon is not of this world; it is eschatological both in origin and in content. Not being drawn from history, we can call the Icon meta-historical.

Nevertheless, the Kingdom can only be depicted by using created means. The Icon is distinct from the truth, not because it is false, delusional, or fantastic, but because it borrows its means of expression from still-corruptible nature.

Although its means of expression derive from fallen nature, the Icon refers to the inexpressible Truth by encouraging our personal relations with Truth; a proper Icon creates true personal relationships. That is why an Icon is indivisibly linked with Love: we cannot speak about Truth without Love, and we cannot speak about an Icon that does not lead us to Love.

For Orthodox Christians, this means that the Icon leads us to the Church. There we will meet the other in his or her true state. As Fr. Justin Popovich used to say, “in the Church we are taught to see (iconically) in every man our future brother/sister [as he or she is in]  Paradise.” There, in the Eucharistic synaxis, we will see and meet God through our communion with others. So the function of the Icon is to create a gathering (synaxis), the community we call the Church. The Icon, then, is not only an object that we kiss and venerate, but an eternal synaxis that exists in moments, movements, and actions during the Divine Liturgy. Outside the Church there is not the Kingdom of God; inside the Church, all is iconic.

Here we understand the next characteristic of the icon: it refers to another, not to itself; leading us, thereby, out of solipsism. It encourages us to go out and meet the other. The Icon is person-oriented! When we venerate an Icon of Christ or a Saint, we demonstrate our victory over individualism and show that we are not self-reliant. When the Icon traces this relationship between persons (God and man) and gathers the Church, then the Church becomes a real depiction of the Kingdom of God, leading us to the Divine Eucharist, which is the image or Icon of the Kingdom, as described by St Maximus the Confessor. In the primitive phase of the ancient Church, the Icon was linked closely with the mystery of the Church in her Eucharist. The Eucharist is the celebration that makes the earthly Church what it is, namely, an Icon of the Kingdom.

But, there is yet one more difference between the Icon and the image. The image « fixes » reality, as opposed to the Icon which does not fix but liberates it from natural laws. We celebrate today the Fathers of the 7th Ecumenical synod who gathered to testify that the Church could not exist without Icons, without iconizing the Person of God! When an image becomes an Icon, it no longer refers to itself anymore – to its ephemeral existence; rather, it refers beyond itself – to something beyond this corrupted world. When an image becomes an Icon, it redeems a person or landscape depicted in it and situates that person or landscape in relationship to the Kingdom. In the historical life of the Church, everything is an image of the future. The Icons which depict the Saints are not photographs of their historical faces, but the images of the future they portray.

That is why the Fathers of this Synod repeated what St Basil said in the fourth century: “the honor paid to the Icon passes on to the prototype”! Therefore, when we venerate an Icon, that relationship goes beyond the Icon and reaches the Original source of the image, which is a Person. That is why, in the Church the Word is an Icon, and an Icon is the Word! And this is something that our Church experiences throughout the ages! In our Churches, the Kingdom of God is depicted and represented through Icons, through chanting, through harmonious architecture, through all manner of aesthetic endeavors that are part of our Liturgical expression.  How did the Orthodox survive under the Ottoman rule without catechism or schools? Only through this Iconic approach to embodying Truth. The pious people spoke with God through Icons (iconographic depictions) and Hymns and not through human words or rational formulations; God, in turn, revealed Himself to His people through Icons and Hymns.

This, in the final analysis, means, dear brothers and sisters, that the Divine worship in its liturgical-iconical context has saved the Orthodox Church and not the verbal descriptions and rhetoric of the homilists…such as this present one.

There will be those who assert that an iconic image conveys the Platonic idea of a shadow empty of reality. This makes it difficult to speak of the Church as an Icon without falling into the realm of the imaginative or unreal. But the Iconic nature of the Orthodox Church does not imply a lack of reality, although it does imply a lack of objectified and autonomous reality. As Metropolitan John of Pergamon states, “by being iconic in her existence the Church is two things: (a) she is an image of something else that transcends her—hence, again, a relational entity; and (b) she is in her institutions and structure so transparent as to allow the eschatological realities to be reflected in them all the time. This can hardly be achieved outside the context of worship, for it is there that transcendence and transparency are experienced par excellence.”

My beloved, in this society permeated with the illusions of multimedia in which we live, where image-pollution of all sorts has blurred our vision, we are invited to promote the true Icon of the Kingdom, we are invited to liberate our everyday life from slavery to the natural world through this iconical ethos that our Tradition bequeaths to us; an iconological ethos that leads to an affirmation of the other, which leads very often to “silence” and to deference before the other, who we prefer over ourselves (“Honor one another above yourselves” – Rom 12:10).

Unfortunately, my beloved, Orthodoxy in our times tends to become an ideology, wherein slogans and accusations of betraying the faith and tradition –  understood ideologically – are hurled at one another. But, significantly enough, our Orthodox Church has chosen the commemoration of the Seventh Ecumenical Council to be the Sunday of Orthodoxy. As is well known, this Council dealt with the issue of Icons and did not put forth any propositional definition of the faith. In declaring, “This is the faith of the Fathers; this is the faith which has sustained the oecumene,” the Council pointed to a form of “theology,” the Icon, which was the liturgical experience of the community and required no subscription to conceptual or ideological statements.

This declaration of the 7th Council ended the Christological debate of words by testifying to the reality of the Mystery in the Icon of the Crucified and Risen Lord. This Icon removes our forgetfulness of the eschatological Coming of the Risen One, the eschatological Newness of the Living One (Apoc. 21, 5; 1, 17). So now “we call Christ’s image ‘Christ’. …The Icon of Christ is nothing other than Christ, apart, of course, from the difference in essence” (St. Theodore the Studite).

The identification of the selfsameness of Christ with His image leads us to my final point: Orthodoxy is the Church and not an ideology ! It is a gathering of the people and, particularly, a Eucharistic gathering of living icons. This is what we must emphasize today ! Not an Internet-online-virtual illusion of communication, but the Icon, a visible communication of Kingdom; such must be the future of Orthodoxy because such is the future Christ promises His Church. In the Eucharist, we are taught not only to venerate and greet icons, but also the other members of the synaxis, not passing the living icons – people –  by, but greeting and embracing them. So, the Icon is indeed the right method of looking at the world…Only the iconic approach will save Orthodoxy from becoming a secular organization in the image of the world. 

May this, our commemoration of the Sunday of Orthodoxy today in Los Angeles, serve as a source of sanctification, strength, and hope for the Orthodox faithful.

Finally, from this Holy Ambon we extend our wholehearted well-wishes to the beloved Hierarchs, to the devout clergy, and to the entire flock of the Orthodox Church of America, and we pray that God may bless our efforts and good works, to the glory of our Father Who is in Heaven and the honor of our Church and all the living icons within. 

[For more information on this homily, click here.]

Chalcedon’s Christology:
Theological, Historical and Cultural Significance

Who do people say I AM?
True God and True Man:
Chalcedon’s Christology in a Postmodern World

Preface

Chalcedonian Christology is a quintessential ingredient of the continuing liturgical-dogmatic-ethical life of the Church. Ever since then, the Church has constantly re-received and transmitted this Christological truth—“one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ”.   In fact one can go even further and make the point that the Chalcedonian definition of Christ entailed not only a vertical perspective (consubstantial [co-essential] with the Father according to the Godhead), but also a horizontal perspective of the people of Israel to which Jesus belonged as Man (consubstantial with us according to Manhood).  Without any doubt, Chalcedon brought about a helpful integration of ‘theology’ and ‘economy’, of transcendence and immanence.  Being God, and belonging to a certain historical era and generation, Christ accepted what was the de facto human context as his own context .  Thus Christology inevitably implies Ecclesiology and even Sociology.

For these reasons I propose to deal with my subject in the following way: First, I will try to point out Chalcedon’s major theological issues in the historical life of the Church.  Second, we will look at the present day situation and see what opportunities these issues provide for the Churches and society.  Finally, we will also try to identify ways in which the Chalcedonian Christology can operate today with its theological, historical and cultural dimensions.  Without going into the subtle, nuanced formulations of Chalcedon’s Definition—for this is the most beautiful dogmatic/doctrinal text of all Ecumenical Councils—we will attempt to present the significance of Chalcedon in a way that is accessible to a wider audience.  

I A Quick Look at History

It is not possible for this presentation to offer a detailed historical analysis of the Concilium universale Chalcedonense (=Fourth Ecumenical Council), which, given its importance, deserves a separate monograph.  That Council, held in the city of Chalcedon, near Constantinople, in 451, is one of the seven ecumenical councils accepted by the Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, and many Protestant Christian churches.  However, it is the first Council not recognized by any of the Oriental Orthodox churches, in spite of the fact that it was designed to heal the growing Christological division.  The Chalcedonian creed was written amid controversy between the western, eastern and oriental churches over the meaning of the Incarnation.  We must, however, know a few historical facts.

1. The Council of Chalcedon was a courageous and quick response to the “Robber Synod” of 449, and was aimed at overturning its decisions.  That gathering, dubbed the “Robber Synod” by Pope Leo of Rome, had articulated an extreme Alexandrian Christology.  The bishops at Chalcedon disclaimed the council of 449 and deposed Patriarch Dioscorus of Alexandria for his role in that gathering.
2. It is commonly held that the Council of Chalcedon was more or less a ‘Cyrillian’ Council; it followed his theology and thus continues the Third Ecumenical Council.
   The Chalcedonian Definition includes the main expressions from the Formula of concordance in 433.  It also uses Flavian’s homologia, and the Tomos of Pope Leo.  So it is a synthesis of Alexandrine, Antiochean and western Christological elements in the Definition, but this synthesis was produced completely within the framework of Cyril’s Christology.
3. However, we must not forget that Chalcedon’s principal aim was to condemn monophysitism and to exclude the possibility of an asymmetrical  monophysite interpretation of Cyrillian Christology.  
   The Fathers of the Council could have chosen either the formula ‘out of two natures’ (ἐκ δύο φύσεων) or the formula ‘in two natures’ (ἐν δύο φύσεσιν), and they chose the latter.  The reason for this was that the Cyrillian formula ἐκ δύο φύσεων did not clearly indicate the existence of a full humanity after the union.
   In addition, Dioscorus had used this formula at the Council of 449, which had rehabilitated the monophysite Eutyches.  Thus, when the Fathers of Chalcedon had to choose between ‘Dioscorus, who denied the two natures in Christ, [and] Leo, who argued that there are two natures’, they unanimously chose the latter, and this led them to adopt the expression ἐν δύο φύσεσιν.
4. But the latter developments have also made the entire matter even more complicated for the following reason:
   The distinction between φύσις and ὑπόστασις, affirmed at the Council, was too new and revolutionary in the theology of incarnation to not provoke different interpretations and misunderstandings. The Council’s definition thus gave rise to a couple of persistent questions, which have bedeviled theologians up to the present day. One of the problems lied in the fact that Eastern Mesopotamia did not posses Greek conceptual tools. They could not understand what the Council’s distinction was between nature and person/hypostasis.

Those who rejected Chalcedon—namely, the anti-Chalcedonian ‘monophysites’— thought that the Christologies of Cyril and Chalcedon were incompatible.  According to them, there was no distinction between nature and person/hypostasis, at least on the level of economy, hence their dismay at the Council, which had ostensibly restored the heresy of Nestorius by attributing two natures to Christ.  

We cannot now investigate their reasons for opposing the Council in details.  We know that when the Definition was to be signed, unfortunately the bishops from Alexandria—although they accepted the faith—did not put their signatures.  They simply stated “we don’t have our patriarch”.  He should sign it first and then us.  When we come back to Alexandria we will elect one and let him sign it first.  There were those who were disingenuously hiding behind this in order to avoid signing the definitions of Chalcedon.  When they got back to Alexandria, the schism occurred because the Orthodox elected their own bishop Proterius, while the other party elected another.  That’s how the schism took place, and how the monophysite Church emerged.  It happened initially in Alexandria, then in Antioch, Jerusalem and Ethiopia.  These are the four Churches: the Coptic in Egypt, the Ethiopian, the Syrian in Syria and India and the Armenian Church with its roots in Lebanon. 

The creed became standard orthodox doctrine, while the Coptic church of Alexandria dissented, holding to Cyril’s formula of the oneness of Christ’s nature as the incarnation of God the Word (μια φυσις του Θεου Λογου σεσαρκωμενη) .  This church felt that this understanding required that the creed should have stated that Christ be acknowledged ‘from two natures’ rather than ‘in two natures’.  This miaphysite position, often known as "Monophysitism", formed the basis for the distinction of what we call the Oriental Orthodox churches – the Coptic church of Egypt and Ethiopia and the "Jacobite" churches of Syria and Armenia. Over the last 30 years, however, the miaphysite position has been accepted as a mere restatement of orthodox belief by the Eastern Orthodox Church and by the Roman Catholic Church.  

II Theological significance

So to the question: what is the existential meaning of its Christology—related to the problem of the overcoming of death—we can answer by analyzing the four adverbs of the Definition: ἀσυγχύτως, ἀτρέπτως, ἀδιαιρέτως, ἀχωρίστως. 

Fr John Meyendorff holds that these “four negative adverbs, while they condemned the two contrary heresies of Nestorius and Eutyches, excluded any pretention to explain fully in human terms the very mystery of the incarnation”. It is true that this Creed, being an extraordinary theological and philosophical achievement, does not exhaust the whole truth; neither does it detract from the personal character of this revelation.  These verbal confessions refer to the living Person of Christ, and the Church through them ‘receives’ above all a Person and not ideas.  However, beyond this apophatical aspect, they offer a solid basis for further theological meaning. Metropolitan John Zizioulas, in his lucid study, “’Created’ and ‘Uncreated’: The Existential Significance of Chalcedonian Christology” elaborated the meaning of two of these words: ἀσυγχύτως (without confusion) and ἀδιαιρέτως (without division). 

Let us try here to see the significance of ἀτρέπτως, unchangeably and ἀχωρίστως, inseparably.  The first of these adverbs ἀτρέπτως means that, in Christ—theologically, anthropologically, cosmologically and ecclesiologically—there was no change between the two natures, per se.  The essence of the natures (so to speak) did not change.  Their otherness is completely respected and preserved.  So, anthropologically, man remains completely man, and not god, and vice versa; cosmologically, the created nature remains created, and not uncreated, and vice versa.  On the other hand, ἀδιαιρέτως refers to such a union, being perfect and absolute, where nothing can separate them because of the hypostatic union (as opposed to “union of natures”).  By preserving the two natures after the Incarnation, Chalcedon safeguarded the precious concept of otherness! We shall see below how important this aspect is for us today.  Speaking existentially in terms of person and nature, Chalcedon affirmed both unitatis and alteritas, communion and otherness.  This is the accomplishment of these apophatic formulations.  

Chalcedon provided the Church with a terminology capable of protecting the faith from both Nestorian and monophysite aberrations.  By stating that the one person of Christ is one hypostasis, it demonstrated its determined opposition to Nestorianism.  
On the other hand, by saying that this hypostasis is known in two natures, not only in a divine but also in a human nature, it showed that it is unacceptable to confuse Christ’s natures, to jeopardize his consubstantiality with the Father and with us, or to undermine the fullness and integrity of his humanity after the union. The Theanthropic “bogocovecanska” reality of Christ does not represent a mere episode of human history but the ontological basis of its salvation.

III Postmodern Cultural and Existential Significance

Chalcedonian Oros [Definition] presents Christ as the Savior of the world, as a cosmic Christ.  However, it is not because Jesus Christ brought a model of morality or a teaching for humanity; it is because He himself incarnates the overcoming of death, because, in his own Person, the created from now on lives eternally.  This was a profoundly eucharistic approach to the Chalcedonian Christology, since the reception of Christ by the people of God always takes place in the event of communion.  Eucharist was not of course the focus of Chalcedon.  But it is widely admitted that the Eucharist occupies the central place in Christology .

1. So, we deal here with the existential meaning of Chalcedon: Who is Christ? What is Christ for me (per me).  It is critical for the theology to regain its existential meaning and purpose, and to cease from being alien to the agonizing questions of contemporary man.

   The problem lies in the fact that, because of alien theological terms that we have adopted without much discernment, contemporary man’s answer to the Lord’s question: “what do men say about who I am?”, is either, A) that Christ is of no interest to him because He cannot help him out of his miseries, or, B) that Christ has placed upon him an unbearable burden which has completely weighed him down.  Very few are those who recognize Christ today as “meek and of a humble heart”, or as the good Samaritan—being “consubstantial with us according to Manhood”—who “pours oil and wine over man’s wounds”.  Maybe Christ loved sinners ‘more’ than others.  

   Our ecclesial communities should expand Christ’s prayer at Gethsemane to the whole world, offering themselves to the world instead of imposing themselves on it .

   We live in an age of individualism.   In our so-called civilization, everyone thinks only of himself; this attitude is not limited to the “secular” world, but is also present among Christians.  Individualism has crept in and each one of us tries to be reconciled with God by himself, on his own.  He forgets his brother or looks at him as an object of his criticism and blame and forgets that the meaning of the spiritual life, the fulfillment of our salvation, exists in this receiving of our brother. 

2. CHALCEDON AND THE INCULTURATION OF THE GOSPEL. But in spite of this general wisdom of Chalcedon’s Christology—which we must always bear in mind—its theological content acquired, over the course of history, a very important sense.  This sense is mainly associated with the life of the Church as manifested in culture, in arts (iconography, architecture), and in parish life (cf. Yannaras on transformative power of this truth)… One can go even further and conclude that Chalcedonian (and of course Post-Chalcedonian) Christology influenced the whole process of the inculturation of the Gospel.  One can speak about the “cultural” epistemology proposed by Chalcedon which has an indisputably “incarnational” basis.
3. CONTEXTUAL MANIFESTATION.  So, what is the contextual manifestation of the eternal Christological/dogmatic content(s) of Chalcedon? History has offered various responses to it, and we note just a few: the Russian Christology of kenosis, so evident in iconography; the Theanthropic Christology of fr Justin Popovic, the “asymmetrical Christology” of George Florovsky, or the “Pneumatologically conditioned Christology” of John Zizioulas… On the basis of this Christology, for instance, St. Gregory Palamas develops an authentic and real hesychast anthropology. Only Christ is the key which enables us to come to God without losing ourselves—our otherness. He enables human self-realization without destroying the God in us and without abolishing the human. The Mystery of Christ is not just a dogma of our Faith but also a great gift of God—the Way in which God, as the Land of the Living (Psalm 26:15), gives Himself to man and accepts man in Himself, without abolishing either.
   As St Maximus stated, “for the Word of God (Christ) and God wants always and in all things to accomplish the mystery of His embodiment.”  All the above mentioned Christological expressions are faithful to Chalcedon, because they are also grounded on the four adverbs (ἀσυγχύτως, ἀτρέπτως, ἀδιαιρέτως, ἀχωρίστως).  Inculturation inevitably involves the Incarnation of Christ, be it in forms other than, and in addition to, the historical one.  “Always and in all things” (continuously and everywhere) indicates that there is no race and no culture to which the Word of God can be unrelated.  It is critical for the Logos (both the eternal Word and the theological word) to regain existential meaning and purpose.
4. LOGOS INSEPARABLY CONNECTED WITH PNEUMA.  Yet, what makes this “true God and True Man” (qeo\j a)lhqw½j kaiì aÃnqrwpoj a)lhqw½j) an inclusive corporate personality, that is, Someone who takes part in all human agonies and weaknesses.  It is another divine person, about which Chalcedon doesn’t speak—the Holy Spirit who works with Christ.  Christ relates to people’s culture by the Holy Spirit, because Logos is inseparably connected with Pneuma.  For now, we can say that “the Spirit allows Christ to enter again and again in every culture and assume it by purifying it, that is, by placing it in the light (or one might say under the judgment) of what is ultimately meaningful as it is revealed in Christ.”  Theology must not simply speak about God, but invite people to His Body, for Christ is not an individual, conceivable in isolation: He is “the firstborn among many brethren” (Rom 8.29).  
   So, communion with the personal being of God through Christ in the Spirit is the primary service which the Church can render to every person and to all humanity in the modern world.
5. AN “EXISTENTIAL” CHRIST.  With the help of these theological principles, drawn from a study of Chalcedon’s Christology, we can make the following points in regard to the arts. We should emphasize that Orthodox iconography depicts Christ as a full man, as opposed to the monophysite depiction! This God-man realism was also applied in architecture, as Hagia Sophia  in Constantinople testifies. Within this broader theological and existential context, Christian art went beyond the dilemma of anthropological maximalism or minimalism or beyond any symmetry in Christology! This is expressed throughout Byzantine architecture and iconography (Hagia Sophia, Pantokrator, Hora ton zoonton etc.).
   So, a Byzantine icon of Jesus Christ always indicates Christ’s eternity (as the Pantocrator, “the Same through all Ages”), but, at the same time, the expression in Christ’s face (gaze, eyes…) reveals his participation in human agonies and weaknesses.  Gazing at Him we might say that this is an “existential” Christ Who, having become man, lives through the antinomies of human existence, through time and difficulties, through passions and suffering.  This is a Christ Who does not wish to be separated from human beings; He is descending to their level, taking upon Himself all human troubles and conditions (la condition humaine—the human condition) —everything except sin.  In the Orthodox iconographic depiction of Christ’s face (eyes), we can see a complete sympathy for us humans, which culminated in the Cross and in the Resurrection. 
6. TRUE SENSE OF BEING HUMAN.  Our postmodern time demands a respect for otherness (personal distinctiveness and identity)! However, this otherness remains in tragic isolation; nothing is as dreadful as the “other” without the inseparable union with somebody else.  How can the Chalcedonian dogma help in this situation?

   Respect for otherness is ‘covered’ with four Chalcedonian terms: ἀσυγχύτως, ἀδιαιρέτως, ἀτρέπτως (unchangeably) and ἀχωρίστως (inseparably).  Being inseparably united with us, Christ of Chalcedon identifies Himself with all of us.  Not only does He simply bear man’s infirmities but also He takes on responsibility for all these.  He took this responsibility on the Cross exactly because He was the one who was paying for the sins of others.  He did not simply bear the infirmities of others but He paid for them.  And, what is valid for Christ is valid for all of us.
    
   This leads us to the next important aspect of this unchangeable and inseparable unity. We, too, are invited to ‘receive one another.’ What does it mean to receive our brother? Simply to tolerate him? Because this is the point where many times we stop.  This is not the meaning of ‘receiving.’ Receiving means I receive him within me and I become one with him–like receiving food. And what happens when we receive food? One element of its nature becomes part of our body.  It is assimilated by our body, transformed and becomes one body with us. I tried to make this section a bit more succinct.  A definition of ‘receiving’ and an example of human relations might help.
    

7. Chalcedon doesn’t address the ecclesiological dimension of the Mystery of Christ. However, Christ is inseparably connected with the Church, which is supposed to be the body of Christ, the very presence of the Divine gift to the world in each place. In our particular situation today, our divided Churches are called to receive from one another and indeed to simply receive one another.  This raises all sorts of fundamental ecclesiological questions, since the highest point of unity in this context is that of mutual ecclesial recognition and not simply agreement on doctrine.  
   It now seems only to be a matter of when, rather than of if, the restoration of full communion between our Churches, which has been sadly interrupted for centuries, will occur.

Concluding Remarks

In this presentation, we tried first to identify ways in which the Chalcedonian Christology could operate today. It is obvious that there are different Christological approaches among the Churches today concerning the application of this Chalcedonian model.  Yet, there are positive developments which allow us to hope that this model can be of use today.  In concluding, let me be more specific.  There are so many fields in which Christology can be realized, in order to curtail the prevailing individualism in society, to overcome Hindu-inspired spiritualism,to curb the growing psychologism, to transform the culture, and to answer questions of bioethics and modern biotechnology.

I believe that the Chalcedonian Christology is holistic and not totalitarian.  Christ appeared with his “parousia” (presence, visitation), and not with his ousia , by springing from an event of communion.  The consequences are really astonishing.  It is Triadic Grace in action: when we say Χριστός, we mean the “anointed one”, anointed of the Father by the Holy Spirit.  
Where can this Christology be helpful? Pluralism is a tremendous opportunity.  Instead of having one uniform Christology (e.g. patristic), we should cultivate a vision of the Christological transformation of the world in a Neopatristic way; that is what Neochalcedonianism offers in order to fulfill and clarify the Fourth Ecumenical Council.  The Chalcedonian view of Christ contains many elements that can be helpful for our situation, if we view them theologically and make proper use of them.  I believe these are the crucial points where this vision can help modern man:

1. Individualism.
2. Instead of Spiritualism we have a Theanthropic realism Богочовечански реализам; Christ as the Church, Hora ton zoonton: to see, hear, feel, touch, and know Him! (The first epistle of John, which contains this eschatological orientation, begins with the triumphant proclamation that "the life was made manifest, and we saw it…," "that which we have seen and heard," "that which we have looked upon and touched with our hands," etc.)
3. Psychologism.
4. Cult, ritual, Sacrus and sanctus = Liturgy.  Hagia Sophia as a master work of Chalcedonian Christology.  There are aspects of Church life that are so deeply bound to this Christological Definition that they cannot operate without reference to the Chalcedonian vision, such as hymnography, iconography, architecture…
5. Cosmic ecology: The central point of our Faith is Christ as the Land of the Living, as the Living Space, which God was well pleased to give us in order that we may live eternally in Him, with Him, around Him, before Him, together with Him, and with one another. In our times, humanity faces many problems, including greater and greater ecological problems, which threaten human living space. Thus, this topic of Christ as the Land of the Living is very pertinent for today.
6. Asceticism: self-denial (αυταπάρνησις). Nobody is as personal, nor as unique as Paul who said: ‘it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2,20)
7. Prophesy: Christ’s presence is always a judgment, “krisis of this world” (Gospel of John).

The word of the Church ought to be the word of love, of the “kenosis” or “self-emptying” of the Cross, and of understanding.  It is a Christological message that should strike the existential “chord” of man, of which he has so much need in the tragic dead-ends of this life.  Beyond biochemistry, He existentially strikes our inner chord, our genes, the logoi of beings, as St Maximus says (beginning with Chalcedon, he developed an amazing Christology). Modern man, our neighbor, is fiercely tried and gripped by anxiety in the face of an uncertain future. He needs an outstretched hand; he needs to be opened toward communion and community. This opening of man to God—the opening of history to the Future, of earth to Heaven – is the message of Chalcedon. It should also be our message and our faith.
 

Here is the famous text of the Chalcedonian definition.

We, then, following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach men to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a reasonable [rational] soul and body; consubstantial [co-essential] with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the Manhood; in all things like unto us, without sin; begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, according to the Manhood; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ; as the prophets from the beginning [have declared] concerning Him, and the Lord Jesus Christ Himself has taught us, and the Creed of the holy Fathers has handed down to us.