Part 1 — Introduction
Part 2 — The Council of Nicaea (325)
Part 3 — The Council of Constantinople (381)
Part 4 — The Council of Ephesus (431)
Part 5 — The Council of Chalcedon (451)
Part 6 — Leo
Part 7 — Conclusion

This is part 5 of our series discussing Lawrence McCready’s article “Papal Primacy in the First Councils” from the Unam Sanctam Catholicam blog. We’ve previously discussed the councils at Nicaea (325), Constantinople (381), Rome (382), and Ephesus (431). Today, we will discuss the last council on our list: the Council of Chalcedon, in 451AD.

The Roman Catholic Axiom

We note, right up front, that McCready had just asserted—in his immediately preceding paragraph—the Roman Catholic Axiom:

So where does all this talk about the “Apostolic and Conciliar Tradition regarding the Supremacy of the Bishop of Rome” come from? It doesn’t come from anything in the past that we have examined so far. After all, a century earlier, the Bishop of Rome didn’t even have primacy within his own diocese. The supremacy of Rome was neither ancient nor apostolic. Rather, this claim derives from its future, in keeping with the Axiom.

When McCready states that the Patriarch of Constantinople was trying to overturn the Apostolic Tradition of Rome’s supremacy, he is not only begging the question, but overturning the historical record. Such is the power of the Axiom: to legitimize fallacious reasoning and rewrite actual history.

As we examine the Council of Chalcedon (and “Pope” Leo in the part 6), we’ll see that McCready is not the only one to invoke the Axiom.

The Council of Chalcedon

The primary purpose of the Council of Chalcedon was, indeed, to reinforce the Council of Ephesus in its rejection of Nestorianism. Ephesus had been a sizable political victory for Rome, so the Bishop of Rome was clearly eager to further establish his power base in Chalcedon.

But McCready makes an historical error here:

Leo did not even attend the council at Chalcedon, despite being asked to preside over it. As with Ephesus, he sent his legates as his representatives. Leo did, indeed, “draft” the Tome, but not at the council. The Tome was written earlier in 449 in response to the Second Council of Ephesus (the so-called “Robber Council”). Rather than being drafted there, the Tome was read aloud by the Roman representatives.

The main document produced was the “Acts of the Council of Chalcedon,” containing:

• The minutes of the sessions
• The Definition of Faith (from Session 5)
• The Canons (from Session 15 and 16)
• The synodal letters
• Various appendices

The history of the Council is also in much dispute. Historical documents indicate anywhere between 16 and 21 sessions. Due to the incompleteness of extant manuscripts and conflicting versions of the Acts, we should take what we think happened with a grain of salt. Just look at how many parentheticals (from Labbe and Cossart, Concilia, Tom. IV.) and how much red-text commentary is found in New Advent’s “extracts” version of events.

I’m sure it would be interesting to analyze “The Tome“—and the Definition of Faith that the Council produced—in light of the claim that it contained what was spoken by Peter through Leo and “taught by the Apostles.” Wouldn’t that make it scripture, or, at the very least, infallible? Maybe a Roman Catholic reader can weigh in. But, that is reserved for another day. Let’s stick to the topic at hand.

The irony is that, a century earlier, the Bishop of Rome did not even have rule over the Diocese of Italy, let alone the whole church. The consolidation of power with the Bishop of Rome continued, and this council reflects that somewhat. But it was not yet secure, as we will see when we examine Canon 28.

I do not see anything being “widely hailed by the bishops in attendance.” What I do see is over-the-top flowery and gushing praise of the Bishops of Rome and Alexandria. I see the behavior of sycophants trying to impress the imperial throne and being afraid to do otherwise (i.e. seeking earthly approval under threat of punishment). And, of course, this is paired with complete and utter condemnation of anyone who dares disagree. I wonder who they could have been referring to? Hint, hint. It looks and sounds exactly like what we saw at the Council of Ephesus.

Go back and read the writings of Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople. The writing there is concise, juridical, and formulaic. It focuses on clarity and agreement. Now, compare it to the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon. The text there is flowery, polite, ornate, ostentatious, and pretentious. It is filled with honorifics, elaborate praise of bishops, the language of deference, and other rhetorical flourishes. All this served to give the proceedings an air of grandeur and solemnity. It was a big show.

When McCready talks about how everyone “widely hailed” something, this is all but meaningless considering they widely hailed everything and everyone, including people they condemned. As we will see in the case of Dioscorus below, this rhetorical approach only served to obfuscate what the bishops actually believed. I can only conclude that McCready has never actually read any of the primary documentation himself, or else he would have noticed the dramatic change in language between the two sets of councils.

I guess we’ll start by assuming, for sake of argument, that “Peter has spoken through Leo” should not simply be dismissed as a meaningless artifact of the epideictic and panegyrical style borrowed from the imperial Byzantine bureaucratic tradition. It isn’t at all clear, to this writer, that “Peter has spoken through Leo” has any substantive meaning at all. But let’s proceed anyway.

Not only is Cyril mentioned alongside Leo, but the contributions of Cyril precede that of Leo. Cyril died in 444, but Leo didn’t write his tome until 449. This is all rather plain in the way they speak of Leo in the present and Cyril in the past. Cyril had already been teaching this—the “true faith”—long before Leo wrote his Tome.

But, directly to the point, the Tome had just been read out loud (as had been the letters of Cyril). It is rather plainly obvious that “Peter has spoken through Leo” is a just-so response to the right-then-and-there just spoken words of the Tome of Leo.

We don’t have to concern ourselves with whether or not the Council was saying that Cyril had the same authority as Peter or the Bishop of Rome, because they were not even discussing authority. It is nowhere mentioned. To assert some form of theological doctrine of authority…

…from a simple, straightforward response to what had literally just been spoken is madness, and reflects the influence of the Axiom.

That said, at one point during the second session, as the Tome was being read, there were a number of interruptions by some who objected to Leo’s words. Someone defended Leo by citing the authority of Cyril. Even Theodoret had to, at one point, defend the Tome by citing Cyril’s authority. If anything is clear at all, it is that Cyril was held in higher authority than Leo. It might even be accurate to state that Leo’s Tome was accepted because it conformed to Cyril’s views, not the other way around.

(We’ll see in Part 6 that the Tome’s widespread acceptance was actually coerced, but we’ll set that aside for now.)

I’ll give McCready credit where credit is due: his strong imagination allows him to see later Roman Catholic doctrine wherever he looks in the past, even when it doesn’t actually exist there. I mean, why should McCready be concerned that the Council said nothing about the “filling the chair of St. Peter” here or anywhere else during the council? Why should be be concerned that “Peter has spoken through Leo” was the simple assertion that the doctrine of the Tome was the same as that handled down by Peter. Let’s make it about Papal Primacy instead just because we can!

Oh, come on! Other than reflecting the tendency of certain members of the church to engage in over-the-top ostentatious, mutually self-congratulatory speech, there is nothing remarkable in this flowery statement. This is just as substantative as saying “You’re amazing, I’m amazing, God is amazing, and we’ve always been amazing! Look how amazing we all are! Except for that guy Dioscorus. He’s the worst.” These men sound and behave like a gaggle of modern teenage girls, with an exception for their use of fancier, more holy, adjectives.

Frankly, it sounds like blatant brown-nosing, as if something far more important is going on than what is being literally said.

Did you notice the “us” in that speech? Do you know who it refers to? McCready didn’t say. If he had, you’d be far less impressed by his argument. The “us” was the people giving this speech: the Roman contingent of legates. Do you know what’s not recorded in the excerpts given at New Advent? The speeches that the other bishops gave (if any). The English translation is about as maximally biased as it could possibly be. You absolutely should be asking why that is.

McCready could not possibly have actually read the document in question, or else he never would have made the assertion above that he did. The quotation by the Roman legate sounds quite definitive, as if Dioscorus was already formally deposed and the Roman legates were just congratulating the Council on a job well done. Is that what you thought? If so, you’d be wrong too.

Let’s peak in on the discussion by Richard Price and Michael Gaddis, who note:

This is to what they refer from the first Session:

(My favorite part is where they call Dioscorus “the most devout bishop of Alexandria” even as they excommunicate him for supposed acts of treason and heresy. My second favorite part is where they call the Emperor—not Christ or the Bishop of Rome—”the divine head.”)

McCready cites the speech as if there was a unified will of the entire Council under the command of the Bishop of Rome. The reality is that it was the imperial will under the board of government officials led by the lay chariman Patrician Anatolius (not to be confused with Patriarch Anatolius of Constantinople). In other words, the emperor was interfering in the council by presiding over it in a tightly managed fashion. Thus, in the first session, Dioscorus was condemned without trial (for supposed crimes that were only vaguely and poorly defined). It is to this that the Roman legate refers when he says:

That’s quite the spin doctoring!

Without at least the appearance of an impartial trial, it just appears as if—like in Ephesus with John of Antioch—that the decision was railroaded (in this case by imperial decree). Consequently, the stated opinion of the Roman contingent tells us almost nothing about what the council at large had to say, including if the other Bishops even agreed at all with the Roman contingent or the imperial representative. Naturally, it’s not like they had much choice, as going against the Emperor was career suicide (or worse).

The speech by the Roman contingent represented a formal declaration of deposition being proposed by Rome in a formal trial, not the official ruling on that deposition. It was as if to say:

The verdict on Dioscorus’ deposition had not yet been executed, but the Roman contingent was letting everyone know ahead of time what the outcome of the trial must be. Here is what New Advent’s commentary says occurred immediately after this speech:

This utterly eviscerates McCready’s argument. And all he had to do to realize his error was to read the very next sentence in the document after the one he quoted.

Isn’t it interesting that immediately after McCready declares allegiance to the Axiom, he immediately starts promoting painfully obvious historical falsehoods. After all, when you have the Axiom on your side, who needs to read the primary sources to see if you are actually right! You can just assume and you get to be automatically right no matter what. And, of course, you only need the Axiom if what you are looking for can’t be found where you look.

The speech by the legates did not, in fact, reflect the will of the council. Nor was it a declaration by the council of the authority of the Bishop of Rome. Rather, it was the Roman contingent’s last minute attempt—just prior to the vote—to ceorce the Bishops to vote with them. It was a political speech! And, most importantly, it didn’t work.

The council didn’t even depose Dioscorus because of the reasons the Bishop of Rome demanded. Here is what Rome tried to do:

Presiding over a sham-trial, Paschasinus tried to smear Dioscorus in order to sway the majority. But it didn’t work.

When finally the Bishops gave their decision, the majority rendered a guilty verdict in absentia. They didn’t find Dioscorus guilty for the reasons the so-called Pope or his representatives gave them, nor because the Bishop of Rome spoke as Peter. No, they found him guilty because he refused the threefold summons to appear. They condemned him on a technicality because the Emperor desired a guilty verdict and used the Roman contingent to get it, but they wouldn’t condemn him for heresy and treason like they were supposed to.

…and…

There is no way this can be construed as Leo “guiding the council” as the Pope of the whole church. The Roman contingent was giving no-so-veiled implied threats to vote along party lines, backed by the will of the emperor himself. This behavior is also quite similar to the “unfounded” accusations made against Rome at the Council of Ephesus. Ultimately, the Bishops voted as they were coerced into doing.

Are you skeptical? Well, do you want to know what Dioscorus was guilty of doing? Excommunicating Leo, the Bishop of Rome (which, as well see in the part 6, he surely deserved). Now do you see why having—(1) Consul Anatolius rule against Dioscorus in the first Session (without a trial); and, (2) Leo’s representative—Paschasinus—preside over the trial—might implicate the perceived impartiality of the proceedings? No kidding!

Remember how, at the Council of Ephesus, John of Antioch refused to appear before what was so very clearly a kangaroo court? Given the way that the Council of Ephesus engaged in acts of clear injustice, no doubt Dioscorus felt exactly the same way that John of Antioch did prior to his excommunication. One has to be particularly credulous to buy, at face value, the spin that the legates of Rome put on the situation, what with the sword of the Roman Emperor metaphorically hovering silently over their heads.

The council did not reference Leo as Peter. Nor did anyone say that the Bishop of Rome (or even the Council itself) were the rock and foundation of the church. They said that Peter is. Not was. Is. But, McCready can, apparently, read the minds of those men from Rome and just knows that they were talking about how the Bishop of Rome is the Pope of the whole thing, sitting in the seat of Peter. Even though they didn’t say that.

So, let me get this straight. Despite Rome sending a contingent of legates to threatenguide the council to rule way Rome wanted it to rule, the Council nevertheless passed a Canon that undermined Rome’s official position in the church. Yeah, that definitely sounds like something you would do if you thought the Bishop of Rome ran the whole church.

Let’s have that reminder again. A century earlier, the Bishop of Rome wasn’t even the Metropolitan of his own Diocese. He ruled over a tiny jurisdiction. In less than a hundred years, the Bishop of Rome had yet to consolidate his not-insignificant power into an official declaration of Roman Papal Supremacy. Sure, he and his cronies were declaring it as fact every chance they got, but the rest of the church hadn’t yet fubought in.

Canon 28 reflects this. Instead of saying…

…it said…

This is not a mistake you can possibly make if you think the Bishop of Rome is the Pope over the whole church. Throughout McCready’s examination of the Council of Chalcedon, he has found precisely no evidence that the Eastern bishops there actually believed that the Bishop of Rome had any special authority over the church. He had to invoke the Axiom here to manufacture some.

The wording chosen wasn’t a mistake at all. The verbiage of Canon 28 reflects the correct view of history, just not a view of history that Rome was willing to admit was true.

The only reason that Rome had ever had any authority as a Metropolian at all was because it was the imperial capital. If it wasn’t for its status as a royal city, Rome would have fallen under the rightful jurisdiction of Milan. Without its status as the royal city, Rome’s bishops would have had to be ordained by Milan in order for their ordinations to be valid, just as had been the case with Constantinople under Heraclea prior to Canon 3 of the Council of Constantinople.

The Council of Chalcedon was reasoning correctly in Canon 28: New Rome should properly be given the same privileges and equal status of Old Rome because New Rome was the royal city. But in deference to Old Rome being the elder of the two, New Rome had to take second place in rank. This rank would have been, if the church was following the Nicaean standard, merely relative to Old Rome’s status, not its absolute placement within the whole of the church.

Perhaps most amusing is that the “ecumenical” Council of Chalcedon gave Constantinople widespread rule over the Eastern segment of the church—something Rome itself coveted—even as the Roman contingent of legates stood by and watched it happen, powerless to stop it. More than anything else, this fact demonstrates the limits of Roman power within the Eastern church during the middle of the 5th century.

The Eastern bishops—acting exactly as NIMBYs are wont to do—were not willing to contest the Bishop of Rome’s claims of authority over the Western church. Why should they care what goes on in someone else’s backyard? But when it came to the Bishop of Rome having authority over the Eastern bishops? They absolutely could not allow that to happen, so they gave it to Constantinople.

It wasn’t bogus at all. The Eastern bishops almost acted in complete accordance with the precedent set at Nicaea and confirmed at the Council of Constantinople. They just didn’t go far enough.

Had they been acting in accordance with Nicaea, they would have established Constantinople as of equal or greater rank to Rome, while placing both of them into limited jurisdictional confines with the dioceses governed separately by each diocese’s Metropolitan bishop.

Likely the only reason they didn’t follow the Nicaean precedent completely is because of Rome’s outsized political power. Ironically, as we’ll see in part 6, the Council of Chalcedon wrote Canon 28 by following Rome’s lead.

Oh, that’s quite rich coming from someone who had just written about the “ecumenical” Council of Ephesus. John of Antioch must be spinning in his grave. Leo, the Bishop of Rome absolutely used deceit along with his massive political sway to coerce Constantinople and the East to comply—at least partially—with his wishes. And, he used deceit in this very council and its aftermath. We’ll offer the definitive proof in part 6 of our series.

There is something that I’ve alluded to throughout this series: most of these “ecumenical” councils were not, in fact, ecumenical. Take the Council of Constantinople, for example. They were topically only concerned with matters in the East, which is why they only mentioned the Eastern dioceses. The bishops there had no idea that the council was supposed to be ecumenical. Only later councils (starting with Chalcedon) implicitly invoked the Axiom and retroactively declared Constantinople to be ecumenical when it clearly had not been.

McCready may be correct here, but, if so, he’s not going far enough. If the “logic” of the Council of Constantinople really is garbage, then so much worse must the “logic” offered by the Roman contingent. We’ll see why that is when we look at Leo’s deceit in detail in the part 6.

When the church and state merged in the 4th century, many of the Bishops were turned into politicians. This included the Bishops from both the West and the East. The Bishop of Rome proved quite capable and effective at applying political pressure. You can see above that McCready clearly had no problem with the use of political pressure when it came from Rome. Nor, does McCready show any hesitation against the Emperor’s biased support of Rome or over the Emperor’s intrusion into the affairs of the church. If Rome (or the Emperor) was “guiding” the council, all the better! McCready’s primary objection is that the political pressure came from elsewhere, not that there was political pressure at all. This is the standard political “my guy good your guy bad” routine.

It takes the power of a full invocation of the Axiom to somehow declare that the Bishop of Rome’s politicking is “the powers of Christ and his Church” against an actual ecumenical council putatively made up of His Bishops in His Church.

Politicians everywhere think their side is amazing while the other side is the absolute worst—the latest incarnation of Trump/Hitler/Nero/Satan—even as they use the exact same tactics.

The fact is, both sides in an argument can be, and often are, wrong. Such is the case of both the Eastern Bishops and the Bishop of Rome at the Council of Chalcedon. But since only one side was pushing Papal Primacy—and Papal Primacy is the very topic of this series—we will continue with our one-sided critique. McCready’s criticisms of the Eastern bishops do not provide any legitimacy to the doctrine of Papal Primacy, and so they are largely irrelevant (even if true).

In order to gain some insight into the thinking of the council, let’s look at one of the other Canons of the council:

Ever since Nicaea, it was the ecclesiastical standard to not have two metropolitans in the same province.

Jurisdictional issues had come up at every church council. Nicaea had to deal with Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Antioch (three metropolitans in the one Diocese of Oriens). Sardica had to deal with the jurisdictional issues pertaining to ordinations across diocesan boundaries. Constantinople updated the Nicaean precedent to reflect the newly established Diocese of Egypt (in Canon 2) and to give Constantinople its own jurisdiction (in Canon 3). Ephesus dealt with jurisdictional issue of one bishop taking claim of another bishop’s domain. Then, of course, Chalcedon gave us Canon 12 and forbid the sneaky creation of new ecclesiastical provinces by having civil authorities create a new civil provincial division. By the Nicaean precedent of the custom of Rome, only Constantinople could be awarded a brand new jurisdiction on account of it being the New Rome.

The ancient custom of Rome cited in the Council of Nicaea was that when there were two metropolitans within a single province, that the lesser metropolitan (e.g. Rome, Jerusalem, and Alexandria) be given its own limited jurisdiction within, but separate from, the chief Metropolitan of its territory. In other words, Nicaea eliminated two ecclesiastical metropolitans in the same civil province by creating a new (of a sorts) ecclesiastical province of limited geographical scope to give to the lesser metropolitan.

The “privileges” of Rome and Constantinople were that they were entitled to their own jurisdiction on account of being the royal seat, just as Canon 28 stated:

The council correctly identified that the “privileges” mentioned by Nicaea were ecclesiastical jurisdictional boundaries, which of course “magnified” the recipient in ecclesiastical matters (e.g. the right to hear appeals and perform ordinations). In a similar way, the significance of Canon 12 is that the Council of Nicaea put the power of assigning the ecclesiastical jurisdiction (i.e. privileges) into the hands of the Nicaean Council itself, not the civil government.

The Bishop of Rome (and his contingent) were using their power to usurp the Council of Nicaea’s authority by denying Constantinople’s jurisdiction. Constantinople did not try to usurp Rome’s power, for it did not lay claim to any part of the city of Rome—the rightful jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome—or even any part of the Diocese of Italy. It was the Bishop of Rome who was trying to extend his reach outside of his own rightful jurisdiction. Constantinople was entitled to full juridical powers within the jurisdiction established by the (Eastern) councils, and Rome (in the West) was trying to subvert it.

Rome had more-or-less declared itself the ruler over the Latin West, extending itself far beyond its rightful jurisdiction. Thus, it had no legitimate claim to gainsay the Eastern bishops from giving portions of the Greek East (Pontus, Asia, Thrace) to the rulership of Constantinople.

Throughout this series, we’ve seen how history has been manipulated in order to support a false narrative about Papal Roman Primacy. But this kicks into overdrive with Leo, who blatantly engaged in outright fraud. We’ll discuss that in part 6.