Council of Chalcedon Re-Examined - Fr. V.C. Samuel

This sentence summarizes the bulk of the book.

"The fact about the council of Chalcedon, which the present writer has shown elsewhere, may be noted here: It abrogated the decisions of the second council of Ephesus without ever examining them against the background of their theological assumptions; it proceeded from the beginning by consider Eutyches a confirmed heretic, showing at the same time no concern at all to establish that fact against him in the light of evidence or at least stating in clear terms what his teaching was; it exonerated Flavian of Constantinople and Eusebius of Dorylaeum, the president of the synod of 448 and the accuser of Eutyches respectively, without looking into the ground of their condemnation by the council of 449; it ratified a sentence of deposition passed against patriarch Dioscorus of Alexandria by a section of the delegates, specifying no definite charge against him; it adopted a definition of the faith with the phrase 'in two natures' in the face of a determined opposition from a large majority of the council's delegates, including patriarch Anatolius of Constantinople; and it acquitted Theodoret of Cyrus and Ibas of Edessa, both of them highly controversial figures, without examining whether there was any ground at all for the charges that had been levelled against them in an impartial way, so that the council of 553 had to pass a resolution justifying the decision, not of Chalcedon, but of Ephesus in 449."