Talk:Eastern Churches Council of Australia

Pre-Chalcedonian and Pre-Ephesian

The Antiochian Archdiocese, and the pre-Chalcedonian Churches, prefer the use of the term Pre-Chalcedonian in this article, and any article dealing with Eastern Hierarchs, or the Pre-Chalcedonian Churches themselves.

Non-Chalcedonian is a loaded term showing bias against those "who did not accept the truth decided by Chalcedon", as the obviously biased put it. Pre-Chalcedonian is a positive term acknowledging the common heritage of both divisions prior to Chalcedon.

The unbiased term Pre-Chalcedonian is needed to help Christians of good-will work towards healing the tearing of Christ's Church.

Similarly, the term Pre-Ephesian is preferred to describe those Churches erroneously referred to as "Nestorian", by so many in the Chalcedonian Churches and their offshoots.

To heal the wounds it is necessary to start from common ground and look at the circumstances and reasons for the divergences, and the semantics in the formularies of the divergences.

The terms Chalcedonian and Pre-Chalcedonian, and Ephesian and Pre-Ephesian, acknowledge the common ground prior to those Councils.

chrisg 2006-05-22-1441 EAST

In the same way that the term 'traditionalist', used for "old calendarists", is objected to by "new calendarists" on the basis of a lack of tradition, for a similar reason is pre-chalcedonian objected to, as both Eastern and Oriental Orthodox (to use different descriptions) were pre-chalcedonian. The question is not whether the Oriental Orthodox (or the Easterns, for that matter) existed before or after Chalcedon, but whether the canons of the council were accepted. In acknowledgement of this, "Chalcedonian" and "Non-Chalcedonian" are the best descriptive terms we have. — by Pιsτévο ^{talk complaints} at 00:02, May 22, 2006 (CDT)