Fear And Loathing In Chalcedon I've been reading some material on the Council of Chalcedon. It happened in the year 451 of the Common Era. This gathering resulted in the split between the Roman and Orthodox churches. The term Orthodox refers to the assertion that the upstarts from Italy were on the console twisting more knobs than they should have been. On the surface, the big disagreement was the question of whether Jesus was (a)both god and man or (b)a kind of fusion of god and man into a third kind of being. Pull back the covers and you find that the pope in Rome was hopping mad that bishops in Constantinople had called a conference without his permission. The paper I read says the church leaders were still having formal discussions of the Council of Chalcedon as late as the 1970s. If Jesus was perfectly god, were they crucifying god and did the holes in his hand damage the deity? If doesn't get a lot of hungry mouths fed, but it is an interesting thing to think about. It keeps people who are teetering on starvation from getting to self-absorbed. Can you imagine a pissing contest over not being invited to a conference that lasts 1500 years? And while these leaders have spent all that energy on who was being crucified and how it might impact their winning ticket through the Pearly Gates, nobody thought about the wood on the cross. A tree gave its life so that a cross could be built. I guess I'm missing some point here.