October 8

Harriet Taylor Mill, William Dwight Porter Bliss, and the Council of Chalcedon

Author

David Barnhart
October 08, 2025

Bolivia, 2004. Own photo.

On this day in 451, the Council of Chalcedon began. This was the last authoritative doctrinal council affirmed by both Eastern and Western churches, and it asserted that Jesus Christ was both fully human and fully divine. It was intended to be the final word in the church in the debate over Jesus’s nature — whether he was more or less divine, or more or less human, or some mixture of the two. Though this debate has never really ended, Chalcedon affirmed a life-giving paradox: Jesus is not less like God when he is most human; he is most like God when he is most human.  

Today is also the birthday, in 1807, of Harriet Taylor Mill, a philosopher and women’s rights activist. Along with her second husband, John Stuart Mill, she made forceful arguments for equality of the men and women both politically and relationally. 

Today is a feast day, in the Episcopal Church, for William Dwight Porter Bliss, a priest who died on this day in 1926. He was a fierce critic of capitalism and a voice for Christian socialism. 

Reflection:

Harriet Taylor Mill wrote: 

“We deny the right of any portion of the species to decide for another portion, or any individual for another individual, what is and what is not their "proper sphere." The proper sphere for all human beings is the largest and highest which they are able to attain to.”

and

“When, however, we ask why the existence of one-half the species should be merely ancillary to that of the other—why each woman should be a mere appendage to a man, allowed to have no interests of her own, that there may be nothing to compete in her mind with his interests and his pleasure; the only reason which can be given is, that men like it.”

Prayer: God, humanity’s image of you is often upside-down and backward. We look for you everywhere but in the most human. Help us to recognize you glory not only in sunsets, mountains, and cosmic infinity, but in the action of human healers, justice-seekers, and peace-makers. Amen.