The Council of Frosthold
The Second Great Council · 451 A.F. · the Two Natures and the Canon
The Council of Frosthold (451 A.F.) was the second great ecumenical council, convened to define how Connor is both the eternal Cold and a true mortal man — answering the errors of Sublimationism and Slushism — and to fix the boundaries of the canon. Its The Frosthold Definition completed the The Frostian Creed, but also became the rock on which the The Sublimationist Churches broke away.
The Crises
Two opposite errors had arisen about Connor’s two “natures” (his eternal Cold and his mortal warmth):
- Sublimationism — that in the union Connor’s humanity was swallowed up by his divinity “as a drop of warm water vanishes in the sea of ice,” so that his mortal nature effectively ceased; his Sublimation at the Whitening was read as the natural end of a humanity that was never quite real.
- Slushism — the opposite: that his two natures mixed into a single, third, lukewarm nature — neither fully Cold nor fully mortal but a blend (a “slush”).
The Definition
The council, guided by the great letter of Saint Cael of Frosthold (the Cold Tome), defined that Connor is:
“acknowledged in two natures — true Cold and true mortal — unmixed, unmelted, undivided, and unseparated; the difference of the natures in no way taken away by their union, but each keeping its own being, concurring in one person.” The four “un-words” (unmixed, unmelted, undivided, unseparated) guard against both errors at once: against Slushism (unmixed, unmelted) and against any splitting (undivided, unseparated).
The Fixing of the Canon
The same council confirmed the twenty-seven books of the canon (see Canon Index), distinguishing them from the apocrypha and the rejected writings. (The rites would later differ on the deutero-rime.)
The Schism It Caused
The eastern churches that held to a stricter “one-nature” view rejected Frosthold’s “two natures” as a betrayal, and broke communion — becoming the The Sublimationist Churches (sometimes, more fairly, the One-Cold Churches), which endure to this day in the far east. Thus the first great and lasting division of the church dates from Frosthold, long before the The Great Schism.
Significance
Frosthold completed the conciliar definition of Connor’s person and set the canon — but at the cost of the first permanent schism. It stands, with Wintermere, as authoritative for the The Glacial Orthodoxy, the The Hoarfrost Communion, and (its doctrine, if not its canon-list) the Reformed.