Posted on 07/22/2010 11:01:11 AM PDT by the_conscience
Edited on 07/23/2010 8:45:24 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
That sounds reasonable but I have no confidence your coreligionists will be able to abide.
well, that is your own opinion, which you are entitled to. thanks for responding
I think, as others have mentioned, the Orthodox position is that the Filoque should never have been added without (or removed) without a Church council (especially since it was a Church council that established the wording of the Nicene Creed). I’m not positive that I agree with them, but I certainly think they have a valid complaint.
On 4 November 1620, the Holy Synod of Constantinople elected «Cyril Lucaris, renowned for his virtue and wisdom», Ecumenical Patriarch. From 1620 to 1638 Cyril reigned five times (1620-23, 1623-33, 1633-34, 1634-35, 1637-38), and found himself at the centre of the acrimonious dispute between the Papacy and the Reformists, while the Churches of the East, especially that of Constantinople, experienced the stifling and infuriating propaganda of the Jesuits.
State diplomacy took an active part in the conflicting actions and counteractions of the Jesuits and the Reformists. France and Austria offered their services to Rome, where the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide was organizing a scheme against Cyril. Part of the plan was to discredit the Patriarch with the clergy and laity by spreading the rumour that he was a Calvinist. At the same time, the Ambassadors of France and Austria were pressing the Porte to depose Cyril.
Indeed, Cyril was deposed five times and each time he was re-elected to the Patriarchal throne by the clergy, with the support of the Orthodox population. Anglicans and Protestants (the English, Dutch, Germans, Swedes) also supported the return of Cyril to their own advantage. In the swirl of conflicting political and religious rivalries and the resulting dangerous climate, Cyril Lucaris tried to steer a course that, in his opinion, would serve best the interests of the Orthodox Church. He was fully aware of the critical state of affairs and of the pervasive influence of the Jesuits. He wrote: They (the Jesuits) «seek our destruction and the ruin of the Patriarchate and of the entire Church of the Greeks».
The Calvinists, from their side, used political influence, diplomacy, money and every other means to win the Patriarchate and the Orthodox Church over to their views. Cornelius Van Haag, the Dutch Ambassador, made use of all his influence in this unrelenting struggle, assisted by the Calvinist divine Antoine Leger. The latter, through theological discussions, fiery sermons and friendly approaches eventually swayed the Patriarch's entourage, which included Nathaniel Conopios, Metropolitan of Smyrna, Meletios Pontogalos, Metropolitan of Ephesus, Theophilos Corydalleus, Metropolitan of Arta, and John Caryophyllos.
At about that time, the Calvinists of Geneva arranged to print and publish the Holy Bible translated into modern Greek by Maximos Callipolitis. Cyril found himself obligated to sanction Callipolitis's translation, though it contained Calvinist views that could cause confusion to the common people. This confusion became chaotic when, in 1629, the Calvinists of Geneva published the first Latin edition of the so-called «Lucarian Confession», in which the Patriarch appeared to accept the Calvinist doctrines and betray the Orthodox faith. From 1629 to 1633 the «Eastern Confession of Christian Faith» was published under the name of Cyril Lucaris in Latin, Greek, French, German and English. J. Carmiris writes: «This inelegantly worded Confession roused great commotion and indescribable agitation throughout the Church and caused preoccupation not only to the ecclesiastical theologians but also to the politicians and the diplomats. In the beginning almost everyone believed it to be a forgery, not a true work of the Patriarch». More than 350 years have elapsed since the first publication of the so-called «Lucarian Confession». Eminent historians, theologians and researchers have tried to clarify whether Lucaris was the actual author of the «Confession» attributed to him by the Calvinists. The Patriarch himself verbally denied it on several occasions and proclaimed his Orthodox faith with his attitude and in his letters. To the end, however, Cyril did not disavow the «Confession» in writing. Successive Synods of the Orthodox Church have condemned the «Confession» as heretical and alien to the Orthodox faith of the Fathers.
The tragic figure of Cyril Lucaris stood in the midst of opposing religious currents. On the one side the Protestants tried hard to win over the Orthodox in their struggle against the Roman Catholics, going so far as to involve the Patriarch himself with the «Lucarian Confession» in order to promulgate their novel doctrines. On the other side the machinations of the Jesuits reached unheard of extremes. The Ecumenical Patriarch, alone, unprotected and betrayed, was judged and condemned. On 27 June 1638, he was strangled and his body was flung into the Bosporus. Manuel Gedeon writes that after some time «the sea out of compassion for this outstanding champion of Orthodoxy washed ashore his body on the island of Chalki». Cyril's body was buried with all honours by the Patriarch Parthenius I (1639-1644) in the precinct of the historical monastery of Panagia Kamariotissa on Chalki.
In the course of his difficult patriarchy «the much famed and very wise» Cyril Lucaris issued a large number of decrees on many ecclesiastical matters. A few of the synodical resolutions, patriarchal decisions and sigils are noted below:
1. A synodical resolution in July 1622 canonized St. Gerasimos of Cephalonia.
2. A special patriarchal encyclic appealed to all the Orthodox to make donations for the rebuilding of the monastery of Simonopetra, Mount Athos, which had been destroyed by fire.
3. In 1627, Cyril set up a patriarchal printing-press for the publication of Orthodox works that would invigorate the faith of the sorely tried Orthodox world.
4. Cyril appointed as Director of the famous Patriarchal Academy «Theophyllos Corydalleus, celebrated erudite and expounder of Aristotle's writings».
5. In 1628, Cyril instituted the dating of patriarchal documents from the Birth of Christ and not from the Creation of the World, as was the practice until then.
So the Orthodox position is "a pox on the Jesuits and a pox on the Calvinists". As others have pointed out, it would have been nice if you had not excised the preamble to your posted article as it contained important information related to this very controversial document.
Strange - I thought you, wmfights, said that Baptists are indeed part of the “Protestants”. is that not correctly stating what you believe?
I'd almost convert to get in on that.
§ 15. The Confession of Cyril Lucar, A.D. 1631
…
The Confession of Cyril Lucar was never adopted by any branch or party of the Eastern Church, and even repeatedly condemned as heretical; but as it gave rise to the later authentic definitions of the 'Orthodox Faith,' in opposition to the distinctive doctrines of Romanism and Protestantism, it must be noticed here. Cyrillus Lucaris (Kyrillos Loukaris), a martyr of Protestantism within the orthodox Greek Church, occupies a remarkable position in the conflict of the three great Confessions to which the Reformation gave rise. He is the counterpart of his more learned and successful, but less noble, antagonist, Leo Allatius (1586–1669), who openly apostatized from the Greek Church to the Roman, and became librarian of the Vatican. His work is a mere episode, and passed away apparently without permanent effect, but (like the attempted reformations of Wyclif, Huss, and Savonarola) it may have a prophetic meaning for the future, and be resumed by Providence in a better form.
Cyril Lucar was born in 1568 or 1572 in Candia (Crete), then under the sovereignty of Venice, and the only remaining seat of Greek learning. He studied and traveled extensively in Europe, and was for a while rector and Greek teacher in the Russian Seminary at Ostrog, in Volhynia. In French Switzerland he became acquainted with the Reformed Church, and embraced its faith. Subsequently he openly professed it in a letter to the Professors of Geneva (1636), through Leger, 55a minister from Geneva, who had been sent to Constantinople. He conceived the bold plan of ingrafting Protestant doctrines on the old œcumenical creeds of the Eastern Church, and thereby reforming the same. He was unanimously elected Patriarch of Alexandria in 1602 (?), and of Constantinople in 1621. While occupying these high positions he carried on an extensive correspondence with Protestant divines in Switzerland, Holland, and England, sent promising youths to Protestant universities, and imported a press from England (1629) to print his Confession and several Catechisms. But he stood on dangerous ground, between vacillating or ill-informed friends and determined foes. The Jesuits, with the aid of the French embassador at the Sublime Porte, spared no intrigues to counteract and checkmate his Protestant schemes, and to bring about instead a union of the Greek hierarchy with Rome. At their instigation his printing-press was destroyed by the Turkish government. He himself—in this respect another Athanasius 'versus mundum,' though not to be compared in intellectual power to the 'father of orthodoxy'—was five times deposed, and five times reinstated. At last, however—unlike Athanasius, who died in peaceful possession of his patriarchal dignity—he was strangled to death in 1638, having been condemned by the Sultan for alleged high-treason, and his body was thrown into the Bosphorus. His friends surrounded the palace of his successor, Cyril of Berœa, crying, 'Pilate, give us the dead, that we may bury him.' The corpse was washed ashore, but it was only obtained by Cyril's adherents after having been once more cast out and returned by the tide. The next Patriarch, Parthenius, granted him finally an honorable burial.
Cyril left no followers able or willing to carry on his work, but the agitation he had produced continued for several years, and called forth defensive measures. His doctrines were anathematized by Patriarch Cyril of Berœa and a Synod of Constantinople (Sept., 1638), then again by the Synods of Jassy, in Moldavia, 1643, and of Jerusalem, 1672; but 56on the last two occasions the honor of his name and the patriarchal dignity were saved by boldly denying the authenticity of his Confession, and contradicting it by written documents from his pen.
This Cyril was the same who seat the famous uncial Codex Alexandrinus of the Bible (A) to King Charles I. of England, and who translated the New Testament into the modern Greek language.
The rest of the article, linked above, provides some useful data (from a respected Protestant perspective).
I can’t click the excerpt box after the article is posted. But I added “snips” to show that it is an excerpt.
I don't either side has grounds for patting itself on the back.
Outstanding. Thanks!
That might take some serious research.
Challenging it directly on thread usually disrupts the caucus and causes a swiss cheese effect if the caucus is upheld.
LOL!
Ironically, if the main body of the thread had somehow acknowledged that it was an excerpt, people would have realized that there has long been speculation about whether or not this confession is a fraud.
I think you overextended yourself there. Those denominations which are still confessional have more in common, especially in major doctrines, than they disagree. The Confessional Lutherans and Reformed are in basic agreement on soteriological doctrine.
Where they differ is not much different than where the different sects within Romanism disagree.
Just as today one must see the Orthodox world in its greater historical context, so in Patriarch Kyrillos’ day, too, Orthodoxy existed in a world of political reality that must be carefully studied, in order to see what implications rise above his specific witness and faithfully address Orthodoxy at a general level. To this end, let me just say, as a general observation, that with the fall of Constantinople the Orthodox East fell under Latin domination and the Turkish Yoke. Its survival threatened, its spiritual and intellectual primacy relinquished to the West, Orthodoxy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries took on an historical character that cannot be applied universally to the Church’s experience and ethos, and especially, again, without careful examination and precision.
Too much scholarship today comes from secondary and from encyclopedic sources, offered up by inadequate scholars who ignore primary sources and who, in the field of Orthodox studies, fail to capture the thinking of the Fathers. For example, the political intrigue surrounding the reign of Patriarch Kyrillos is very complex. It involves theological and political issues dating back to the time of his mentor and (most probably) relative, Patriarch Meletis (Pegas) of Alexandria, and to Loukaris’ strong opposition to the Latin Church and the Unia, an opposition that brought him into conflict with certain circles (both in Alexandria and in Constantinople) which had primarily political reasons for their sympathy with Rome. To reduce these complicated factors to some supposed opposition within the Orthodox Church to Patriarch Kyrill’s so-called Protestantism is absurd. Such a faulty reduction also creates a myth about the Patriarch that is to a great extent a fabrication of Western scholarship and of those Orthodox captured by the West. It also ignores the standard historiographical assumptions of Orthodox Greek writers, who have a far more expansive knowledge of Orthodoxy in the age in question than their Western counterparts. In this vein, it is rather amazing that one of these articles in Credenda tries to make something of the fact that the Patriarch’s "Confessio fidei..." was published in Geneva. Could we imagine it being published in post-Byzantine Constantinople? Anyone with even an elementary knowledge of intellectual life of the Greeks at this time would readily understand why men of Greek letters published throughout the West, and especially in Italy and France. It is astonishingly naive for anyone to attach to the publication of Loukaris’ confession in Geneva any special significance at all. The notion that these particular writings were "composed" by Loukaris in Latin is another troubling statement. It needs careful scrutiny and actually says nothing to support the thesis that Loukaris had, by implication, a keen appreciation and knowledge of Western (Reformed) theology. It leads us, rather, in another direction, as we shall see.
While he knew Latin, it is clear from his many letters and writings, as well as from biographical data from contemporaries of his, that Patriarch Kyrillos could not have produced a polished text such as that of the original Latin "Confession." Indeed, many Greek scholars even dispute the claim that the Greek text, which appeared together with the Latin text four years later, was the work of Loukaris. Rather, it is argued by most Greek scholars that the text was essentially the work of Calvinist scholars with whom Cyril communicated on a regular basis and who condensed many of his letters and exchanges into a conveniently Calvinistic confession that ignored the Patriarch’s Orthodox understanding and grasp of reformed theology. For a brilliant textual analysis in support of these assumptions, see Professor Ioannis Karmiris, Orthodoxia kai Protestantismos (Athens, 1937). (Cf. Chrysostomos Papadopoulos, Kyrillos Loukaris [Athens, 1938].)
It is only by ignoring his many sober theological works and writings, wholly in concord with traditional Orthodox theological concepts, and his synodal confessions and justifications, that one can argue that Patriarch Kyrillos was a supporter of Calvinism. The whole idea of a "Protestant" Patriarch who was forced to betray his Protestant leanings is a bit of Western fancy that the Reformers used to slap at Rome (beset as it was by the "problem" of the Eastern Church only a few centuries after having, however fruitlessly, "united" with it, a "problem" which the Lutheran Reformers had also exploited at the Diet of Worms). This fanciful idea was also one that the Latins used in their struggles against Loukaris, on account of his many years of opposition to the Unia and the Jesuits in Eastern Europe, characterizing him as a betrayer of his own Faith. (Remember that the Latins had a deep hatred for this Patriarch. Through the machinations of the Jesuits and other anti-Orthodox agents in Constantinople, the Papists were finally able, through the Austrian Embassy, to bribe the Turks to condemn and kill Patriarch Kyrillos in 1638, and thus to silence him. His body was, indeed, unceremoniously thrown into the Bosporos.)
Let us also say that the Orthodox Church, which in Her mind constitutes the successor of the very Church established by Christ, has a theology and spiritual life quite foreign to those of the West, whether Latin or Reformed. Soteriology, the sacraments (or, more properly, the Mysteries), and Christian anthropology and cosmology, however misunderstood and misrepresented by the West (we think, here, of the gross stupidity of Western scholars who imagine our theological traditions to be neo-Platonic—an accusation which shows an ignorance both of Orthodoxy and of Neo-Platonism), are concepts that we discuss in a context and with nomenclature foreign to the Papists and Protestants. When addressing Roman Catholics, our Church has, however, spoken about seven sacraments and about various administrative structures in Western language (though, in fact, our Mysteries are without number and order always yields to prophecy in Orthodoxy); speaking with Protestants, we have spoken of the interaction of Faith and good works and of Divine Providence and Grace in ways that they understand (when, in fact, the first distinction is unknown to us and the apophatic and Hesychastic traditions of Orthodox theology approach the second issue in a way largely mystifying to Western theologians). Admittedly, less-gifted Orthodox thinkers today also seek to form a "systematic theology" in response to the West (notwithstanding the fact that it is in the realm of spiritual practice, not confessional theology, that any notion of the systematic properly applies in Orthodoxy). But all of this does not mean that we are speaking the language of the heterodox in our hearts, let alone that we share their theological precepts.
When we address Westerners on their own terms, we are reaching out to them in the limited language that they grasp. Setting aside the issue of the authenticity of his confession, when Loukaris reached out to the Protestants, then, whatever his motives and whatever his language, his writings, his witness, and his Orthodoxy were in no way compromised by these actions. Nor did he become that which he addressed. I leave it to others to judge the wisdom of his actions. But to characterize them in any way than that which I have is to argue, once more, against all that one can glean from studying his life and reading his writings as a whole. If the modernist Orthodox can make "Popes" of their Patriarchs and create a melange of Orthodoxy, Protestantism, and Papism that they pass off as "official" and "canonical" Orthodoxy, Protestants sectarians can make of Patriarch Cyril a Protestant. But these creations do not change the truth. Both in the case of modern Orthodoxy (which has created its own religion from the language of mission by which Orthodoxy has been preached in the West) and a phantom "Protestant" Patriarch, we are dealing with false creations of theological nomenclature that are separated from true experience.
Despite Western references to Patriarch Kyrillos’ wide contacts with the Reformers, he is in fact most famous in the Orthodox world for his anti-Papist stand against the Uniate menace and for his opposition to Jesuit missions in Eastern Europe. His contacts in Eastern Europe, where he studied, served, and traveled, were extensive. His opposition to Uniate Catholicism after the Brzeesc-Litewski Treaty of 1596 was so strong and widespread, that his so-called "Confession," whatever its true source, is a mere footnote to his struggle against Papism. It was THIS anti-Latin Loukaris who supported Protestant opposition to Papism, who perhaps allowed his views to be restated and published by his Calvinist contacts in Geneva, and who earned the enduring hatred of the Papacy, which has played an essential role—if one reads the intellectual history surrounding this issue—in perpetuating the idea that the "Confessio" was the direct work of Kyrillos and that he was a Protestant in his thinking. If one ignores almost all of his scholarship and accepts the "Confessio," and if one ignores almost all of his activities and accomplishments in Eastern Europe and in resisting Uniatism, then it might be argued that Loukaris was the author of an Orthodox "reform" that almost was. But this fantasy, so favored by Protestants and so boldly bequeathed to them by Latin polemicists, is much like modernist Orthodoxy in America. It has the press. It has attention. It can dismiss arguments against it as those of fringe elements and cultists. But just as a thorough study of those who hold forth as Orthodoxy’s "official" spokesmen today show these people to be something other than what they are, so with a careful study of the facts surrounding the "Confessio fidei" of Kyrillos Loukaris the myth of a "Protestant" Patriarch goes the way of Pope Joan.
So between this and the previous entry, it is obvious that, at best, this is the personal opinion of the author. At worst...a fairly disgusting forgery.
I think you'd (the_conscience) have done yourself a big favor had you posted the whole piece from the website and then asked the EO here if this thought is at all reflected in modern EO thinking...(it likely could have retained its caucus label...had you done so)
So let it be written; So let it be done
I would add that posts questioning the Caucus status will be deleted and the poster scourged unless and until the Caucus status is removed.
Okay. You can leave out the scourging part.
I thought mortification was good for the soul...
I think the difference is that I don’t see any Protestants conspiring to break up a caucus before it’s even begun.
I realize there is an affinity between the Orthodox and Romanists but it looked awful petulant to try and destroy a caucus before it even began.
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