[127] This is the date (achmg') given by Kimmel, P. I. p. 53, and the date of the Synod of Jassy, where the Confession was adopted. Butler (Hist. Acc. of Conf. of Faith, p. 101) gives the year 1663; but the Confession was already published in 1662 with the letters of the two Patriarchs. See Kimmel, Proleg. p. lxii.
[128] he metriotes he mon, a title of proud humility, like the papal 'servus servorum Dei,' which dates from Gregory I.
§ 17. The Synod of Jerusalem and the Confession of Dositheus, A.D. 1672.
Hardouin: Acta Conciliorum (Paris, 1715), Tom. XI. pp. 179-274.
Kimmel: Monumenta Fidei Ecclesiæ Orientalis, P. I. pp. 325-488; Prolegomena, pp. lxxv.-xcii.
On the Synod of Jerusalem, comp. also Ittig: Dissert. de Actis Synodi Hieros. a. 1672 sub Patr. Hiers. Dositheo adv. Calvinistas habitæ, Lips. 1696. Aymon: Monuments authentiques de la religion des Grecs, à la Haye, 1708. Basnage: Hist. de la religion des églises réformées, P. I. ch. xxxii. J. Covel: Account of the present Greek Church, Bk. I. ch. v. Schroeckh: Kirchengeschichte seit der Reformation, Bd. ix. (by Tzschirner), pp. 90-96. Gass: Symb. der griech. Kirche, pp. 79-84.
The Synod convened at Jerusalem in March, 1672, by Patriarch Dositheus, for the consecration of the restored Church of the Holy Nativity in Bethlehem, [129] issued a new Defense or Apology of Greek Orthodoxy. It is directed against Calvinism, which was still professed or secretly held by many admirers of Cyril Lucar. It is dated Jerusalem, March 16, 1672, and signed by Dositheus, Patriarch of Jerusalem and Palestine (otherwise little known), and by sixty-eight Eastern bishops and ecclesiastics, including some from Russia. [130]
This Synod is the most important in the modern history of the Eastern Church, and may be compared to the Council of Trent. Both fixed the doctrinal status of the Churches they represent, and both condemned the evangelical doctrines of Protestantism. Both were equally hierarchical and intolerant, and present a strange contrast to the first Synod held in Jerusalem, when 'the apostles and elders,' in the presence of 'the brethren,' freely discussed and adjusted, in a spirit of love, without anathemas, the great controversy between the Gentile and the Jewish Christians. The Synod of Jerusalem has been charged by Aymon and others with subserviency to the interests of Rome; Dositheus being in correspondence with Nointel, the French embassador at Constantinople. The Synod was held at a time when the Romanists and Calvinists in France fiercely disputed about the Eucharist, and were anxious to secure the support of the Greek Church. But although the Synod was chiefly aimed against Protestantism, and has no direct polemical reference to the Latin Church, it did not give up any of the distinctive Greek doctrines, or make any concessions to the claims of the Papacy.
The acts of the Synod of Jerusalem consist of six chapters, and a confession of Dositheus in eighteen decrees. Both are preceded by a pastoral letter giving an account of the occasion of this public confession in opposition to Calvinism and Lutheranism, which are condemned alike as being essentially the same heresy, notwithstanding some apparent differences. [131] The Answers of Patriarch Jeremiah given to Martin Crusius, Professor in Tübingen, and other Lutherans, in 1572, are approved by the Synod of Jerusalem, as they were by the Synod of Jassy, and thus clothed with a semi-symbolical authority. The Orthodox Confession of Peter Mogilas is likewise sanctioned again, but the Confession of Cyril Lucar is disowned as a forgery.
The Six Chapters are very prolix, and altogether polemical against the Confession which was circulated under the name of Cyril Lucar, and give large extracts from his homilies preached before the clergy and people of Constantinople to prove his orthodoxy. One anathema is not considered sufficient, and a threefold anathema is hurled against the heretical doctrines.
The Confessio Dosithei presents, in eighteen decrees or articles, [132] a positive statement of the orthodox faith. It follows the order of Cyril's Confession, which it is intended to refute. It is the most authoritative and complete doctrinal deliverance of the modern Greek Church on the controverted articles. It was formally transmitted by the Eastern Patriarchs to the Russian Church in 1721, and through it to certain Bishops of the Church of England, as an ultimatum to be received without further question or conference by all who would be in communion with the Orthodox Church. The eighteen decrees were also published in a Russian version (1838), but with a number of omissions and qualifications, [133] showing that, after all, the Russian branch of the Greek Church reserves to itself a certain freedom of further theological development. We give them here in a condensed summary from the original Greek: