Truth Unites - The Calvinist Orthodox Patriarch: Introducing Cyril Lucaris

Episode Date: January 8, 2025

Gavin Ortlund introduces the theology of Cyril Lucaris, a significant Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople within Eastern Orthodoxy who sought to harmonize Orthodox and Protestant theology. Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

Cyril Lucaris was an Eastern Orthodox patriarch and Calvinist reformer. Yes, you heard that right. On the one hand, he was an ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople and a significant and capable one at that. On the other hand, he was a reformer with Protestant theology, specifically a reformed Protestant or Calvinist theology. For those who are not aware, the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople is regarded as a kind of representative spiritual leader for Eastern Orthodoxy as a whole. Here's a picture of the current patriarch. He doesn't have the same. kind of authority that you get with like the Pope in Roman Catholicism, but it's as close as you can get to that within Eastern Orthodoxy. So it's remarkable for there to be a prominent holder of this office whose theology is unmistakably Calvinist and Protestant. And if you doubt the Calvinism part,

I'll put up chapter three of his confession. This is the first thing he gets to after the Trinity and scripture, and you can pause and read this if you want, but we're not even going to focus on the Calvinism part here. Instead, I want to focus on teachings like his teachings that the scripture is above the church and justification by faith alone, that the church is fallible and can err, that there are two sacraments, and then his rejection of transubstantiation and purgatory and praying to the saints and bowing down to images and so on and so forth will explicate all of that clearly in this video. I'll put up a table of contents on the screen so you can see where we're going to go and skip around in the timestamps as you want. But the goal of this video is

actually very modest. It's not to establish whether any of Cyril's views were correct or incorrect or even to try to fully draw out the implications. Rather, the goals are just two things. Number one, historical accuracy and number two, conceptual clarity. Cyril's story is worth describing with historical accuracy, in contrast to the very polemical takes that you often hear on him, because it undermines simplistic narratives about church history. In fact, it highlights the contingency and complexity of church history, and I'll say more about that to conclude this video. It's also helpful for conceptual clarity.

Understanding Cyril brings light to where our traditions differ. In fact, if you want to avoid caricaturing Protestant notions like Sola Scriptera or Sola Fide, you don't actually need to read lengthy books by the reformers themselves. All you need to do is read Cyril's brief two-page summary of doctrine, and he's a very good, faithful explicator of a reformed view of those topics and many others, as we'll see. Before I dive in, because I'm going to be citing from Cyril's famous confession, I need to address two ways that Cyril is often dismissed, and his confession is often dismissed. First, people claim that it's a forgery, and second, they try to dismiss and discredit Cyril himself.

So first, because it clearly has Protestant theology, some people have attempted to say that Cyril really didn't write this confession himself. And they say basically it's a scheme, for example, perhaps of his Jesuit opponents who attributed to him and that kind of thing. But outside of Eastern Orthodoxy, Cyril's authorship of this confession is a consensus view among scholars. And even many Eastern Orthodox scholars concede that Cyril did indeed write this. I'll put up some examples on the screen. All of these are Eastern Orthodox scholars. And there are three reasons why the authenticity of this confession is acknowledged by non-biased scholars.

First, Cyril himself acknowledged that it was his. Even in the face of intense opposition on its account, including assassination threats and assassination attempts. Cyril was a very controversial figure. He was like Athanasius in that. He was deposed and exiled and then reinstated, back and forth many times over, something around six times. And in the face of this kind of pressure, he maintained his own authorship of this confession. You can see that in several different letters

of his from the 1630s, as well as from the testimony of others. There's one episode in which he was dialoguing with a French ambassador who was inquiring whether this confession was really his, and he confirmed that it was his. And when he was accosted about that, he replied, in the affairs of my belief and eternal salvation, I shall neither follow the King of France nor any person in the world whatsoever, and I shall never do anything otherwise than what my conscience directs me. Cyril was a pretty cool dude, by the way. You'll see that.

Second, this confession is attributed to Cyril at multiple different Greek synods right around and during his lifetime. The authorship wasn't disputed until way later in the 17th century. at the Senate of Jerusalem, for example. But at these earlier synods, right around that time, they're attended by many people who know him personally, including many friends and sympathizers, who would have no motive to condemn him

and did not want to sign this document cursing him as a heretic. For example, at the Synod of Constantinople in 1638, the patriarch of Alexandria, who had great affection and friendship with Cyril and owed him a great debt of gratitude, was not eager to sign one biographer of Cyril notes that had there been the slightest doubt in his mind that Cyril was indeed the author of the Confessio Cretopoulos would certainly have refused to affix his signature. That's the Patriarch of Alexandria.

And third, third reason we know this confession was from Cyril is the theology of Cyril's letters is also very Protestant and corroborates the confession on almost every point. So if the confession was forged, why would you see the same exact themes in his letters, which no one disputes? So, and I'll quote from those letters in this video to document that. So don't let people tell you, you hear this all the time. People just deny that he wrote this because it's so Protestant. And if people do that to you, my advice is just to quote from the letters that he wrote, that no one disputes their authorship where you see the same thing.

The second thing, though, is if people can't deny the authorship of Cyril of this confession, then they try to dismiss him and discredit him as a person. Just as he was unjustly persecuted during his life and ultimately murdered, so he has been unjustly neglected and vilified after his life. People try to paint him as this kind of oddball who just somehow became the patriarch. But there's three problems with this. Number one, even within Eastern Orthodoxy, he's a martyr and a saint. He was canonized by in the Eastern Orthodox Church in 2009.

Second, he's not alone in his views. He had a lot of enemies, but he also had sympathizers and supporters. Not just among the Anglicans and the Dutch Reformed, he had a lot of conversing with those two groups, but also within the Eastern Orthodox Church. Albert Outler references Cyril as one episode within the century-long backstage parlay that went on between various Protestants and Greeks in the 16th and 17th centuries, at least. A few Orthodox leaders saw in Protestantism not only an authentic reformatory impulse, but also an ally against the aggressions of counter-reformation Rome. So note the words, but also there. It wasn't just the case that several Orthodox leaders were appealing to the Reformation,

kind of like as a hammer against Rome. They also saw some authenticity to the reform efforts. And Cyril was not alone in that. A good example would be Militios Pontagalos, who is the Archbishop, of Ephesus and a close friend of Cyril, and he called Cyril the good pastor and wise captain of the church, and he shared his opposition, not just a certain Roman Catholic doctrines, but his opposition to transubstantiation, icon veneration, praying to saints, etc. And he said, it is not permissible for us to hold any of the above doctrines nor any other human doctrine, but only what has been given

us by our Lord and his inspired apostles. We'll see Cyril's views on those matters in just a moment. that's we're about to get. The third reason, though, why we shouldn't just dismiss cereal as just kind of this oddball is, honestly, he's an impressive person. No one can deny that he did a lot of good. He was remarkably ecumenical and conversant with Western Christians. He had all kinds of contacts all throughout Europe. He was intelligent. He was energetic. He initiated a lot of good reforms within orthodoxy. One scholar references his role in clerical and calendar reform, his role in the establishment of the first Greek press, his role in a 1638 translation of the New Testament into Greek. This is an impressive guy. Another interesting thing about him is that he had a significant

role in First and Second Clement being sort of rehabilitated. He sent a copy, so, you know, Cyril has all these contacts. He has all this communication. He's really active and conversant. And he sent a copy of a particular codex to King James, which contained, among other things, first and second Clement. Those letters had not really been widely circulating, and because he did that, and then because they were subsequently translated, that really rehabilitated those letters. So Cyril has all kinds of significance and all kinds of positive features apart from these issues. Many regard him as the major Eastern Orthodox figure of his lifetime, and really of that whole span of time between the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the later Synod of Jerusalem, and the later 17th,

century that would condemn Cyril. So this is a significant person. So let's go through a brief overview of his theology. He writes this confession, is very brief. It's 18 points of doctrine. It's published in 1629. Then it has some later editions. And it has a few later questions in the later editions, which I'll mention. But these 18 points are just about two pages. You can read it in a couple of minutes. It goes through a lot of just basic doctrines that aren't that controversial, like creation, the fall, the incarnation. You can read it online. In addition to the Calvinism, which was chapter three of these 18 chapters, and I already quoted from that, let me highlight five other areas where you see basically Protestant theology. First, Sola Scripura. This is the second

thing in the confession right after the doctrine of the Trinity. So the doctrine of the Trinity is chapter one. Here's chapter two. We believe the authority of the Holy Scripture to be above the authority of the church. To be taught by the Holy Spirit is a far different thing from being taught by a man. For man may through ignorance err, deceive, and be deceived, but the word of God neither deceives nor is deceived nor can err and is infallible and has eternal authority. Let me leave this quote up for just a second while I explicate this. What's interesting is Cyril does not deny a conception of authority in the church. He just ranks it as inferior to that of Scripture. The distinction between Scripture,

and the Church here is on the basis of relative degrees of authority. And the basis for these different degrees is that, basically, one is infallible, one is not. The Scripture cannot err, but the Church can. And the rationale for that is that the Scripture is correlated with divine authority, but the Church is correlated with human authority. And that doesn't mean God's not at work in the Church. It just means that church teaching is not divine speech, like Scripture. is. Well, as you've probably heard from, if you watched any of my videos on this kind of stuff,

you know this is the essential content of Sola Scriptura. Scripture is the Word of God, therefore it has infallibility, but the church does err. She is human. Therefore, scripture is divine, and the church is fallible and human. Therefore, scripture is of superior authority to the church. Therefore, the church must measure herself by this superior standard, just like the divine is superior. superior to the human. God doesn't make mistakes. Human beings do. Again, it's not denying God's at work in the church. It's just saying the church teaching is not the speech of God. Now again, consider the goal here of conceptual clarity. Even if you don't agree with Cyril, listening to how he words that

can help somebody understand what a Protestant is trying to say. This is what the confession of DeSithius, which comes later in the 17th century and condemns Cyril, was opposing when it advocated for the opposite view. So in that document, the first article is about God, and then the second decree is about Scripture. And you see here the exact opposite teaching, saying, no, the church is not inferior to Scripture, and at the very end, you can see they're both infallible and so forth. Now, for me, between the confession of Cyril and the confession of DeSithius, I just say, go Cyril.

I think Cyril just got it right nailed like the hammer hits the nail right on the head. I just think he was correct, just like I think the Council of Nicaea II was wrong, and the Council of Frankfurt was correct, you know? These are the things that make somebody a Protestant. We're not rejecting everything going on, but we do think that there are some errors that happen now and again. Now, Cyril's doctrine of Sola Scriptura is reflected in his letters as well. So let me document this, because otherwise people are just going to try to dismiss it. I know people will try to deny that he actually wrote the confession. It doesn't matter. You just get all the same stuff, from his letters. So for example, in one letter exchange, he references a disagreement between himself

and an interlocutor, and he's talking about torture and the church and violence. And he says, the mere opinions of men, we will both hold in suspicion the words of the scripture and the gospel are true and infallible. The resistance to torture and violence here, of course, is a sadly relevant issue at that time as well. But again, you see that basic idea here, fallibility, infallibility. In another letter, he explains how he eventually was forced to this view, saying that the scripture must be prioritized over the church fathers because it has unique authority. At the end of this, he says, I cannot longer bear to hear it asserted that the comments of human tradition are of equal weight with Holy Scripture.

Second, Cyril's confession affirmed justification by faith alone, or what we call Solafide. He said, we believe that man is justified by faith and not by works. he then goes on to really develop a very distinctly reformed and Protestant understanding of that. Again, there's great value here for conceptual clarity, because if you want to understand that Solofide is not against the necessity of good works, Cyril is a good representative of this, he says in the second emboldened part here, this we say without any prejudice to good works, or truth itself teaches us that works must not be neglected and that they are necessary means to testify to our faith and confirm our calling. But then he's talking about judgment day. He's saying,

you don't want to stand on your works on judgment day. In the later discussions, what will come out as the formal cause of justification, you know, that this is the Protestant impulse on this point, is no, when I stand before God, I need to stand on the perfect alien righteousness of Christ, nothing inherent within me. Cyril's basically there. Third, sacraments. Cyril teaches very plainly two sacraments and stipulates that there's not any more than two. In the quote that you see on the screen, you can also, if you read the whole thing and see the second part I'm bolden, see that he also has an essentially reformed account of sacramental efficacy for both sacraments. They confer grace, but they must be received by faith. Similarly, he affirms, so if you don't

have faith, you don't have the fullness of the sacrament. That's true for the Eucharist, specifically, where he talks about real presence, but he rejects transubstantiation, and instead he understands real presence in a spiritual manner, which requires faith in the recipient. Similarly, in his letters, he writes, I believe in a spiritual eating, so that he who approaches the Lord's table in faith not only receives the visible sacrament of the body and blood, but also spiritually and inwardly partakes of the real body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. again, why is Cyril so valuable? So many reasons, but one very modest one is just this. If you know what Cyril taught will have less of the caricatures and less of the simplistic bifurcation of either transubstantiation or memorialism.

You know, either you believe it's a real feast upon Christ or you reject it as just a symbol. It's like, no, the real differences in church history have more been to do with how we understand that. Cyril is faithful to a reformed account of that, which I've defended in various places. Fourth, Cyril Stockner of the Church, in chapter 10 of his confession, he affirms that the Catholic Church contains all true believers. That's interesting. And then he says the head of the church is Christ alone. And he says that without negating the role of other subordinate offices under Christ. Now you can see in this passage a reference to visible churches in what I've underlined here, what does the adjective visible mean for him? Here again, conceptual clarity can come out.

If you want to avoid caricaturing the Protestant distinction between the visible church and the invisible church, listen to how Cyril develops it in the next chapter. We believe that the members of the Catholic Church are saints chosen unto eternal life from the number and fellowship of which hypocrites are excluded, though in particular visible churches, tears may be found among the wheat. Okay, that's as good, a little tiny expression of this distinction between visible, invisible as I found anywhere else in Protestants. This is the Protestant idea, and it's also a Hussite idea. You see it in Jan Hus. Basically, the church, strictly speaking, is the elect. And this just means that we cannot see who is actually united to Christ as his members,

because we don't see into people's hearts. We don't know who are the hypocrites who've been baptized, but they're hypocrites. Only God sees that. That's invisible to us. we can see it imperfectly. Now, that is not a negation of the visible church, as that we don't also affirm that. That is caricatured over and over. People set the idea of an invisible church over and against, like church structures and church institutions and so forth. It's just a simple distinction between whom we baptize and whom God ultimately knows are his. And that's a point you can see explicated there in Cyril. Cyril also affirms the fallibility. of the church. That's already been implicit in his treatment of scripture, but it's also very

clear here in the confession. Now, another clear aspect of Cyril's confession is number five. His rejection of various, what I call accretions, he kind of calls them that too. He actually uses the term superstitions more. In specific, we can talk about purgatory, icon veneration, and praying to the saints. The final chapter of his confession says that the souls of the dead are either in blessedness or in damnation, according as everyone has done, for as soon as they are out of the body, they pass either to Christ or into hell. And he calls purgatory a fiction. Cyril also has strong feelings about icon veneration. Now, earlier on, in his career and his letters, you can find how disgusted he's become with the practice, even though he doesn't reject the whole thing. He says, regarding the reverence

of images, if not in former times, however, it has become pernicious to such a degree that I can by no means say. With God as my witness, I deplore the present state of the east, of which I see no limit. How is it possible to remedy this deformed and obscene ulcer? In my judgment, images should not be simply rejected, for without being reverenced, they are not able in themselves to cause mischief, but the idolatry they cause to blind worshippers I abhor. So you can see kind of an interesting position there, but then as his career develops. So there's a study by, I think her name is Stephanie Falcosky. It's a really good and clearly written study you can find it online. She notes that the 1633 Greek translation of his confession has Cyril adding an addendum with

a few more questions, not found in the earlier Latin edition. And that includes affirmation of a shorter Old Testament canon, affirmation of the clarity of scripture, and affirmation of the right of the believer to read the scripture, but also it addresses this issue of icons. And here, his position becomes a little more clear. And he approaches it from the standpoint of the Second Commandment, saying essentially it is forbidden. He also opposed the invocation of saints. This is clear in his letters. He says, to honor the saints' right, but not so to invoke them. And this is a view as well. It became clearer throughout his career. As for the invocation of saints, time was when I did not perceive how.

how they eclips the glory of our Lord Christ, and I obstinately defended them by two works against the learned. And he mentions a person. But in his answer, he so completely refuted my arguments that I had need of no other book to prove my error. And now I call the Lord to witness that in reciting the public office, it gives me the greatest pain to hear the saints invoked circumstantially to the dereliction of Jesus Christ and to the great detriment of souls. You see his pastoral burden as it's developing, and as he's seeing the way these practices play out in the church. So that's just a brief overview. What does all that mean? Well, there's so much it means that we can't fully explore in this video. We need to keep vetting this. I'm not going to try to draw all the implications out of this.

I have a more modest point. Again, I think just knowing about him, I mean, that's a starting point, just putting this out there for people to wrestle with and think about and just be aware of. You know, church history is simply fascinating. I'll just make one very modest and brief point, and that is the complexity and contingency of history. We tend to take the status quo for granted. But when we look back in church history, even just a few hundred years ago, this is in the 17th century,

it's amazing to consider how much variation we find and how things might have gone differently. Cyril understood himself to be a reformer within orthodoxy. You can see from some early letters that he had no conception that his views constituted a departure from the Orthodox faith. At the same time, Cyril plainly owned being a Calvinist. Sometimes earlier in life, because his views develop a little bit, he could be a little more cryptic at times, but toward the end of his life,

he was very frank in acknowledging this. In one letter, just a few years before his death, he basically said, I approve and adopt the doctrine of the most worthy Dr. John Calvin, and all who agree with him. You can also see in this quote, which I leave up on the script, the explicit link he makes between his own confession and the Belgic confession, which is a reformed confession, as defining the word evangelical, as well as his worries about superstition among Greek Christians. So you could ask the question, which is he, Orthodox or Reformed?

And the answer is, Cyril didn't see those as distinct as we do today. One study on this cautions against thinking that this is an acceptance of every tenet of Calvinism. She's kind of nuanced about this. But nonetheless, she notes that Lucaris has conflated Reformed Orthodoxy with Eastern Orthodoxy. Luccharis thought that Calvinist doctrine, at least as far as he accepted it, was actually congruent with orthodoxy. Isn't that amazing? As late as the 17th century, there was not as much definition and boundary around Eastern

Orthodoxy, particularly in this dynamic of responding. to the Protestant Reformation. For Cyril, the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople, and an impressive leader within the Orthodox Church, the reformed faith represented a purified orthodoxy, one that is freed from the stains of Greek superstition, and also bulwarked against the errors of what he saw the deadly errors of the papacy. So that raises the question. You know, fascinating question. What if he had been more successful? in reforming orthodoxy. It's always a fun thought experiment to ask about church history, you know, what if questions. Of course, he wasn't successful. In fact, we can say that indirectly

Cyril is somewhat responsible for shaping modern Eastern Orthodoxy away from Protestantism, because the Senate of Jerusalem, which really defined Eastern Orthodoxy in the modern era, and was very anti-Protestant was in response to Cyril. Philip Schaff says that the Senate of Jerusalem did for Eastern Orthodoxy, what the Council of Trent did for Roman Catholicism. In both cases, they're kind of codifying and systematizing and coalescing against the Protestant Reformation. So, you know, it's really cementing the divide.

And as you know from my other videos, if you've watched them, the Senate of Jerusalem basically says the Protestants are not Christians. So that's Cyril. Now, if you're interested in more about him, I've tried to be modest. I've tried to lay it out, explain why I think we should not dismiss him or just dismiss his confession and lay out some of his Protestant theology without drawing too many implications, because I just want to invite people into this. Normally, at this point, I would recommend further reading for where to go. But in this case, I would say if you would like to read more about Cyril or learn more, go write a dissertation on him.

Because we need more scholarship on Cyril, there is amazingly little relative to his importance. So let me know what you think in the comments. Hope this video will at least spark some people to do some further research here. Thanks for watching, everybody.