Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/170

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.&mdash;The Greek Church has no creeds in the modern Western use of the word, no normative summaries of what must be believed. It has preserved the older idea that a creed is an adoring confession of the church engaged in worship ; and, when occasion called for more, the belief of the church was expressed more by way of public testimony than in symbolical books. Still the doctrines of the church can be gathered from these confes sions of faith. The Greek creeds may be roughly placed in two classes, the oecumenical creeds of the early undivided church, and later testimonies defining the position of the Orthodox Church of the East with regard to the belief of the Roman Catholic and of Protestant Churches. These testimonies were called forth mainly by the protest of Greek theologians against Jesuitism on the one hand and against the reforming tendencies of Cyril Lucaris on the other. The Orthodox Greek Church adopts the doctrinal decisions of the .&amp;lt;even oecumenical councils, together with the canons of the Concilium Quinisextum or second Trullan council ; and they further hold that all these definitions and canons are simply explanations and enforcements of the Nicaeo-Con- stantinopolitan creed and the decrees of the first council of Nicfea. The first four councils settled the orthodox faith on the doctrines of the Trinity and of the Incarnation ; the fifth supplemented the decisions of the first four. The sixth declared against Monotheletism ; the seventh sanctioned the worship (SovXeta not aXrjOivr) Aarpeta) of images ; the council held in the Trullus (a saloon in the palace at Constantinople) supplemented by canons of discipline the doctrinal decrees of the fifth and sixth councils. The Reformation of the 16th century was not without effect on the Greek Church. Some of the Reformers, not ably Melanchthon, expected to effect a reunion of Christen dom by means of the Greeks, cherishing the same hopes as the modern Old Catholic divines and their English sympa thizers. Melanchthon himself sent a Greek translation of the Augsburg Confession to Joasaph, patriarch of Constantin ople, and some years afterwards Jacob Andrese and Martin Crusius began a correspondence with Jeremiah, patriarch of Constantinople, in which they asked an official expression of his opinions about Lutheran doctrine. The result was that Jeremiah answered in his Censura Orientalis Ecchsice condemning the distinctive principles of Lutheranism. The reformatory movement of Cyril Lucaris brought the Greek Church face to face with Reformation theology. Cyril was a learned Cretan, who, having travelled exten sively in Europe, and having become acquainted with and devoted to the Reformed faith, was afterwards elected patri arch of Alexandria in 1602 and patriarch of Constantinople in 1621. He conceived the plan of reforming the Eastern Church by bringing its doctrines into harmony with those of Calvinism, and by sending able young Greek theologians to Switzerland, Holland, and England to study Protestant theology. His scheme of reform was opposed chiefly by the intrigues of the Jesuits. He was five times deposed, and five times reinstated. In the end he was murdered by the Turks at the instigation of the Jesuits. The church anathematized his doctrines, and in its later testimonies repudiated his confession on the one hand and Jesuit ideas on the other. The most important of these testimonies are (1) the Orthodox confession or catechism of Peter Mogilas, confirmed by the Eastern patriarchs and by the synod of Jerusalem (1643), and (2) the decree of the synod of Jerusalem or the confession of Dositheus (1672). Besides these, the catechisms of the Russian Church should be con sulted, especially the catechism of Philaret, which since 1839 has been used in all the churches and schools in Russia. Founding on these doctrinal sources the teach ing of the Orthodox Greek Church is&thinsp;:&mdash;

1 Tliis summary has been taken, with corrections, from Winer. Small capitals denote differences from Roman Catholic, italics differences from Protestant doctrine.