Acts of the Synod of Jerusalem (1672)
The preamble and chapters that lead up to the Confession of Dositheus in the synod’s acts. They explain why the synod met, deny that the Calvinist confession published under Cyril Lucaris’s name was his, and reprint the acts of two earlier synods against it.
The acts are headed “A Shield of Orthodoxy” and addressed to all Orthodox bishops and Christians. The preamble says that the bishops had come together for the dedication of the church of the Nativity at Bethlehem and wished to answer Western writers who claimed the Eastern church for Calvinist doctrine. Six points follow: that the Eastern church never knew Cyril Lucaris as a Calvinist or accepted the confession as his; that if he wrote it he did so in secret; that it is not the confession of the Eastern church; and that two synods had already condemned it. The sixth point is the synod’s own confession, cited separately as the Confession of Dositheus.
The acts are an argument by one party to a dispute. Their denial of Cyril’s authorship is the synod’s claim, made some forty years after his patriarchate by men who say they had a book of his sermons in his own hand before them. See the Synod of Jerusalem and the Confession of Dositheus.
Cited in
- 16 March 1672, firm date