The Myth of the "Calvinist Patriarch"

by Archbishop Chrysostomos of Etna

Webmaster's Note: The Orthodox Christian Information Center asked Archbishop Chrysostomos, the Academic Director for theCenter for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies,  to review the comments made by a Protestant publication calledCredendaAgendain their articles "Confessio Fidei" and "The Reformation that Failed" (by Chris Schlect; see Vol. 6, No. 5). His Eminence graciously replied and made a number of comments about the issues at hand, excerpts from which are presented in a condensed and selected form below. This is the first of numerous forthcoming installments responding to the articles inCredenda Agenda.

Just as today one must see the Orthodox world in its greater historical context, so inPatriarch Kyrillos’ day, too, Orthodoxy existed in a world of political reality thatmust be carefully studied, in order to see what implications rise above his specificwitness 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 fellunder Latin domination and the Turkish Yoke. Its survival threatened, its spiritual andintellectual primacy relinquished to the West, Orthodoxy in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies took on an historical character that cannot be applied universally to theChurch’s experience and ethos, and especially, again, without careful examination andprecision.

Too much scholarship today comes from secondary and from encyclopedic sources, offeredup by inadequate scholars who ignore primary sources and who, in the field of Orthodoxstudies, fail to capture the thinking of the Fathers. For example, the political intriguesurrounding the reign of Patriarch Kyrillos is very complex. It involves theological andpolitical issues dating back to the time of his mentor and (most probably) relative,Patriarch Meletis (Pegas) of Alexandria, and to Loukaris’ strong opposition to theLatin Church and the Unia, an opposition that brought him into conflict with certaincircles (both in Alexandria and in Constantinople) which had primarily political reasonsfor their sympathy with Rome. To reduce these complicated factors to some supposedopposition within the Orthodox Church to Patriarch Kyrill’s so-called Protestantismis absurd. Such a faulty reduction also creates a myth about the Patriarch that is to agreat extent a fabrication of Western scholarship and of those Orthodox captured by theWest. It also ignores the standard historiographical assumptions of Orthodox Greekwriters, who have a far more expansive knowledge of Orthodoxy in the age in question thantheir Western counterparts. In this vein, it is rather amazing that one of these articlesinCredenda tries to make something of the fact that the Patriarch’s"Confessio fidei..." was published in Geneva. Could we imagine it beingpublished in post-Byzantine Constantinople? Anyone with even an elementary knowledge ofintellectual life of the Greeks at this time would readily understand why men of Greekletters published throughout the West, and especially in Italy and France. It isastonishingly naive for anyone to attach to the publication of Loukaris’ confessionin Geneva any special significance at all. The notion that these particular writings were"composed" by Loukaris in Latin is another troubling statement. It needs carefulscrutiny and actually says nothing to support the thesis that Loukaris had, byimplication, a keen appreciation and knowledge of Western (Reformed) theology. It leadsus, rather, in another direction, as we shall see.

While he knew Latin, it is clear from his many letters and writings, as well as frombiographical data from contemporaries of his, that Patriarch Kyrillos could not haveproduced a polished text such as that of the original Latin "Confession."Indeed, many Greek scholars even dispute the claim that the Greek text, which appearedtogether with the Latin text four years later, was the work of Loukaris. Rather, it isargued by most Greek scholars that the text was essentially the work of Calvinist scholarswith whom Cyril communicated on a regular basis and who condensed many of his letters andexchanges into a conveniently Calvinistic confession that ignored the Patriarch’sOrthodox understanding and grasp of reformed theology. For a brilliant textual analysis insupport of these assumptions, see Professor Ioannis Karmiris,Orthodoxia kaiProtestantismos (Athens, 1937). (Cf. Chrysostomos Papadopoulos,Kyrillos Loukaris[Athens, 1938].)

It is only by ignoring his many sober theological works and writings, wholly in concordwith traditional Orthodox theological concepts, and his synodal confessions andjustifications, that one can argue that Patriarch Kyrillos was a supporter of Calvinism.The whole idea of a "Protestant" Patriarch who was forced to betray hisProtestant 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 centuriesafter having, however fruitlessly, "united" with it, a "problem" whichthe Lutheran Reformers had also exploited at the Diet of Worms). This fanciful idea wasalso one that the Latins used in their struggles against Loukaris, on account of his manyyears of opposition to the Unia and the Jesuits in Eastern Europe, characterizing him as abetrayer 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 condemnand 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 successorof the very Church established by Christ, has a theology and spiritual life quite foreignto those of the West, whether Latin or Reformed. Soteriology, the sacraments (or, moreproperly, the Mysteries), and Christian anthropology and cosmology, however misunderstoodand misrepresented by the West (we think, here, of the gross stupidity of Western scholarswho imagine our theological traditions to be neo-Platonic—an accusation which showsan ignorance both of Orthodoxy and of Neo-Platonism), are concepts that we discuss in acontext and with nomenclature foreign to the Papists and Protestants. When addressingRoman Catholics, our Church has, however, spoken about seven sacraments and about variousadministrative structures in Western language (though, in fact, our Mysteries are withoutnumber and order always yields to prophecy in Orthodoxy); speaking with Protestants, wehave spoken of the interaction of Faith and good works and of Divine Providence and Gracein ways that they understand (when, in fact, the first distinction is unknown to us andthe apophatic and Hesychastic traditions of Orthodox theology approach the second issue ina way largely mystifying to Western theologians). Admittedly, less-gifted Orthodoxthinkers 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 confessionaltheology, that any notion of the systematic properly applies in Orthodoxy). But all ofthis does not mean that we are speaking the language of the heterodox in our hearts, letalone that we share their theological precepts.

When we address Westerners on their own terms, we are reaching out to them in thelimited language that they grasp. Setting aside the issue of the authenticity of hisconfession, when Loukaris reached out to the Protestants, then, whatever his motives andwhatever his language, his writings, his witness, and his Orthodoxy were in no waycompromised by these actions. Nor did he become that which he addressed. I leave it toothers to judge the wisdom of his actions. But to characterize them in any way than thatwhich I have is to argue, once more, against all that one can glean from studying his lifeand 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 theypass off as "official" and "canonical" Orthodoxy, Protestantssectarians can make of Patriarch Cyril a Protestant. But these creations do not change thetruth. Both in the case of modern Orthodoxy (which has created its own religion from thelanguage of mission by which Orthodoxy has been preached in the West) and a phantom"Protestant" Patriarch, we are dealing with false creations of theologicalnomenclature that are separated from true experience.

Despite Western references to Patriarch Kyrillos’ wide contacts with theReformers, he is in fact most famous in the Orthodox world for his anti-Papist standagainst the Uniate menace and for his opposition to Jesuit missions in Eastern Europe. Hiscontacts in Eastern Europe, where he studied, served, and traveled, were extensive. Hisopposition to Uniate Catholicism after the Brzeesc-Litewski Treaty of 1596 was so strongand widespread, that his so-called "Confession," whatever its true source, is amere footnote to his struggle against Papism. It was THIS anti-Latin Loukaris whosupported Protestant opposition to Papism, who perhaps allowed his views to be restatedand published by his Calvinist contacts in Geneva, and who earned the enduring hatred ofthe Papacy, which has played an essential role—if one reads the intellectual historysurrounding this issue—in perpetuating the idea that the "Confessio" wasthe direct work of Kyrillos and that he was a Protestant in his thinking. If one ignoresalmost all of his scholarship and accepts the "Confessio," and if one ignoresalmost all of his activities and accomplishments in Eastern Europe and in resistingUniatism, 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 soboldly bequeathed to them by Latin polemicists, is much like modernist Orthodoxy inAmerica. It has the press. It has attention. It can dismiss arguments against it as thoseof fringe elements and cultists. But just as a thorough study of those who hold forth asOrthodoxy’s "official" spokesmen today show these people to be somethingother 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.