1629–1672

The Confession of Cyril Lucaris and the Response of Dositheus: Scripture, Tradition, the Infallibility of the Church and Transubstantiation

In the Eastern Confession of the Christian Faith (1629), Patriarch Cyril Lucaris combined the Orthodox dogmas on the Trinity and Christ with Protestant, especially Calvinist, tenets: Scripture is the infallible Word of God and above the authority of the Church, which can err; predestination, justification by faith and only two sacraments, with a spiritual presence in the Eucharist, while he called the Roman doctrine of transubstantiation false. The Council of Constantinople of 1638 anathematized Cyril, and the Council of Iași of 1643 condemned the Confession for Calvinism. The response came in the Eastern confessions of the 17th century, above all the Confession of Dositheus, approved by the Synod of Jerusalem in 1672: the witness of the catholic Church "has no less authority than the divine Scripture," since the author of both is one and the same Holy Spirit, and the Church cannot err. On the Eucharist Dositheus (article 17) proclaimed that after the consecration the bread "is changed, transformed, transubstantiated into the true body of the Lord himself," so that only the appearance and form of bread and wine remain. The Eastern confessions took the number of seven sacraments from late scholasticism and for the real presence used the term metousiosis, corresponding to the Latin "transubstantiation," while keeping reticence about the mode of presence.