Иерусалимский синод 1672 года: Доктринальное определение Православия

Eastern Orthodox synod (1672)

The Synod of Jerusalem is an Eastern Orthodox synod held in 1672. It is also called the Synod of Bethlehem. Lucaris was accused of adopting in this book Calvinistic views and asserting that Calvinism was in fact the faith of the Eastern Church. His E. Orthodox defenders claim that the book was a forgery. Cyril did not disavow it in writing. Cyril Lucaris died in 1638. It is also possible that the synod is referred to as Synod of Bethlehem because Patriarch Dositheus of Jerusalem summoned it on the occasion of consecrating said Church of the Nativity in 1672. The Synod affirmed that the Holy Ghost proceeds from God the Father alone and not from both Father and Son.

The acts of the synod are signed by Dositheus, his predecessor the ex patriarch Nectarius, six metropolitans and bishops, the Archimandrite of the Holy Sepulchre, Josaphat, and a great number of other archimandrites, priests, monks, and theologians. There are sixty eight signatures in total. The Church of Russia was represented by a monk, Timothy. In their correspondence with the 18th century Non Juror Anglican bishops, the Eastern Patriarchs insisted on acceptance of the Synod's teaching on transubstantiation.

The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica called the confession of the Synod of Jerusalem "the most vital statement of faith made in the Greek Church during the past thousand years." The 1910 Catholic Encyclopedia states the decrees of the synod "have been accepted unreservedly by the whole [Eastern] Orthodox Church. They were at once approved by the other patriarchs, the Church of Russia, etc. ; they are always printed in full among the symbolic books of the [Eastern] Orthodox Church, and form an official creed or declaration in the strictest sense, which every [Eastern] Orthodox Christian is bound to accept." Protestant scholar Philip Schaff wrote: "This Synod is the most important in the modern history of the Eastern Church, and may be compared to the Council of Trent. Both fixed the doctrinal status of the Churches they represent, and both condemned the evangelical doctrines of Protestantism. Both were equally hierarchical and intolerant, and present a strange contrast to the first Synod held in Jerusalem, when 'the apostles and elders,' in the presence of 'the brethren,' freely discussed and adjusted, in a spirit of love, without anathemas, the great controversy between the Gentile and the Jewish Christians."