Digging Out the Embedded Church - The Maranatha Community

The Eastern Churches were not rent asunder by anything like the Reformation in the West.
Only one eminent Eastern Churchman was affected by Protestant ideas. This was Cyril
Lukaris (Lucar) (1570-1638), 63 patriarch of Constantinople. Having studied in Italy and
been drawn to Calvinism, he was attracted to Anglicanism and established contact with
Oxford University.
He is notable for presenting the 5 th Century Codex Alexandrinus (one of England‟s greatest
Biblical treasures) to Charles I in 1628. He signed a Confession of Faith on Protestant lines in
1638 in Geneva, refining Orthodoxy, as he saw it, in a Calvinist manner. He sought a
rapprochement between Orthodoxy and Protestant Reformed teaching by suggesting that
Reformed doctrine should be placed in the Context of the Early Fathers, that Scripture and
Tradition should be seen as a whole revelation, and that good things that had become
corrupted should not be abandoned but the good in them sought out.
The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church calls him „the first important theologian of
the Eastern Church since the fall of Constantinople in 1453‟ and „the most brilliant and
politically outstanding Greek Patriarch and national leader of the 17 th Century.‟ He was
murdered by a collusion of Turkish, Catholic and Orthodox enemies.
In England, Richard Baxter (1615-1691) proposed a national and comprehensive Church for
England, not only to unite Christians but to be a bulwark against an unreformed Roman
Catholicism.
His model was a medieval model in that he saw England to be a Christian kingdom with the
Sovereign as head of the Church as well as of the State. His longing for Christian Unity
would have let Independents into the National Church; an Independent congregation would
still be able to be part of the established Church. A great disciplinarian, Baxter saw the
magistracy as part of the divine plan for creating a godly church, not as separate from the
Church but as part of it. All true Christians are united in Christ and therefore should worship
together.
The Church of England was an episcopal church but Baxter‟s view of episcopacy was radical.
There was to be no overlording of the church by bishops: their authority was to be exercised
through a council of pastors. He saw that much of what denominations held dear, including
belief in an apostolic succession, created division rather than unity in the Church. His
definition of what was needed to be a church member of any denomination was a personal
repentance and a Trinitarian faith. 64
63 Cyril Loukaris (Lucar), 1570-1638. He is remarkable in being an eminent Orthodox leader (he
became Patriarch of Constantinople) who was profoundly influenced by Protestant thinking. He
signed a Confession of Faith which was clearly Calvinistic through which he hoped to purify the
Orthodox Church. He was a supporter of Biblical translations. The Codex Alexandrinus Manuscript of
the Bible in Greek is now in the British Library in London.
64 Baxter held the view that the Church of England „derived its succession‟ not from Rome but from
the „British and Scottish Church‟ (see Slosser, G J, Christian Unity, its history and challenger in all
communions, in all lands, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co Ltd, London, 1929, p 56). Slosser
writes also that Baxter saw that unity depended upon the personal sanctification of Christianity.
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