Christian Unity (the book) - The Maranatha Community

a growing unity among Christians at home. In this he anticipated the EdinburghWorld Missionary Conference 1910 by over 300 years.The Eastern Churches were not rent asunder by anything like the Reformationin the West. Only one eminent Eastern Churchman was affected by Protestantideas. This was Cyril Lukaris (Lucar) (1570-1638), 63 patriarch of Constantinople.Having studied in Italy and been drawn to Calvinism, he was attracted toAnglicanism and established contact with Oxford University.He is notable for presenting the 5 th Century Codex Alexandrinus (one ofEngland’s greatest Biblical treasures) to Charles I in 1628. He signed aConfession of Faith on Protestant lines in 1638 in Geneva, refining Orthodoxy,as he saw it, in a Calvinist manner. He sought a rapprochement betweenOrthodoxy and Protestant Reformed teaching by suggesting that Reformeddoctrine should be placed in the Context of the Early Fathers, that Scriptureand Tradition should be seen as a whole revelation, and that good things thathad become corrupted should not be abandoned but the good in them soughtout.The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church calls him ‘the first importanttheologian of the Eastern Church since the fall of Constantinople in 1453’ and‘the most brilliant and politically outstanding Greek Patriarch and nationalleader of the 17 th Century.’ He was murdered by a collusion of Turkish, Catholicand Orthodox enemies.In England, Richard Baxter (1615-1691) proposed a national andcomprehensive Church for England, not only to unite Christians but to be abulwark against an unreformed Roman Catholicism.His model was a medieval model in that he saw England to be a Christiankingdom with the Sovereign as head of the Church as well as of the State. Hislonging for Christian Unity would have let Independents into the NationalChurch; an Independent congregation would still be able to be part of theestablished Church. A great disciplinarian, Baxter saw the magistracy as part ofthe divine plan for creating a godly church, not as separate from the Church63Cyril Loukaris (Lucar), 1570-1638. He is remarkable in being an eminent Orthodox leader(he became Patriarch of Constantinople) who was profoundly influenced by Protestantthinking. He signed a Confession of Faith which was clearly Calvinistic through which hehoped to purify the Orthodox Church. He was a supporter of Biblical translations. The CodexAlexandrinus Manuscript of the Bible in Greek is now in the British Library in London.Page 102